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Hoover feared a breakfast program
Programs for the community
The Black Panther Party began in 1966, at a time when other civil rights and liberation movements were also fighting for change, and this weekend marks 60 years since its birth. Alongside its revolutionary politics, it started community programs: free healthcare, ambulance services, and a breakfast program for hungry schoolchildren.
A photographer's view
Stephen Shames, a white Jewish American student in California, was drawn to the Panthers because they had specific, concrete things they were doing. Other campus groups held meetings about who would run the tractor factory after the revolution. Shames photographed the breakfast program, including two little white kids at the table, and the Panthers accepted everyone. There were calls for the programs to be copied across the country, including in poor white communities.
Hoover's letter
In the late 1960s, co-founder Huey Newton asked Ericka Huggins, a member of the party, to request the party's files from the FBI under the Freedom of Information Act. Boxes and boxes of documents arrived. One was a letter from Hoover to his operatives in field offices and informants. In it, the FBI director wrote that the Panthers talking about self-defense in their communities did not worry him, and that the breakfast program did.
How did the breakfast program spread?
The first Panther breakfast ran in January 1969 at a church in Oakland, California. Within months, chapters in other cities opened their own, usually in churches and community halls staffed by volunteers who asked local grocers for food. The federal government had run only a small pilot school breakfast program since the Child Nutrition Act of 1966, and Congress made the program permanent in 1975.
How did the FBI target the Panthers?
The FBI ran a counterintelligence effort called COINTELPRO from 1956 to 1971, and by 1968 the Black Panther Party was among its targets. The Senate's Church Committee reported that the bureau used informants, anonymous forged letters, and efforts to sow conflict inside the party. The committee, chaired by Idaho senator Frank Church, published its findings in 1976.
How does the Freedom of Information Act work?
The act, signed by President Lyndon Johnson in 1966 and in effect from 1967, lets anyone request records from federal agencies. Agencies must release them unless a listed exemption applies, such as national security or personal privacy. Withheld passages usually come back as black bars over the text. Congress strengthened the law in 1974 after Watergate, passing the amendments over President Ford's veto.
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