13. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, July 9–11, 1969, p. 3571.
14. Alvin L. Schorr, note to Mr. Califano and attachment, “Effects of Malnutrition on Physical and Mental Growth,” November 30, 1967, p. 3, 1968 Interagency Task Force on Nutrition and Adequate Diets, LBJ Library.
15. Michael Harrington, The Other America: Poverty in the United States (New York: Macmillan, 1962), and Dwight MacDonald, “Our Invisible Poor,” The New Yorker 38/48 (January 19, 1963), 82–132.
16. On the War on Poverty, see James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945–1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996); John Morton Blum, Years of Discord: American Politics and Society, 1961–1974 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991); and William H. Chafe, The Unfinished Journey: America since World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986).
17. Dan Olson, “Remembering Orville Freeman,” National Public Radio, February 21, 2003, http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2003/02/01.
18. See James N. Giglio, “New Frontier Agricultural Policy: The Commodity Side, 1961–1963,” Agricultural History 61 no. 3 (Summer 1987): 53–70.
19. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Hearings, School Milk and Breakfast Programs, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess., June 21, 1966 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1966), 17.
20. “Legislation with Civil Rights Implications,” 11; Legislative Proposals, December 8, 1965, Office Files of Harry McPherson, Civil Rights—1965, Box 21, LBJ Library.
21. Senate Hearings, Agriculture Committee, 1966, p. 17.
22. “Legislation with Civil Rights Implications,” 11, Legislative Proposals, December 8, 1965, Office Files of Harry McPherson. This report admitted, “There appears to exist an unfortunate correlation between the presence of large numbers of abysmally low income families and grossly inadequate statewide welfare services. Thus, in the States of the South in which Negro poverty is most concentrated, the kinds of programs available for assistance are much more restricted than in other States” (10).
23. Memorandum for Orville Freedman from Harry C. McPherson, Jr., September 28, 1965, Box 21, Office Files of Harry McPherson.
24. House Committee on Education and Labor, 1968, p. 311.
25. The school lunch funds came from Title 1 of the 1965 Elementary and Secondary School Act.
26. Memorandum, Phillip Hughes to Mr. Califano, December 10, 1965, WHCF EX LE/HE, 1–1, Box 59, LBJ Library.
27. Legislative Proposals, December 8, 1965, V. Legislation with Civil Rights Implications, Box 21, Office Files of Harry McPherson.
28. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, December 17–19, 1968, p. 48. Also see “Legislation with Civil Rights Implications,” Legislative Proposals, December 8, 1965, p. 10, Office Files of Harry McPherson. This memo proposed that the school lunch and school milk programs “be removed to the Welfare Administration.”
29. Maurice MacDonald, Food Stamps and Income Maintenance (New York: Academic Press, 1977); Leamann, Promised Land; and Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson and the War on Poverty.”
30. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread (Atlanta, Ga.: McNelley-Rudd, 1968), 89–91.
31. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1966, p. 23.
32. Ibid., 1966, p. 10.
33. John A. Schnittker to Joseph Califano, Jr., November 19, 1965, LBJ Library, WHCF EX LE/HE 1–1, Box 59. Also see memo from Phillip Hughes to Califano, “Child Feeding Programs,” December 10, 1965. Hughes recommends leaving school lunches in the Department of Agriculture.
34. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1966, p. 11.
35. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Agriculture and Forestry, Hearings, National School Lunch Act, 87th Cong., 2nd Sess., June 19,1962 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1962), 12. While the program amendments directly addressed domestic poverty, much of the senators’ attention went to a provision that would extend the program to American Samoa. Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands were already covered, but American Samoa had been left out of the original legislation. Some senators opposed sending food aid to Puerto Rico. North Carolina’s Everett Jordan said that “they cannot even speak English.” He thought that “if they are going to receive aid from the United States, they ought to be able to speak English and say, ‘I would like to have a little bread,’ instead of calling it something other than bread” (31).
36. Senate Agriculture Committee, 1966, p. 17.
37. Ibid., 1966, p. 18–19.
38. Administrative History, Department of Agriculture, vol. 1, ch. 8, p. 61, LBJ Library.
39. Memo from John A. Schnittker to Harry McPherson, November 16, 1966, Papers of Harry McPherson, Box 50, Folder: Joe Califano, LBJ Library.
