Food security isn’t possible until EVERYONE has access to healthy foods.
This African Heritage and Health Week we honor Black leaders who have led movements toward food security and food sovereignty.
Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer not only played a role in 1960s civil and voting rights movements in Mississippi, she also fought for food sovereignty. She started a “pig bank” to provide free pigs to Black farmers, launched the Freedom Farm Cooperative to purchase land for Black farmers, and with the assistance of donors purchased land to create a co-op store, boutique and sewing enterprise. In January 2025, now former President Joe Biden posthumously awarded Hamer the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Three years after the Black Panther Party was established in 1966, the party started the Free Breakfast for School Children program for children in Oakland. According to History.com, party members and volunteers went to local grocery stores to solicit
donations, consulted with nutritionists on healthful breakfast options for children, and served the food to children for free. The group eventually fed thousands of children per day in at least 45 programs.
As the first Black woman elected to Congress in 1968, Shirley Chisholm fought for racial, economic and food justice. She played a key role in expanding what is now known as SNAP and created the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. She later became the first Black woman to run for a major party's presidential nomination in 1972.
George Washington Carver was a revolutionary agricultural chemist, agronomist, and experimenter. Born into slavery, later in life he was appointed as director of the newly organized department of agriculture at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama in 1896. Notably, Carver was the only African American in the United States with a graduate degree in agricultural science. He sought to uplift Black farmers through the development of new products derived from peanuts, sweet potatoes, and soybeans. He helped farmers revitalize cotton fields into producing other crops, enlarged the commercial possibilities of the peanut and sweet potato for more profitability, and developed 300 derivative products from peanuts.
Booker T. Whatley was a horticulturist and agricultural professor at Tuskegee University in Alabama who was an advocate for regenerative agriculture and is credited for founding the U.S. use of the CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) model. As a result of Black farmers often being denied loans and grants by the federal government, Whatley
advocated for what he called clientele membership clubs — allowing customers to pay up front for a season of food as a way of guaranteeing business for the farmers. The Hunger and Health Coalition participates in the CSA model with local farmers in our area!
What other Black Americans do you know have had a positive influence on food sovereignty and food security? Let us know!
Resources used came from the following sources: www.britannica.com, www.nokidhungry.org, www.womenshistory.org, www.History.com, and www.smithsonianmag.com
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