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Millure 1
PITTSBURGH’S PUBLIC SCHOOL LUNCH PROGRAMS AND THE AMERICAN DREAM
Holland Millure
October 30, 2016
History 1000: Capstone
Dr. John Stoner
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Since James Truslow Adams first coined the phrase “the American Dream” in 1931,
American scholars and laypeople alike have debated its meaning. Many understand the American
Dream as loosely connected to freedom, but freedom itself also lacks a uniform definition.1 For
example, there exists the idea of freedom of opportunity, but there is also the notion of freedom
from threat in the sense of national defense. Upon reflecting what actually constitutes freedom,
more questions arise. For whom should the U.S. government provide freedom? Should it
disproportionately focus efforts on citizens stricken with poverty to engender equity? Or should it
attend equally to all Americans? These are just some of the questions that surrounded and continue
to surround debates over school lunch programs in the United States.
This paper examines the American Dream and freedom in relation to the implementa t ion
of school lunch programs in Pittsburgh between the 1930s and 1970s. It also explores the debates
which emerged amongst the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education following the National School
Lunch Act of 1946. Local school officials and national politicians used a variety of rationales for
school lunch programs throughout these decades, and each related to different interpretations of
the American Dream and freedom. Sources regarding local Pittsburgh school lunch programs as
well as those concerning the National School Lunch Program during this time period make a
consistent argument: by providing schoolchildren with nutritionally adequate and low-cost
lunches, schools and governments afford students the freedom to better make use of their education
and thus the opportunity to achieve future occupational success. However, in the 1940s, the decade
in which Congress created the National School Lunch Program, local and national sources
concerning school lunch programs emphasize freedom in the sense of national defense amidst
foreign threats. As the program progressed into the 1960s, a moral component of freedom emerged,
as both the federal government and the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education increased attention
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towards the welfare of the poor, aiming to provide educational opportunity specifically for children
from low-income households. This paper seeks to integrate these various conceptions of the
American Dream and freedom with the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education’s implementation of
lunch programs from the 1930s through the 1970s. Between these decades, the Board shifted the
focus of its lunch programs from all children, rich and poor, with goals of providing equal
educational opportunity and bolstering national defense, to specifically needy children with goals
of making educational opportunities, and thus opportunities for future success, more equitable.
Since the birth of school lunch programs in the United States in the early 20 th century,
school boards, health officials, and federal politicians argued that lunch programs afforded
children the strength necessary to properly develop physically and mentally, and make the most of
their education. With the late 19th century’s discovery of nutrition science, a movement labelled
“New Nutrition” emerged; researchers for the first time applied food science to human health,
discovering vitamins, nutrients, and calories and their roles in the body.2 Along with this
movement came the country’s first school lunch programs, which school administrators and health
authorities argued would improve children’s health and better promote learning in schools.3 Louise
Stevens Bryant, a prominent American public health specialist, in her 1914 book about the history
of school lunches, emphasizes how research had established that “physical health of children has
… come to be regarded as a most important part of their education.”4 Bryant claims that “there
must always be doubt as to the value of the results of a school day for the child who is listless from
want of food or from eating large quantities of indigestible or non-nutritious food.”5 By properly
feeding children, school boards and the main early pre-war providers of school lunches, volunteer
organizations,6 granted children opportunities to better take advantage of their education.
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The educational opportunity facilitated by school lunches, in theory, led to future
opportunities for financial success or even upward mobility, both of which are ambitions
emblematic of the American Dream. Adams, in his 1931 The Epic of America, defines the
American Dream as a “dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every
man, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement.”7 Jennifer Hochschild and
Nathan Scovronick, in their 2003 book The American Dream and the Public Schools, claim that
public schools “are the central institutions for bringing … the dream into practice.”8 Theoretically,
a child could have possessed the ability to succeed in school but lacked good nutrition and health,
thus hampering academic achievement and future success in adulthood. Lunch programs, in a
sense, reduced the educational disadvantages of the underfed and unhealthy, levelling the
nutritional playing field to make educational opportunity more accessible to all children. As
revealed in below paragraphs, rhetoric surrounding school lunch programs, in both Pittsburgh and
within the larger national context, often evoked these arguments for educational opportunity and
future success.
