The Black Panther Party’s (BPP) legacy in America has been significant and lasting. It began as a militant movement focused on protecting Blacks from injustices such as evictions, and it was effective in shining light on racially motivated inequalities such as hunger and poverty (1). The Party gave Blacks a sense that someone was watching out for their interests in the face of abuse by police, governmental entities, and businesses (2).

The notoriety of the BPP as an activist organization drew attention and also retaliation from those in authority who were anxious to stymy this movement and all that it represented. Members of the BPP were often armed, and that created the potential for violence, attracting publicity that defined the BPP as a violent anti-government organization. This association persisted long after they ceased to exist. However, another more important legacy grew along with this one: the party’s work as a social services organization. Indeed, this can be considered the most impactful of their achievements.

After its inception as the protector of the rights of Black people, the BPP did something unexpected: It pivoted and began to extend itself into the service of Blacks in many other ways. The beginning was the Free Breakfast Program. Children were going to school without any food in their stomachs, making it extremely hard for them to focus on learning. As a result, the number of children who performed poorly and were underserved by the education system was higher than among the white population. Studies have shown the positive impacts (psychological and academic) breakfast has on children (3, 4). The BPP set out to tackle that problem first, and they devised breakfast programs to feed children every day of the week.

The popularity of these programs grew and spread across the country, with more and more of them being instituted in poor black communities. Their success was enormous. For example, in the first year after its inception, the Free Breakfast Program that started in Oakland grew to 19 cities across the US and fed 20,000 school-aged children (5). Women who were members of the organization were typically the ones who prepared the meals each day, but the people who served the breakfasts and therefore interacted personally with the children were male members of the BPP. The act of serving breakfast each day demonstrated a gentle side of male BPP members that had never been depicted before in the press. Much of the media coverage of the BPP was negative and cast the membership of the BPP as violent aggressors, but initiatives like the breakfast programs led to more nuanced coverage (6).

With the rise of the breakfast programs, the BPP legitimized themselves caretakers of the most vulnerable members of Black communities—the children. Photos in the press of Black males setting down a plate of food in front of the children were emotionally impactful and shook the bad reputation that had followed the BPP previously. It is hard to maintain negative feelings against men who take time to feed and engage with children. The visibility of the BPP as a social service NGO grew during that period, and they became more well-known than ever for good deeds, but there was still a patina of violent activism in the public’s perceptions of them.

Many later programs built on the success of the breakfast programs. Other BPP programs, such as ambulance services for Blacks and other minority groups, health care clinics, and in-community at-home health services, as well as transportation to take people to visit friends and family members who were in prison, became a huge help to Black communities (7). Black EMTs were trained and employed for the ambulance services, and medical professionals were recruited to come into Black neighborhoods and set up health care centers.

The ultimate legacy of the BPP was that it filled a huge gap in services for Black communities and helped address major inequalities. It showed what could be done when visionary leaders refused to stand down in the face of oppression. It empowered Black people and communities, increased Black leadership and control over policies and programs, and also elevated women’s opportunities to use all of their skills and commitment to helping others to promote broad change in the Black community.

Many of these programs shamed the government into participation in providing funding and services to impoverished and marginalized communities. They gave rise to other initiatives that continue to serve the dire needs the BPP identified, like school lunch programs, drop-in medical clinics, busing to prisons, etc. Those programs have in turn morphed into new ones that serve more defined segments of society. The BPP created a movement that continues to benefit the United States, and other countries emulated the successes of some of their programs. For example, the People Survival Programs in Mozambique offered free food, schools, and hospitals (8). In this way, the party’s impact persisted for many decades even after the BPP disintegrated.

References

Andrea King Collier, “The Black Panthers: Revolutionaries, Free Breakfast Pioneers,” National Geographic, last modified November 4, 2016. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/culture/food/the-plate/2015/11/04/the-black-panthers-revolutionaries-free-breakfast-pioneers/

Sandra Korn, “The Politics of Power: This Side of Glory and the Black Panther Party, Harvard Political Review, last modified February 13, 2012. https://harvardpolitics.com/features/memoirs-project/the-politics-of-power-this-side-of-glory-and-the-black-panther-party/

Katie Adolphus, Clare L. Lawton, and Louise Dye, “The Effects of Breakfast on Behavior and Academic Performance in Children and Adolescents,” Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 7 (2013): 425. Accessed May 15, 2020. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3737458/

Huey Newton, “To Feed Our Children,” The Black Panther (1969). Accessed May 15, 2020. https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/workers/black-panthers/1969/03/26.htm

Collier, “The Black Panthers.”

Morgan Vickers, “The Free Breakfast for Children Program and the Contestation of a Right to Food,” Black Power in American Memory, last modified April 18, 2017. http://blackpower.web.unc.edu/2017/04/the-free-breakfast-for-children-program-and-the-contestation-of-a-right-to-food/#_ftnref10

David Hilliard, The Black Panther Party: Service to the People Programs (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008).

“People’s survival programs thrive in Mozambique,” The Black Panther 8, no. 2 (1971): 1. Accessed May 10, 2020. http://freedomarchives.org/Documents/Finder/DOC513_scans/BPP_Paper/513.BPP.ICN.V8.N2.Apr.1.1972.pdf

Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin, Jr., Black Against Empire: The History and Politics of the Black Panther Party (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2016).