[opo]

No, that is not true. The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946. That has since been updated several times: the Child Nutrition Act in 1966, the Child Care Food Program in 1975, etc.

[komali2]

What you're saying doesn't contradict the argument that the goal was do outdo the black panther lunch programs.

Certainly I'd like to read more about the idea before I buy into it, but it does make a lot of sense - schools in black neighborhoods are chronically underfunded and the black panthers were first and foremost a direct action and mutual aid group, and furthermore the USA government viewed them as a huge threat to government authority and did many things to attempt to undermine the black panthers... Including outright assassination.

[maxlybbert]

> [Original, emphasis added]: the only reason we have school lunch programs in the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free breakfast program for black children in the 70s

> [Response, emphasis added]: The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946

Are you saying that the government started trying to one-up the Black Panther school lunches 30 years before the Black Panthers started offering them?

Is it possible that the people in charge of school lunches in the 1970s viewed the Black Panther program as some kind of competition? Sure. Was the 1970s Black Panther program "the only reason" the US started a national school lunch program in the 1940s? I don't see how that would be possible.