Late 19th and early 20th century school lunch advocates promoted equal opportunity rather
than equal outcome as the basis for school lunch programs with their justification of educational
opportunity. Adhering to the nutritional age belief that malnutrition could beset anyone, rich or
poor, they argued that all children deserved nutritious school lunches. In 1898, Ellen Richards,
pioneer of home economics, claimed that anyone, “working man, student, or millionaire” could
suffer from malnutrition.9 Likewise, throughout the first half of the 20th century, scientists and
health specialists argued that malnutrition, an ambiguous affliction lacking clear diagnosis
criteria,10 could just as likely affect the poor as it could the rich. According to historian Henry
Levenstein, Americans in the first half of the 20th century believed that malnutrition was based in
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“ignorance or poor childhood training, not poverty” and “could strike individuals of any status.”11
Consequently, school lunch advocates and school officials up through the 1960s conceived all
children as deserving of lunches and the freedom of educational opportunity which accompanied
them. Thus, these individuals neglected to work towards a more equitable outcome which would
focus school lunch funds on poor students whose families may have lacked the financial means to
adequately feed them.
Local Pittsburgh Public Schools (hereafter, PPS) officials adhered to this belief in the
universal need of school lunches with the implementation of its first school lunch programs. The
Pittsburgh Board of Public Education established a credo in 1913 providing for the future operation
of school lunch programs in Pittsburgh, framing them as necessary to feed children who, living
too far from school, could not travel home for lunch during “noon recess” to receive warm
lunches.12-13 This problem, quite common in urban areas, could afflict any child regardless of
family wealth. According to Bryant, it existed “in densely settled portions of great cities” and “at
the other end of the social scale … in homes of the cultured and well-to-do, where parents are
frequently absent during the mid-day hours.”14 The Board began its first lunch programs in 1918,
well in line with those of other urban school boards in the Northeast and Midwest; however,
Pittsburgh’s lunch programs, in the beginning, lagged behind those of other major cities such as
Philadelphia and Chicago.15 Only eight of approximately 157 schools operating in Pittsburgh in
1918 had school lunch programs in place.16 Additionally, as the Board did not aim school lunch
efforts explicitly at low-income area schools or low-income children, instead simply focusing on
children living too far from school, it neglected, along with nutrition scientists, home economists,
and school lunch advocates, to consider financial reasons for poor nutrition.
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Hungry students flooded existing urban school cafeterias across the country, includ ing
those in Pittsburgh, with the onset of the Great Depression in 1929.17 A number of reports, surveys
and studies, each with different criteria for establishing malnutrition, exposed the prevalence of
child nutritional deficiencies in America amidst the economic crisis.18 The Pennsylvania General
Assembly, reacting to the national situation, passed regulations regarding school lunchrooms and
their operation in 1931.19 Classifying school lunches as “welfare work,” the Annual Reports of the
Superintendent of PPS, during the worst years of the Depression, 1931-1935, list the total number
of free meals provided for students throughout each school year.20 During these years, the Supply
Department teamed with the Home Economics Department and trade school cafeterias to provide
meals for hungry students, while outside volunteer organizations also contributed to the effort.21-
22 For example, between 1931 and 1932, outside volunteer organizations and school cafeterias
allocated 662,938 free meals,23 and, later in the Depression, during the 1934-1935 school year,
they provided 311,284 total meals.24 Clearly, PPS cafeterias, in combination with outside voluntee r
efforts, worked during the Depression to feed schoolchildren, although they distributed free meals
to, in the words of the 1940-1941 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public
Schools (hereafter, Annual Report) which summarized these Depression-era efforts, “school
children who otherwise would have suffered a great deal for lack of proper nourishment.”25 School
lunch program administrators in Pittsburgh, adhering to the notion of the universality of
malnutrition, focused their efforts on feeding all children, rather than just those from low-income
families, as they would four decades later.
