School Lunch Politics (45 page)

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 Programs,
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.

C
HAPTER
7. A R
IGHT
TO
L
UNCH

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.

12. Ibid., p. 6.

13. For an overview, see Lawrence M. Friedman, “The Social and Political Context of the War on Poverty: An Overview,” and discussions by Nick Kotz and Robert Lapman in Robert H. Haveman, ed.,
A Decade of Federal Antipoverty Programs: Achievements, Failures, and Lessons
(New York: Academic Press 1977).

14. United States Congress, Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Manpower, and Poverty of the Committee on Labor and Public Welfare,
Hearings to Establish a Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs,
90th Cong., 2nd Sess.,   May 23–June 13, 1968, Senate Hearings, Employment Subcommittee 1968, p. 12.

15. Ibid. Congressional focus on hunger culminated in George McGovern's formation of a Senate Select Committee at the end of 1968. This committee met in venues across the country for almost ten years. While the Committee reported no legislation to the Senate floor, it nonetheless drew national attention to the problem of hunger and poverty. In 1977 the Committee terminated its hearings after national legislation eliminating the purchase price of food stamps. See Peter K. Eisinger,
Toward an End to Hunger in America
(Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1998), 78–83.

16. See Susan Lynn, “Gender and Progressive Politics: A Bridge to Social Activism of the 1960s,” and Harriet Hyman Alonso, “Mayhem and Madness: Women's Peace Advocates during the McCarthy Era,” both in Joanne Myerowitz,
Not June Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945–1960
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994).

17. On the women's movement in the post-World War II period, see Susan Levine,
Degrees of Equality: The American Association of University Women and the Challenge of Twentieth Century Feminism
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995). Also, Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor,
Survival in the Doldrums: The American Women's Rights Movement 1945 to the 1960s
(Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1991); Meyerowitz,
Not June Cleaver;
Dorothy Sue Cobble,
The Other Women's Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern America
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); and Daniel Horowitz,
Betty Friedan and the Making ofthe Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism
(Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1998).

18. Committee on School Lunch Participation,
Their Daily Bread
,3.

19. These organizations worked together in a number of arenas. The NCJW, NCNW, NCCW, and Church Women United, for example, also formed Women in Community Service (WICS), a group that recruited for the Job Corps and worked on employment training. Michael L. Billett,
Launching the War on Poverty: An Oral History
(New York: Twayne Publishers, 1996), 305.

20. Olya Margolin to Helen Raebeck, April 18, 1966; Jean Fairfax to Mrs. Joseph Willen, July 5, 1966; Jean Fairfax to Mrs. Adele Trobe, March 22, 1967, National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW), Washington, D.C., Office, Box 191, School Lunch Program Correspondence, 1966–67, Library of Congress. Ultimately, the CSLP interviewers also included staff members from the American Friends Service Committee and the Georgia Council on Human Relations as well as volunteers from the member organizations.