School Lunch Politics (18 page)

Powell's amendment only reinforced Republican opposition to the school lunch program. Foreshadowing what would become an increasingly common congressional alignment, northern Republicans joined with the most conservative southern Democrats to oppose any expansion of federal power. While some northern Republicans claimed to support the principle of anti-discrimination, they clearly saw Powell's amendment as a good way to kill the entire lunch program. Harold Knutson, a Republican from Minnesota, for example, admitted that he opposed the creation of a National School Lunch Program because he did not want to see any more growth in the federal government. He nonetheless voted in favor of Powell's amendment. Pennsylvania Republican George Harrison Bender introduced his own amendment that specifically prohibited federal funds from going to any state that maintained separate school systems. When confronted, both representatives admitted to being “against the passage of the bill.”
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Powell's amendment finally passed with a vote that reflected the shifting post-war political alliances. Among the votes against the amendment were Jerry Voorhis and the up-and-coming congressman from Texas, Lyndon Baines Johnson.

Figure 4.1. President Truman signing the National School Lunch Act. Congress created the National School Lunch Program in 1946. Also shown: Richard Russell
(third from left)
and Allen Ellender
(fourth from left).
United States Department of Agriculture, photo by Forsythe. Courtesy Harry S Truman Library.

Southern Democratic party support, so necessary for the success of the school lunch legislation, ensured that the structure and administration of school cafeterias would be left to local officials and, despite the Powell Amendment, would leave existing racial divisions intact.
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The decentralized administrative structure of the program reflected one of the core characteristics of American welfare and social policy. While social welfare advocates praised the new National School Lunch Program as a victory for children's health and nutrition reformers applauded the new potential for improving American diets, astute observers soberly warned that the school lunch bill was, in truth, severely limited in its scope. Unions, liberal women's organizations, and child welfare advocates, in particular, cautioned against the bill's funding formula that required states to match federal contributions to the program. The matching provisions, they warned, would render poor states less able to match federal dollars and poor districts within states would have difficulty meeting the matching obligation. As a result, the very children who most needed a nutritious lunch would be left out of the program entirely. National Education Association legislative representative Agnes Winn cautioned that bill's funding formula “forces the diversion of available school revenues from one purpose to another—from arithmetic and history and citizenship to the school lunch program.” Given that choice, she said, few districts would be willing to pay for free lunches.
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United Auto Workers' Union representative Anna Berenson warned that unless “ironclad safeguards” were instituted to ensure that poor states “guarantee that all children, regardless of geographical accidents of birth,” would benefit from school lunches, the program would inevitably favor more prosperous communities. The spokeswoman of the American Association of University Women concluded that the legislation crafted by Congress ensures that “unto him that hath shall be given.”
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As with much of American welfare state legislation, however, Congress formulated a program that depended heavily on local resources and left the day-to-day administration to the discretion of local officials. Congress did not stipulate how states were to raise their matching contributions nor, despite Powell's amendment, did it establish any enforcement mechanism to ensure that school lunches were offered equally to all children. The most problematic consequence of lax congressional oversight, however, was the fact that while the school lunch legislation required schools to feed poor children for free, no one was charged with enforcing that provision.

The debate and legislation establishing a national school lunch program after World War II revealed both the high ideals of American democracy and the social fissures that would split the country open over the next two decades. Coming out of the war, American optimism ran high. American freedoms would unlock the “iron curtain,” and America's consumer prosperity, it seemed, would fuel a world economy devastated by war. In this context, few public voices denied the value of feeding children at school. The New Deal promise of rational social planning and a more equitable distribution of resources seemed logically to point to a national food program for the nation's children. Indeed, most public officials liked to boast that America could well afford to keep all of its children healthy. Commenting that he had received “thousands of letters” from across the country in support of the school lunch bill, Adolph J. Sabath, Democratic representative from Illinois, said, “I do not know of any appropriation we have ever made that has been more humanitarian in nature.”
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At the same time, a persistent fear that the economy would once again sink into depression fueled farmers' desires to protect what they had come to see as a significant outlet for surplus commodities—the nation's school cafeterias. Overall, however, a lingering, if not intensifying, distrust of federal authority combined with the realities of racial and economic equality to make it difficult for law makers to craft a truly universal or egalitarian school lunch program. Indeed, the question of which children would receive lunch, who would decide, and what role state and local officials would play in that process revealed fundamental splits in the post-war American political agenda.