Even as the Depression waned, in 1937 President Roosevelt claimed that “one-third of the
nation” was “ill nourished.”26 The Pittsburgh Board of Public Education continued to operate its
school lunch programs, despite some limitations, and outside educational authorities applauded
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them. A 1940 Report on a Survey of PPS conducted by the Teachers College at Columbia
University found that “the operation of the cafeterias in Pittsburgh is highly commended,” calling
“exceptional” the quality and quantity of food as well as “the low-cost of meals to students.”27
Menus included “protective foods,”28 or those researchers found to contain essential nutrients and
vitamins.29 Twenty-two cafeterias, twenty-one of which were high schools, operated in Pittsburgh
during the 1940-1941 school year, with an average cost per meal of twelve cents,30 approximate ly
$2.07 in today’s dollar.31 However, according to an Archival Survey Project conducted in 1982,
133 schools operated in Pittsburgh during this school year, so PPS school lunch programs remained
fairly limited.32 Despite this detail, in all of Pittsburgh’s elementary schools, school administrators
provided milk “to all children needing it, on recommendation of the school physician.”33 Still,
however, the Board granted no priority to schools in low-income areas, instead distributing free or
low-cost milk to any elementary schoolchild deemed malnourished.
The American Dream rhetoric surrounding school lunches shifted during the war, as the
idea of national defense in relation to education and school lunches emerged on both the national
agenda and that of PPS. A document published from the U.S. Office of Civilian Defense in 1943
argues that “school lunch programs throughout the nation must be maintained and expanded if the
youth of America are to attain the strength and vigor necessary to win the war.”34 The Pittsburgh
Board of Public Education also adjusted to wartime conditions. The 1941-1942 Annual Report
emphasizes that the problems of fascism and communism cannot be “solved without education. ”35
The report also uses language which hints at the national security benefits of school lunches,
framing school feeding as “waging war against malnutrition.”36 Board members adapted to the
tone of wartime America, conceiving school lunches and education more broadly as indispensab le
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to nationwide war efforts. During the war, Pittsburgh school administrators and national politic ians
planted the seeds of the national defense argument for school lunches.
All the while national security concerns grew, the reasoning for the universal need for
school lunches continued. The 1941-1942 Annual Report describes an experiment conducted
during the war in which the Board fed 2,400 high school age children considered malnourished to
test the effects on “physical health, school attendance and scholastic records.”37 The Board
initiated this experiment as a part of a national government program “to correct cases of
malnutrition.”38 School health workers examined adolescents “to determine those with poor and
very poor nutrition” using their weight to gauge this nutritional level.39 Federal government
officials likely had national defense motivations for this wartime experiment. By improving the
health of underweight adolescents, they increased the pool of potential soldiers and wartime
factory workers, while also aiming to improve student academic performance for a stronger and
more prosperous American future. The Board used no poverty metric and failed to provide
specifically for poor adolescents, explicitly framing the program as one of “treatment rather than
charity.”40 This limitation, originating from heightened wartime national security concerns, along
with other others stemming from the relationship which developed throughout the 1930s and 1940s
between school lunches and agricultural surpluses41 and the lack of cafeteria facilities in
Pittsburgh’s elementary schools,42 set the foundation for future problems faced by and debates
surrounding Pittsburgh’s school lunch programs.
