The Black Panthers' Free Breakfast Program

In November 1969, the Black Panthers announced that their program had spread to 23 cities and distributed free breakfast to more than 20,000 children. The leadership of the Panthers suspected or outright hoped in some cases that they might one day wind up in an armed revolutionary struggle with the US government. In Baltimore, the police called this program a front for indoctrinating children with Panther propaganda. By 1972, the U.S. government free breakfast program had reached more than 1.18 million children.