40. Senate Agriculture Subcommittee, 1962, p. 23; memorandum to the President from Orville Freeman, November 5, 1965. Freeman admits that “many schools, especially older ones in many urban centers cannot meet the needs for free lunches, when up to 50 percent of the pupils may be unable to pay their share.” White House Central Files, EX AG 7, AG 7–2, School Lunch Program, Box 10, LBJ Library.
41. “Position of the American School Food Service Association on the Proposed Repeal of Existing Child Nutrition Legislation,” n.d. (probably October 4, 1975), Washington, D.C., Office, Box 285, Children—Nutrition, 1975–76, National Council of Jewish Women Papers, Library of Congress.
42. House Subcommittee on D.C., p. 8. Washington, D.C., school cafeteria wages were below the national norm and below minimum wage (31).
43. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread, 49.
44. Ibid., 449–50.
45. Ibid.
46. See, e.g., Robert C. Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, Mass.: Havard University Press, 1998), 161 and 167–68; and Sheldon Danziger, “Welfare Reform Policy From Nixon to Clinton: What Role for Social Science?” paper prepared for conference, “The Social Sciences and Policy Making,” Institute for Social Research, University of Michigan, March 13–14, 1998.
47. See Gordon W. Gunderson, “The National School Lunch Program Background and Development,” Food and Nutrition Service, 63, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1971.
48. Senate Employment Subcommittee, 1968, p. 70.
49. See Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson”; Lieberman, Shifting the Color Line; Alex Waddan, The Politics ofSocial Welfare: The Collapse ofthe Centre and the Rise of the Right (Cheltenham, U.K.: Edward Elgar, 1977). He argues that the War on Poverty was not, in fact, a war on inequality (55).
50. Senate Select Committee, Part 4, February 18–20, 1969, p. 1246.
51. Senate Employment Subcommittee, 1968, p. 213.
52. United States Congress, House Select Subcommittee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor, Hearings to Amend the National School Lunch Act, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 28, 1968 (hereafter, House Subcommittee on Education, 1968), 8.
53. Senate Employment Subcommittee, 1968, p. 213.
54. United States Congress, House Subcommittee on the District of Columbia, Hearings to Amend the District ofColumbia Public School Food Service Act, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 19, 1968 (hereafter, House Subcommittee on D.C.), 8.
55. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, July 9–11, 1969, p. 3413. See also Lee G. Burchinal and Hilda Schiff, “Rural Poverty,” in Louis A. Ferman, Joyce L. Kornbluh, Alan Harber, eds., Poverty in America: A Book of Readings (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1965), 104. “To some extent, poverty is a relative concept, reflecting societal standards of living. Shades of gray obscure any fine line between being ‘really poor,’ being ‘deprived,’ or simply being less well off than most. Still, there are absolute limits below which it is difficult or impossible to maintain or foster human health, growth, and dignity.”
56. Senate Select Committee, Part 5A, March 10, 11, 1969, pp. 1538–39.
57. United States Congess, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Hearings, School Lunch and Child Nutrition Progr
ams, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., September 29–October 1, 1969 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1969), 51–55.
58. Richard Russell to A. J. Shaw (Deputy Office of the County Council, Modesto, Calif.) November 3, 1969, Richard Russell Papers, Series IX:B, Box 7, Folder: School Lunch Program January 1969–November 1969, Richard Russell Library, Athens, Georgia.
59. Senate Select Committee, Part 5A, March 10, 11, 1969, pp. 1538–39.
60. Ibid., Part 5B, March 11, 1969, p. 2011.
61. United States Congress, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Forestry, Hearings on the School Lunch Program, 92nd Cong., 1st Sess., September 16, 1971 (hereafter, Senate Agriculture Committee, 1971), 2.
62. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread, 24. Also see United States Congress, House Committee on Education and Labor, Hearings, 91st Cong., 1st Sess. March 6, 1969 (hereafter, House Committee on Education and Labor, 1969), 100; and Senate Select Committee, Part 11, July 9–11, 1969, p. 3431. Some principals took into consideration whether the child could go home for lunch or could bring “a suitable lunch from home.” Ibid., 3413.
