Panthers Free Breakfast Program (photo: Race-Talk.org)
Panthers to Pitchforks: Food Justice and the Black Panthers Legacy
This trip is now closed.
Through their food distribution programs in poor neighborhoods and anti-racist activism, the Black Panthers were among the original leaders of the U.S. food justice movement. The majority of Black Panther Party members were high school and college youth activists, and they embraced Food Justice activities long before the phrase was coined. On this historical bus tour, led by Oakland-based Black Panther Legacy Tours, you will visit numerous sites significant to the Black Panther Party, the civil rights movement and United States History.
There are a total of 18 historical landmarks on this tour, including the homes of David Hilliard, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale, Party headquarters, the church that housed the BPP free breakfast program and the street on which Huey Newton was shot and killed. Accompanied by Hilliard himself, the tour will explore the deep and complex history of the Black Panther Party, with a focus on the BPP Community survival programs. There will be time for questions and discussion all along the way.
New York Times review: “The Black Panther Legacy Tours aren’t for your typical tour group types. Led by David Hilliard, a former Panthers chief of staff and childhood friend of Huey P. Newton, the three-hour tours start at the West Oakland Library, 18th and Adeline Streets. They trace the history of the Oakland-born movement at 18 sites, from the boxy building where Newton and Bobby Seale drew up the party’s Ten Point Program in 1966 to the sidewalk where Newton was killed by a drug dealer in 1989.”
Tour Highlights
- St Augustines Episcopal Church at this site in 1969, the party initiated a free breakfast for children program, the first in a series of community survival programs.
- Visit the Second BPP office at 4419 West St, which was the site for the BPP free fresh vegetable distribution. Vegetables from SF Farmers Market were delivered to low resource Oakland residents daily by a counter culture group called the Diggers.
- The traffic signal at the corner of Market & 55th is where a small cadre of armed Black Panthers stopped motorists and personally escorted children across this busy intersection. Installation of a traffic signal was begun August 1st 1967
Participating Organizations
- Black Panther Legacy Tours provides tours of historic Black Panther Party sites in Oakland, CA
This trip is now closed. Please check back for future tours of the Black Panthers’ food justice legacy.
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Bay Area Food Justice Tours (Nov. 4 – 5, 2011) are brought to you by CFSC in partnership with Food Sovereignty Tours, a project of Food First/the Institute for Food and Development Policy.
For more information, contact Tanya at tkerssen@foodfirst.org or by phone at (510) 654-4400, ext. 223