Post-war America saw significant changes to school lunch programs, as the federal
government, with chiefly national security concerns in mind, created legislation for a national
program. In 1946, Congress passed and President Truman signed the National School Lunch Act
creating the National School Lunch Program (hereafter, NSLP) “as a measure of national security,
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to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nation’s children and to encourage the domestic
consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other foods.”43 Here, in the actual
legislation, the American Dream rhetoric of freedom from threat appears from phrases such as
“national security” and “safeguard.” With fascism defeated, the menace of communism
materialized, and the Cold War uncertainties that would plague the United States for decades
surfaced. In the minds of federal legislators, strong and healthy children bolstered and symbolized
the nation’s democratic strength in the face of these emerging foreign threats, and, accordingly,
they framed the principal intention of the NSLP as reinforcing national defense.
This defense-related focus of the new federal program also pertained to goals of enhancing
future American prosperity, emanating from worries about the future of American economic
productivity. Strengthening American schoolchildren through providing them with nutrit ious
lunches would allow them to gain the skills required to become productive in the labor force in
adulthood. Additionally, as legislators highlighted, the national program would serve to instruct
the entire nation of nutritious eating habits. The National School Lunch Act legislation notes, “the
educational features of a properly chosen diet served at school should not be under-emphasized.
Not only is the child taught what a good diet consists of, but his parents and family likewise are
indirectly instructed.”44 School lunch programs, in the minds of federal politicians, could serve to
fight communism and strengthen the fiber of the country as a whole through teaching children and
indirectly their parents how to eat nutritiously.
Following the federal legislation, the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education began to report
upon its existing school lunch programs with rhetoric speaking to national defense and worries
about the future of American prosperity. All the while, it continued to imply the universal focus
of its programs and its aim to provide low-cost meals for all Pittsburgh schoolchildren. For
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example, the 1947-1948 Annual Report states, “The Aim of the Division of Food Service is to give
Pittsburgh students ‘the most for the least,’ for in so doing they are emphasizing the importance of
proper nutrition for a better and healthier America.”45 In the next year’s annual report, Pittsburgh
school officials indicate the educational aspect of lunch programs, stating that school cafeterias
allow a student to develop food habits “in such a manner that he will continue the practice of good
food selection in later years.”46 As did national government officials, the Board argued that a strong
America not only required healthy schoolchildren; it also required its citizens to continue to make
healthy food choices.
The old focus of educational opportunity surrounding Pittsburgh’s school lunch programs
continued amidst this increase in national security rhetoric. These two articulations of the
American Dream – opportunity and national defense – both pertained to freedom and the
sustaining of American democracy and prosperity. The 1947-1948 Annual Report, for example,
emphasizes that “children cannot be expected to progress normally in school if they are
undernourished.”47 Similarly, the 1948-1949 Annual Report states that “because a child’s progress
in school and success in later life is so vitally dependent upon good health, it is important that
every child shall receive an adequate diet during critical years of growth.”48 By pushing for “every
child” to achieve “success in later life,” the Board, through school lunches, facilitated access to
the American Dream for students. Essentially, by feeding their students scientifically proven
nutritious lunches, the Board allowed them more opportunity to learn and thus become more
successful in their coming careers.
The federal government, with its new NSLP, attempted to standardize school lunch
programs based on the consensus of nutrition science, while also attending to the needs of
American farmers. The act creating the program included a stipulation that, in order to receive
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federal funds, schools had to serve meals that fulfilled either the Type A, Type B or Type C meal
nutrition requirements, with Type A designating the most nutritious meals and guaranteeing the
most federal reimbursement.49 The federal program required states to match federal contributions
for the first three years, 1947-1950, on a dollar to dollar basis, with the state proportion of funds
increasing in the following years.50 Legislators drafted the act and passed it through Congress due
to a coalition of the Department of Agriculture and Southern Democrat legislators pushing for a
program that would benefit American farmers.51 Through the program, the government purchased
surplus goods from farmers to distribute to the nation’s schools participating in the program.52 This
surplus-based nature of the program helped to bolster national security efforts, as prosperous
farmers, in addition to healthy children, signaled American economic and physical strength in the
face of Cold War adversaries. However, the fact that agricultural surpluses served as the backbone
of the program led to some undesirable drawbacks nationally. The Pittsburgh Board of Public
Education expressed vocal opposition to this particular limitation.
