Free Breakfast for Children Program

In 1966 a black nationalist and socialist party began in the U.S celled the Black Panther Party (BPP), at first this organization had the purpose of protecting the black community by having black armed citizens monitor the police behavior, this was because in many times the community felt assaulted by them, so they felt the need to fight this police brutality.  Later on the Black Pathers Party wanted to do more for their community so they started to create really important social programs, one of the being the “Free Breakfast for Children Program”

The Black Panthers knew that even though the US was a wealthy and stable country, there was people out there in their neighborhoods starving. The free breakfast for children program started in a small church in California and was created for black and poor children whos family didn´t have enough money to feed the young ones. The party had the idea that every children needed to have a full stomach before they went to learn at school, they no longer wanted their people to live without proper health. It was also a good instance for the panthers to promote their political views and gain support from the community. This programe was so succesfull that it started to spread all over the country, which meant that the program fed over 10.000 children every morning.
The FBI was thretened by this social service because every day more and more people would support the Black Panther Party. Not agreeing with this, the FBI defined the program as a propaganda tool used by the panthers to inculcate their communist beliefs in kids, and in response they created a terror campaing against the BPP.


So did the BPP mix their political organization with social services just to promote themselves? To me they did this mainly for the welfair of people, of course they gained more followers for their party by having such a great service, but the FBI had no need to criticize this when they weren´t helping the community either.