63. See Brauer, “Kennedy, Johnson”; Leamann, Promised Land; and Wadden, Politics ofSocial Welfare.
64. “Many in Appalachia Hungry Despite U.S. Aid,” NYT, June 18, 1971.
65. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, July 9–11, 1969, p. 3463.
66. United States Congress House Select Committee on Education, Committee on Education and Labor, Hearings, National School Lunch Act, 89th Cong., 2nd Sess., July 21, 1966 (hereafter, House Select Committee, 1966), 28.
67. See Meg Jacobs, Pocketbook Politics: Economic Citizenship in Twentieth Century America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005).
68. Sanford F. Schram, Words of Welfare: The Poverty of Social Science and the Social Science of Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1995). The 1955 Agriculture Department study found that families at every income level spent about one-third of their incomes on food. According to one account, Orshansky intended to measure family need, but her figures came to be used to measure destitution instead. Still, her figures linked poverty to income and the cost of food. The later switch to the consumer-price index unlinked poverty from food and established a line that no longer referred to income and nutrition at all. See ibid. Also see Gordon F. Bloom, “Distribution of Food,” in Jean Mayer, ed., U.S. Nutrition Policies in the Seventies (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1973), 128; Michael Morris and John B. Williamson, Poverty and Public Policy: An Analysis of Federal Intervention Efforts (New York: Greenwood Press, 1984), 14; S. M. Miller and Pamela Roby, “Poverty: Changing Social Stratification,” in Daniel Patrick Moynihan, ed., On Understanding Poverty: Perspectives from the Social Sciences (New York: Basic Books, 1969), 77; and John Cassidy, “Relatively Deprived: How Poor Is Poor?,” The New Yorker, April 3, 2006.
69. Mollie Orshansky, “Counting the Poor: Another Look at the Poverty Profile,” in Ferman et al., eds., Poverty in America, 45. Also see Orshansky, “The Shape of Poverty in 1966,” Social Science Research, March 1968. She told the Senate Select Committee that her formula was “a far from generous measure… it is a minimum for a household.” Senate Select Committee, Part 2, January 810, 1969, p. 639. Thanks to Jan Rosenberg for first introducing me to Mollie Orshansky.
70. Harrington, The Other America, 183. The government began to use the Consumer Price Index rather than the actual cost of food. This, according to Schram, meant that “the food-income relation which was the basis for the original poverty measure was no longer the current rationale.” Schram, Words ofWelfare, 207, nn. 22 and 81.
71. Shram, Words of Welfare, 78–81 and 208, n. 35. According to Shram, Orshansky intended her formula to be an “overall research tool, not as a means for determining eligibility for anti-poverty programs.” See 206, n. 19. Arnold E Schaefer, Chief Nutrition Program, Health Services and Mental Health Administration, Public Health Service, testified in 1969 that the “O’Shanky Index” was adopted “primarily … due to our urgent need to make a quick screen.” See House Hearings, Education Committee, 26.
72. Wadden argues that liberals aimed to cure poverty by integrating the poor into the economic mainstream and that they preferred services over income transfers. Thus, they needed some way to figure out who needed the services. Hence, a poverty line. The Politics ofSocial Welfare, 57–60.
73. Interagency Task Force on Nutrition and Adequate Diets, 1968, LBJ Library. This report noted, “Many local communities have been unwilling or financially unable to accept the local costs associated with the operation of a food stamp program.” The task force recommended that the law be amended to allow federal funding of local costs “where extraordinary actions are necessary to start or to continue a program,” 2.
74. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread, 35.
75. Ibid., 33.
76. House Committee on Education and Labor, 1969, p. 100.
77. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, July 9–11, 1969, p. 3413.
78. House Subcommittee on D.C., p. 33.
79. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, December 17–19, 1968, p. 157.
80. John Perryman, “School Lunch Programs,” in Mayer, U.S. Nutrition Policies in the Seventies, 217–18.
81. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, “Professors and the Poor,” in Moynihan, ed, On Understanding Poverty, 22; David Zarefsky, President Johnson’s War on Poverty: Rhetoric and History (n.p.: University of Alabama Press, 1986), 41; and Waddan, Politics of Social Welfare.
82. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, December 17–19, 1968, p. 25.
83. House Subcommittee on Education, 1968, p. 186.
84. Historian Richard J. Jensen observed that while the Democrats tried to extend New Deal type social measures, they were unable to do so because of “the strength of the conservative coalition consisting of the great majority of Republican congressmen in alliance with most of the Southern Democrats this coalition depended upon modern, middle-class families, who were opposed to taxes, and hence spending, except for national defense expenditures.” See his Grass Roots Politics: Parties, Issues, and Voters, 1854–1938 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1983), 14.
85. (Mrs.) Helen A. Davis to the President, March 25, 1966, WHCF Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library (emphasis in the original).
86. Vella (Mrs. Olin) Bellinger to the President, WHCF Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library.
87. Senate Select Committee, Part 11, p. 3413.
88. C. L. Mooney to the President, WHCF Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library.
89. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread, 46.
90. Ibid. Also see Senate Employment Subcommittee, p. 112. In one Texas district, children had to carry the trays, wipe tables, and wash dishes.
91. (Miss) Genevieve Olkiewicz to the President, March 14,1966, WHCF Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library.
92. “Child Nutrition Programs: Issues for the 101st Congress,” School Food Service Research Review, Spring 1989, p. 34.
93. House Select Committee, 1966, p. 23. The American Parents Committee resurfaced during this debate. See (Mrs.) Barbara D. McGarry to the President, January 18, 1966, WHCF, Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library.
94. House Select Education Committee, 1966, p. 14.
95. Ibid., p. 15.
96. Ibid., p. 14.
97. See John Burnett, “The Rise and Decline of School Meals in Britain, 18601900,” in John Burnett and Derek J. Oddy, eds., The Origins and Development ofFood Policy in Europe (London: Leicester University Press, 1994). Burnett suggests that “the issue of whether certain children attending school should be fed at public expense has a strong moral and political overtone and has been hotly, even passionately debated … because it raises fundamental questions about the responsibility of the state as against that of parents” (56).
98. C. L. Mooney to the President (signed by five board members), WHCF Gen AG 7–2, Box 11, LBJ Library.
99. Memo, Thomas R. Hughes
to Henry Wilson, February 17, 1966, WHCF EX LE/HE 1–1, Box 59, LBJ Library.
CHAPTER 7. A RIGHT TO LUNCH
1. Kenneth Schlossberg, “Nutrition and Government Policy in the United States,” in Beverley Winikoff, ed., Nutrition and National Policy (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1978), 329.
2. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty, Committee on Labor and Public Welfare, Hunger in America: Chronology and Selected Background Materials, 90th Cong., 2nd Sess., October 1968 (hereafter, Senate Subcommittee on Employment).
3. United States Congress, Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, Senate, 90th and 91st Cong., 1968, (hereafter, Senate Select Committee), Part 9, p. 1069.
4. White House Conference on Food, Nutrition, and Health: Final Report (Washington, D.C. 1969), p. 260–62. According to a Department of Agriculture 1968 survey, total enrollment in public and private schools was 50.7 million. About 36.8 million, or 73%, were enrolled in schools participating in the lunch program. Actual participation rate was only 18.9 million, or 37%. Free and reduced price meals were provided for about 12% of the participating children. See Gordon W. Gunderson, “The National School Lunch Program: Background and Development,” Food and Nutrition Service, 63, U.S. Department of Agriculture 1971, p. 26.
5. Committee on School Lunch Participation, Their Daily Bread: A Study of the National School Lunch Program (Atlanta: McNelley-Rudd, 1968), 15.
6. Ibid., 16.
7. Ibid., 16.
8. See Judith Segal, Food for the Hungy: The Reluctant Society (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1970), 11.
9. The Citizens’ Crusade represented a coalition of religious, trade union, and other liberal activist groups. It was supported by the Chicago-based Field Foundation and led by Leslie Dunbar.
10. “Sever Hunger Found in Mississippi,” New York Times (hereafter, NYT) June 17, 1967.
11. Senate Select Committee, Part 1, December 17–19, 1968, v.
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