With school lunch programs already in place that boasted quality and low-cost, Board
members viewed the new NSLP with some skepticism. The Annual Reports from the years
following the act repeatedly hint that Pittsburgh’s existing lunch programs were adequate,
questioning the desirability of the surplus goods granted by the federal government through the
program. When the Board initiated the national program on a limited basis in the late 1940s, the
popularity of the surplus items on the menu determined how likely students were to participate in
the program, and lowering the price hardly improved the demand for particularly unattractive
surplus items.53 Depending on the year, certain surplus goods including, for example, apricots and
olives, repeatedly appeared on menus nationwide, sometimes for weeks at a time.54 As the 1947-
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1948 Annual Report suggests, the amount of waste produced in cafeterias increased when they
served unpopular surplus items.55 The Board, albeit indirectly, initially criticized the NSLP.
Doubting the effectiveness of the NSLP, Pittsburgh school officials continued to operate
twenty-one of Pittsburgh’s school cafeterias, all but one, independent of the new national program.
Nevertheless, they boasted of their experimentation with the national program in one secondary
school. The Board implemented the federal program at Herron Hill Junior High school, initia t ing
it in the school year following the legislation.56 Demonstrating Pittsburgh’s high standing in the
national program at that school, the 1947-1948 Annual Report boasts that “Pittsburgh has kept
these prices at 20 cents per lunch to encourage the program,” contrasting to other cities which “set
a minimum charge which varies from 25 to 45 cents.”57-58 Although school officials were skeptical
about the new program and the experiment at Herron Hill, feeling that they had to set the price low
to “encourage” students to participate due to the unpopularity of surplus items, they still celebrated
the Board’s ability to charge low prices for students relative to programs in other cities.
Ambivalence continued into the 1948-1949 school year, as the school year’s Annual Report
argues against the necessity of participation in the NSLP due to the high quality of Pittsburgh’s
existing school lunch programs. The 1948-1949 Annual Report states that “it is interesting to note
that the rules established by legislative enactment were so in accord with established Board
practice that no material changes in our mode of operation were necessary.”59 In 1948, the Food
Service Division operated in twenty-one high schools and one elementary school, just as it did as
far back as 1940.60 However, school officials continued to experiment with the federal program,
celebrating its efforts while also criticizing the program’s limitations. In 1948, the Board, in
addition to its continuing its experiment at Herron Hill, began to implement the federal program
amongst “spastic” children at Bedford School, using the “nine cents reimbursement from the
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Federal Lunch Program.”61 The fact that the Board received a nine cent federal reimbursement
reveals that the Board provided Type A meals, the category of the highest nutritional quality, for
students at Bedford. School administrators continued to operate the federal program at Herron Hill,
but, presumably due to the lack of choice of surplus goods, more students participated in “an á la
carte program.”62 The report states that “the 1948 school child must be given the right to choose
his lunch according to his likes and dislikes.”63 Evidently, the federal legislation had an initially
negligible effect on Pittsburgh’s existing school lunch programs, and Board members both
criticized the NSLP and, nevertheless, bragged of its experiments with the program.
Although the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education exulted in its school lunch programs,
their programs faced several limitations. The Board encountered a major structural obstacle that
narrowed the scope of school lunch programs to begin with: older schools, particularly elementary
schools, lacked the facilities and space for cafeterias and meal preparation.64 School lunch
programs at this time operated only in Pittsburgh’s public high schools, with the exception of one
elementary school, revealing a significant limitation of PPS lunch programs that many urban
school boards across the nation shared.65 Thus, school cafeterias and federally subsidized lunches
did not reach Pittsburgh’s vast elementary school student population. Additionally, even though
the federal government stipulated through the 1946 act that schools would “serve meals without
cost or at reduced cost to children who were determined by local school authorities to be unable to
pay the full cost of the lunch,” a lack of federal oversight inhibited this goal nationwide.66 Most
schools, including those in Pittsburgh, did not adhere to this federal stipulation. In the PPS
documents in the years following the legislation, there exist no mentions of income or poverty
playing a role in the distribution of low-cost lunches. Pittsburgh school administrators, maintaining
the pervasive belief spurring from the nutrition age of the late 19 th and early 20th centuries that
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malnutrition could affect anyone, regardless of family income, neglected to direct school lunch
funds to those areas and students who arguably needed it most. Amidst a façade of high quality
school lunch programs, limitations plagued Pittsburgh’s school lunch programs throughout the
1940s and 1950s.
