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Title details for Power Hungry by Suzanne Cope - Wait list

Power Hungry

Women of the Black Panther Party and Freedom Summer and Their Fight to Feed a Movement

by Suzanne Cope
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Two unsung women whose power using food as a political weapon during the civil rights movement was so great it brought the ire of government agents working against them
In early 1969 Cleo Silvers and a few Black Panther Party members met at a community center laden with boxes of donated food to cook for the neighborhood children. By the end of the year, the Black Panthers would be feeding more children daily in all of their breakfast programs than the state of California was at that time.

More than a thousand miles away, Aylene Quin had spent the decade using her restaurant in McComb, Mississippi, to host secret planning meetings of civil rights leaders and organizations, feed the hungry, and cement herself as a community leader who could bring people together—physically and philosophically—over a meal.

These two women's tales, separated by a handful of years, tell the same story: how food was used by women as a potent and necessary ideological tool in both the rural south and urban north to create lasting social and political change. The leadership of these women cooking and serving food in a safe space for their communities was so powerful, the FBI resorted to coordinated extensive and often illegal means to stop the efforts of these two women, and those using similar tactics, under COINTELPRO—turning a blind eye to the firebombing of the children of a restaurant owner, destroying food intended for poor kids, and declaring a community breakfast program a major threat to public safety.
But of course, it was never just about the food.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    November 9, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781641604550

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781641604550
      • File size: 910 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      October 11, 2021
      NYU writing professor Cope rescues two female activists from obscurity in this intriguing look at the role that food played in the civil rights and Black Power movements. Contending that preparing and serving food provided a crucial means of fostering a sense of community necessary to fight for change, Cope spotlights Cleo Silvers, who cooked for the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast for Children program in New York City, and Aylene Quin, who served meals to Freedom Riders and held secret voter registration meetings at her restaurant in McComb, Miss. Cope draws on the work of historian François Hamlin to explain how both women performed “activist mothering,” finding their power “in roles socially modeled and considered acceptable for them to embrace within society at large,” and weaves in harrowing details of FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s crackdown on Black activism (FBI agents destroyed food intended for the Black Panthers’ breakfast program, alleging that there were “drugs or guns hidden among the eggs and grits”) and the reign of terror white supremacists directed against the civil rights movement in the South. Incisive sketches of other female activists, including Fannie Lou Hamer and Afeni Shakur, add depth to Cope’s contention that sexism limited the recognition of women’s contributions to the cause. The result is a worthy tribute to the unsung heroines of the fight for racial equality.

    • Booklist

      Starred review from October 1, 2021
      In 1964, Aylene ("Mama") Quin's restaurant, South of the Border, became a hub for voter-rights organizing and education in McComb, Mississippi. In California in 1969, Cleo Silvers of the Black Panthers sought to inspire social revolution via free-breakfast programs for poor Black children. In both cases, the simple act of feeding people was a multilayered retort to white supremacy. Quin's restaurant gave her the financial freedom to support SNCC's voting rights activists. The Panther breakfasts spawned a series of "survival" mutual aid programs and gave Black city dwellers the radical idea that they deserved better. The outrageous violence and intimidation both women endured is a testament to their effectiveness: Mama Quin's home was bombed several times (the perpetrators were set free because they had been "unduly provoked" by civil rights workers), while the FBI and local law enforcement officers smeared Black Panther reputations and vandalized their food supplies. In Chicago police even broke into a church and urinated on Black Panther supplies. Cope connects the dots between 1960s food activism and the role of community gardens and Native foodways in fighting environmental racism today and notes that the Panther breakfasts evolved into federally funded SNAP and WIC programs. In all, an overlooked and inspiring story of female heroism on the civil-rights front.

      COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

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  • EPUB ebook

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Languages

  • English

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