The Journey to Free School Meals: How Topeka Became Part of a National Movement
For the 2024-2025 school year, students in Topeka Public Schools will receive free breakfast and lunch, ensuring that every child has access to nutritious meals regardless of financial status. This significant achievement is part of a larger national effort that has evolved over decades to address childhood hunger and educational inequality.
Topeka’s Free Meal Program: A Step Forward
Topeka Public Schools announced that, thanks to federal assistance and district-wide initiatives, all enrolled students will be eligible to receive breakfast and lunch at no charge. This move eliminates financial barriers that have historically prevented some students from receiving adequate nutrition during the school day. But how did we get here? To understand the significance of this policy, we need to look at the history of free school meal programs in the United States.
The Federal School Lunch and Breakfast Programs
The roots of federal school meal programs date back to the Great Depression, when widespread poverty and malnutrition forced the U.S. government to intervene. In 1946, President Harry Truman signed the National School Lunch Act, establishing the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) to provide low-cost or free lunches to children in need.
While the NSLP helped address hunger, it wasn’t until 1966 that the federal government introduced the School Breakfast Program (SBP) as a pilot initiative, championed by Kentucky congressman Carl Perkins. Perkins was particularly concerned about children in rural areas, who often worked the fields with their families before embarking on long bus rides to school, arriving hungry. The program began small, experimenting with various approaches, but was ultimately made permanent in 1975.
Free breakfast is now one of the U.S. government’s largest welfare programs, providing meals to millions of children every year. In 2012, the program served breakfast to 12.9 million students and had an operating budget of $3.3 billion, according to the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service.
Unlike the NSLP, which has garnered both praise and criticism, the School Breakfast Program has often been overlooked in policy discussions. However, its origins and expansion were shaped not only by federal efforts but also by radical grassroots activism.
The Black Panther Party’s Influence on School Meal Programs
While federal programs played a crucial role in addressing childhood hunger, community-driven activism also left a lasting impact. The Black Panther Party (BPP), often remembered for its political activism, was also a pioneer in feeding children.
In January 1969, the BPP launched the Free Breakfast for Children Program in Oakland, California, recognizing that many children from low-income families went to school hungry. Their program provided free, nutritious breakfasts before school, rapidly expanding to dozens of cities across the country, including Kansas City, Missouri.
The program was highly effective and widely embraced by the communities it served, often operating out of churches and community centers. Supplies such as grits, eggs, toast, and milk were donated by local businesses, sometimes voluntarily and other times under community pressure. The initiative was not just about food—it was also a political statement, exposing the government’s failure to meet basic needs in Black communities.
Despite its success, the BPP’s program faced active opposition from the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover’s COINTELPRO program. A 1969 memo from Hoover explicitly stated that the Breakfast for Children Program needed to be disrupted because it was attracting support from moderate Black and White communities, a threat to the government’s attempt to isolate the Panthers.
However, despite these attempts at suppression, the BPP’s breakfast program gained national attention, and some scholars argue that its success pressured the federal government to expand and fund the School Breakfast Program, leading to its permanent establishment in 1975.
The Role of Women’s Organizations in School Nutrition Policy
While the Black Panther Party played a major role in drawing attention to childhood hunger, women’s organizations were also key players in shaping federal policy. In the late 1960s, mainstream women’s groups lobbied Congress to expand school meal programs. The Committee on School Lunch Participation (CSLP), for example, published a scathing report, “Their Daily Bread,” which highlighted the failures of the U.S. government to provide adequate food assistance to children. Their efforts, particularly in the wake of Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, led to increased funding and policy changes that helped shape the modern school meal system.
A Legacy That Endures
Today, programs like the one in Topeka Public Schools exist because of a combination of federal policy, local advocacy, and grassroots activism. While government programs formalized school meal access, it was the Black Panther Party’s direct action that helped bring national attention to the urgency of feeding hungry students.
As Topeka celebrates a new chapter in ensuring no child goes hungry at school, it’s worth remembering the long and complex journey that led us here. The fight for food justice in education continues, but thanks to decades of policy evolution and community activism, the next generation of students in Topeka and across the country will have one less barrier to success.
