Black History Month isn’t separate from public health history – it is the blueprint for how America learned to care for the most impacted people’s basic needs.

When most people think of Black History Month, they think:

• Famous names in textbooks
• Civil rights marches
• Historical speeches
• Laws being passed

What they don’t realize is:

Black history is the reason many of the public health programs we rely on today even exist at scale.

Free breakfast at schools.
Community clinics.
Food security programs.
Housing justice.
Environmental justice.
Maternal health advocacy.

These weren’t “public health ideas” first.

They were survival strategies created by and for Black communities.

And then the country learned from them.

The truth most people don’t know

Before the U.S. government fed children breakfast (at scale)…the Black Panther Party did.

Before cities invested in community health clinics…Black neighborhoods built their own.

Before we used the phrase “social determinants of health”…Black leaders were fighting housing discrimination, food apartheid, policing, and environmental exposure because they knew things were killing their communities.

They didn’t call it public health.

They called it justice and survival.

The Free Breakfast Program to National School Breakfast Program

Before the federal government fully committed to feeding children breakfast, the work was already being done by Black communities.

In 1966, the U.S. government launched a small, under-resourced pilot of what would become the ​School Breakfast Program​ under the Child Nutrition Act. Its goal was clear: provide free or low-cost breakfasts to children in low-income and rural areas so hunger wouldn’t interfere with learning.

But the program reached only about 80,000 children in its first year – nowhere near the scale of need.

Three years later, that gap became impossible to ignore.

In 1969, through their ​“Serve the People” initiatives​, the Black Panther Party launched the ​Free Breakfast for Children Program​ in Oakland, California. Their insight was simple and powerful: children cannot learn if they are hungry. Using volunteers, donations, and community organizing, the Panthers served nutritious breakfasts before school with no paperwork, no barriers.

The program spread fast. By the end of 1969, thousands of children were being fed daily across dozens of cities. By 1971, programs operated in at least 36 cities nationwide.

The visibility of this work forced the country to confront an uncomfortable truth: communities were meeting needs the government had ignored (and should have met).

That pressure worked. Local governments were embarrassed. Federal officials took notice. And in 1975, the ​School Breakfast Program​ was permanently authorized and expanded, becoming a cornerstone of child nutrition policy.

This was not a coincidence.

The Black Panther Party didn’t just feed children – they reshaped public health policy. Their work exposed policy gaps, demonstrated what solutions could look like, and pushed the federal government to act.

What we now call standard public health infrastructure was built, in part, on the vision and labor of Black communities responding to systemic neglect.

Black history didn’t just influence public health.

It forced governmental public health to become what it claimed to be.

They also ran free health clinics

The Panthers didn’t stop at food.

They understood something public health would take decades to formalize: health is built in the community, not just the clinic.

So they expanded.

Across the country, the Black Panther Party launched free health clinics and community-based services that met people where they were.

They ​provided​:

• Free health screenings
• Sickle cell anemia testing (when the medical establishment largely ignored it)
• Community-run clinics
• Transportation to medical care

They were doing this before community health worker was a job title.

Before hospitals were focused on population health.
Before mobile clinics were considered innovative.
Before health equity entered policy language.
Before centering community became a best practice.

What we now label as “innovative public health models” were, for the Panthers, acts of necessity and survival.

They didn’t wait for institutions to catch up. They built systems of care in the gaps institutions and government left behind.

Black communities didn’t just imagine what public health could be – they showed the country how to do it.

The civil rights movement was a public health movement

Clean water.
Safe housing.
Fair wages.
Access to food.
Education access.
Dignity.
Voting rights.

These are public health outcomes.

Let’s remember the civil rights movement fought for every one of them.

What we now teach in public health programs as “social determinants of health,” was lived experience for Black communities for generations.

Black public health bosses you should know

Past

W.E.B. Du Bois

Du Bois used data and sociology in ​The Philadelphia Negro​ (1899) to show that poor health outcomes in Black communities were caused by racism, poverty, and housing – not biology – laying the foundation for modern health equity and social epidemiology.

Booker T. Washington

As founder of the ​Tuskegee Institute​, Washington advanced public health by emphasizing sanitation, hygiene, nutrition, and agricultural health in Black communities excluded from medical care. While his accommodationist politics are debated, his work clearly embedded disease prevention and community health into everyday life in the Jim Crow South.

Fannie Lou Hamer

Hamer advanced public health through food sovereignty, founding the ​Freedom Farm Cooperative​ to combat hunger, malnutrition, and economic instability – core drivers of poor health. She is also known for her transformational work against voter suppression and moving racial equity forward in the US South.

Ella Baker

Baker’s emphasis on grassroots, community-led organizing directly aligns with today’s community-based public health and participatory health equity models. Often called the “Mother of the Civil Rights Movement,” she insisted that “strong people don’t need strong leaders” redefined social-movement strategy, inspiring later feminist, student, and human-rights campaigns.

Stokely Carmichael

Carmichael reframed power, dignity, and self-determination as survival tools, highlighting how systemic racism and political exclusion damage both mental and physical health. He was a central architect of the ​Black Power movement​ and was chairman of the ​Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee​ (SNCC).

Current

Sherman A. James

James developed the ​John Henryism Hypothesis​, showing how chronic stress from racism and socioeconomic pressure contributes to hypertension and heart disease among Black Americans.

Deborah Prothrow-Stith

Prothrow-Stith helped ​redefine youth violence​ as a public health issue, shifting the focus from punishment to prevention, trauma, and community-level solutions. She also the ​Dean​ and led the creation of the 4th MD degree program at an HBCU, Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science.

Dr. Camara Jones

Jones created the widely used ​“Levels of Racism” framework​, helping public health professionals identify racism as a root cause of health inequities. As a past president of APHA – she is known globally for using ​allegory and analysis to explain racism and the structural determinants of health​.

Faye Wattleton

As president of ​Planned Parenthood​ from 1978-1992, Wattleton expanded reproductive health access and framed bodily autonomy as a public health and human rights issue. Her leadership has had enduring influence on U.S. reproductive health and gender equity policy.

Robert D. Bullard

Bullard – known as the ​Father of Environmental Justice​ – exposed how environmental racism drives disproportionate health harms in Black communities, establishing environmental justice as a core public health concern.

Angela Doyinsola Aina

Aina leads national efforts to center Black maternal health called ​Black Mamas Matter Alliance​, advancing culturally grounded public health solutions to maternal mortality, chronic disease, and systemic inequities.

These are the public health leaders of the past and present we should lift up.

But that’s exactly what they were and are.

Why this matters right now

The same conversations happening today about:

• Immigration
• Access to care
• Food programs
• Housing
• Environmental protections

These are the echoes of the exact same fights Black communities led decades ago.

Oppression of one group is oppression of all groups.

That’s not a slogan.

That’s a public health principle. That’s why we must empower and resource communities now.

What to do with this now

1. Reframe Black History Month

Not as only celebration – but also as education for how public health was built.

2. Tell these stories

In classrooms, organizations, and public platforms. This should be public health curriculum, not trivia.

3. Recognize your role

You don’t have to be Black to carry this work forward. You just have to understand whose shoulders you stand on.

As a public health professional, I was taught about social determinants, health equity, and community engagement.
I wasn’t taught that many of those frameworks came from Black communities solving problems the system ignored.

That realization changed how I see my work (and how I show up).

Close

Black History Month is not separate from public health.

It is the origin story.

And if you work in public health, you are part of continuing that story.

The question is:

Will you know the history you’re standing on?