'One of the biggest, baddest things we did': Black Panthers' free breakfasts, 50 years on

The party’s program to feed kids, launched in 1969, became a national phenomenon. This weekend, former members joined a celebration in the party’s birthplace

Last Saturday morning at Lil Bobby Hutton Park in West Oakland, local residents lined up for the 50th anniversary of the Black Panther party’s pioneering free breakfast program. Among the attendees were Emory Douglas, who was the party’s minister of culture; Fredrika Newton, widow of the party’s co-founder Huey Newton; and the Black Panther illustrator Gayle Dickson. Organized by the Oakland-based People’s Kitchen Collective (PKC), the gathering was scored by soul music and warm conversations from communal tables.

Now in its eighth year, the breakfast was one of the PKC’s biggest, serving 650 plates of grits, greens, scrambled eggs and tofu. At the edge of the feast, an altar decorated with flowers and seeds held framed photographs of Black Panther members, activists, and mothers to whom this breakfast owed its legacy.

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from World news | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2puYmwV