CHAPTER 5

 

Ideals and Realities in the Lunchroom

During the 1950s the National School Lunch Program became a permanent fixture in the federal budget. It also became a potent symbol for the American promise of equality and prosperity in the post-war world. Popular loyalty to the program reflected a confidence in continued economic growth and in America's new position as “leader of the free world.” The affluent society and an expanding middle class became articles of faith in post-war political and popular culture. In 1959, when Vice President Richard Nixon promised the Soviet Union's Nikita Khrushchev that the United States would defeat communism with kitchen appliances, he articulated America's quintessentially optimistic confidence that consumer prosperity would necessarily produce social equality, if not world peace. Central to that vision, of course, was individual health and an abundance of food. Frozen foods, processed foods, and “fast foods” signaled not only seemingly homogenized American tastes but the ability of even those whose incomes did not quite meet middle-class levels to enjoy the benefits of modern life. Poverty and hunger all but disappeared from the pages of newspapers and from the consciousness of most lawmakers. In the Cold War world, the United States claimed not only to support its heartland producers but also to ensure the health and well-being of all its children. Most Americans, if asked, assumed that their government offered school lunches to all children and free lunches to any who could not afford to pay. In 1961 the
New York Times
confidently asserted that “children unable to pay must be served free lunches; and the lunches must meet nutritional standards of the Department of Agriculture.”
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The fact was, however, that the American public invested the National School Lunch Program with an idealism that far outstripped its capacities. School lunch menus were still based on surplus commodities—apricots one year, olives the next—and many schools chose not to serve “Type A” meals. More significant, however, was the fact that most American children did not, in fact, have access to the program. Although federal school lunches were available in almost every state and U.S. territory (Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands), only about half of the nation's public and parochial schools actually participated in the program.
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Similarly, although the number of children participating in the program increased from 8.6 million in 1950 to 14 million a decade later, this consti tuted only about one-third of all American schoolchildren.
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The National School Lunch Program, while an agricultural subsidy in content, was administered like a social welfare program in practice. This meant that, as with other welfare benefits, school lunches were administered by states who decided how federal resources were distributed and by local officials who decided which schools participated and how many free meals were offered. Most significantly, school teachers, principals, or social workers determined which children deserved free lunches. The tension between an ideal of universal child nutrition and the ability, indeed, the willingness of either Congress or the states to fund and oversee such a vision revealed the limits of the post-war liberal welfare agenda.
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The Truman and Eisenhower years were marked by a relatively prosperous economic growth that enabled both Democratic and Republican administrations to foster expansions of government functions. Those expansions, however, did not alter the decentralization that marked American social policy. For example, in his Fair Deal, Truman promised “full employment and nutritionally sound diets” for all Americans.
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He happily signed the school lunch bill, noting that “no nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers.”
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In addition to school lunches, his administration endorsed public housing, modestly expanded Social Security coverage, debated national health insurance, and raised the minimum wage.
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The Truman administration also signaled, at least rhetorically, a new commitment to racial equality. Not only did the president integrate the armed forces, but he also called for the abolition of poll taxes, spoke out against lynching, and opposed discrimination in employment. The words, however, often bespoke ambition more than action. President Truman's housing initiative, for example, promised affordable accommodations for all Americans but, in fact, built very few homes.
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The Democrats created the National Science Foundation and passed the Atomic Energy Act, but were unable to enact national health insurance or to convince Congress to pass any substantial aid to education. In most cases, the Democratic party's social agenda continued to depend on a New Deal coalition of southern legislators and liberal representatives. During the early 1950s, some southern Democrats began to abandon the party, but stalwart school lunch advocates, including Richard Russell and Allen Ellender, remained loyal. These men supported Truman when it came to defense and agriculture but balked at any hint of a civil rights or labor agenda. After the Dixiecrat revolt of the early 1950s, the Democratic party basically retreated from an expansive social agenda.
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In deference to its southern wing, the party allowed welfare programs, including Aid to Dependent Children and school lunches, to be administered locally by the states and accepted severe limits on federal control.
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When it came to school lunches, this meant that the program operated differently in each state as local officials decided how to distribute donated commodities and school administrators, welfare workers, or county representatives determined which schools participated in the program. Most notably, for the school lunch program, the Department of Agriculture did nothing to ensure the participation of black schools in racially segregated southern districts, nor did it establish any policies or guidelines to enforce the School Lunch Act's mandate that poor children, north or south, receive free meals.

Figure 5.1. Idealized image of the National School Lunch Program. Two children eating their lunches in a school cafeteria. National Library of Medicine.