The 1960s, with new national attention to poverty, saw a heated national debate regarding
the future direction of the NSLP. After the relative prosperity of the 1950s and minimal mentions
of the school lunch program in PPS annual reports and Board meeting minutes during that decade,
the United States during the 1960s saw the issue of poverty arrive on the national agenda as
President Johnson cultivated his “Great Society” and Americans began to associate malnutrit ion
with poverty.67 Within the context of school lunch programs both nationally and locally in
Pittsburgh, a moral component of the American Dream emerged. School boards and politic ians
thought it better to focus efforts explicitly on low-income area schools and provide educational
and thus future occupational opportunity to specifically poor children through school lunch
programs. A 1962 survey conducted by Orville Freeman, the Secretary of Agriculture under
President Kennedy, exposed the limitations of the NSLP in reaching impoverished children,
finding that they the vast majority of them were excluded and did not receive free or reduced price
lunches.68 Liberal politicians began to question the universality of the school lunch program,
pressuring the government to expand the program to provide more low-cost and free lunches to
poor children.69 School lunch advocates, however, generally disagreed with the assertion that the
program should be redirected to solely impoverished children, and those with interests in
agriculture agreed.70 The belief in the universal necessity of school lunches combined with nationa l
security concerns had prevailed amongst politicians and school officials working with school lunch
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programs both nationally and in Pittsburgh during the years following the passage of the National
School Lunch Act. However, the 1960s gave way to a new anti-poverty direction of the program.
Liberal politicians eventually won the debate over universality, as the Child Nutrition Act
of 1966, signed by President Johnson, essentially transformed the NSLP from a farm subsidy
program to a welfare program.71 Consequently, this new act redefined how the program would
address the American Dream. For the first time, the U.S. government contributed federal funds for
free lunches for the poor.72 With this restructuring of the program, the government applied a new
moral component of the American Dream to the NSLP, concentrating federal funds on providing
the freedom of educational opportunity for poor schoolchildren. Congress and President Johnson
reflected upon a moral obligation to assist impoverished children, who arguably required a leg up
in school in order to be at the same nutritional level as more well-off children. President Johnson,
in a proclamation about his signing of the new legislation, stated how providing lunches to poor
children allows them to “obtain maximum benefits from the learning process.”73 The Child
Nutrition Act of 1966, in reforming the National School Lunch Act, worked to establish more
equity in educational opportunity in America’s public schools.
Despite this reshaping of the program to assist children from low-income families, liberal
politicians and the hunger lobby criticized the 1966 act.74 The act failed to restructure the finances
of the program and establish universal eligibility criteria for free and reduced price lunches, instead
leaving those decisions up to state and local officials.75 A report entitled “The Daily Bread,”
published in 1968, found that two out of every three American school children, or thirty- two
million out of fifty million, did not receive lunches through the NSLP while under four percent
nationwide, less than two million out of fifty million, received free or reduced price lunches.76
Additionally, Americans became more and more aware of hunger in the years following the Child
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Nutrition Act. Documentaries such as the 1968 CBS documentary “Hunger in America,” books,
and reports helped to turn hunger into a top national political issue, bolstering the priority of
reforming the NSLP along with them.77
With increasing pressure from the hunger lobby and American public opinion, the U.S.
government responded. President Nixon agreed that the NSLP faced major limitations, which
President Johnson had largely ignored during his presidency, declaring during National School
Lunch Week in October 1969, “it is unfortunate that many thousands of children seriously in need
of better nutrition do not now have the benefit of either the school lunch or school breakfast
service.”78 With pressure from the President himself, Congress established universal criteria for
free and reduced price lunches in 1970, stipulating that states provide free lunches for children
from families that were up to 25% above the poverty line, and reduced price meals for those
children from families up to 50% above the poverty line.79 Thus, for 1970-1971 school year, under
President Nixon, the federal government for the first time required schools to utilize national
income poverty guidelines to determine eligibility for a new Free and Reduced Price Lunch
Program.80
Although the revised NSLP possessed a new moral welfare angle, redirecting attention to
the poor, the old educational opportunity justification that officials first voiced early in the 20th
century continued. Demonstrating both the American Dream as educational opportunity and the
moral argument that the government should for the impoverished and make more accessible the
American Dream, President Nixon, in his statement on signing the bill expanding the National
Lunch Program and creating a Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program, declared that “because the
student who is well fed is more attentive and learns better, improved nutrition can help children
break out of the cycle of poverty.”81 In the 1930s through the 1950s, national and local Pittsburgh
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sources regarding school lunch programs had lacked this welfare-oriented rhetoric, framing lunch
programs as necessary for all children, regardless of family income, who might suffer from
malnutrition. However, as poverty and welfare programs became more prevalent in the 1960s, the
implementation of school lunch programs across America changed, becoming redirected to the
impoverished.
Even before any of the new requirements of the national program under President Nixon,
the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education, by the late 1960s, responded to the pressure to
restructure school lunch programs to better represent the needs of poor schoolchildren. The 1968-
1969 Pittsburgh Board of Education Meeting Minutes state the Board’s intention to work on
establishing a “reduced price lunch program in schools where food is now served.”82 The 1970-
1971 Meeting Minutes report upon the implementation of this program, which granted funds for
reduced price lunches in schools in certified low-income areas.83 These minutes also quantify the
expansion of the school lunch program in impoverished neighborhoods, reporting that between
1968 and 1970, the program had broadened to reach an additional fourteen secondary and forty-
four elementary schools in poor areas.84 While elementary schools had previously been largely left
without programs, the Board worked during these years to expand the program amongst younger
children, while specifically focusing on those from impoverished neighborhoods. The Board also
met the new Type A meal requirement, stipulated by the Department of Agriculture in 1970,85 to
continue receiving federal funds.86 Furthermore, the local Pittsburgh government increased local
taxes by $800,000 for the 1970-1971 school year precisely to “insure participation of poor children
and children of modest family incomes” in the school lunch program.87 PPS officials adapted to
the increasing national concern of poverty in the late 1960s and early 1970s by reforming and
expanding their school lunch programs.
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Board members, however, conveyed some skepticism regarding the new requirements for
the Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program. They had already been working since the late 60s to
increase the reach of the program in low-income neighborhoods and worried about the financ ia l
repercussions of the new federal program. The 1970-1971 Meeting Minutes express concern over
the possibility that the new federal regulations would destroy “the blanket reimbursement
previously granted to Pittsburgh schools in low income areas,” further explaining that “the
imposition of a three-price lunch policy … would pose both administrative and economic
hardships to many Pittsburgh families.”88 PPS officials, strapped for financial and administrative
resources as the U.S. steel industry’s decline impacted Pittsburgh,89 worried that they could not
properly fund and operate President Nixon’s new Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program. They
even went as far as to request that the federal government reconsider its proposed regulations.90
PPS school administrators and Board members claimed that their current lunch programs aimed at
low-income areas had been working well and efficiently and felt distressed about meeting the
sudden change in federal regulations.
Despite this controversy, the Board accepted and implemented the Free and Reduced Price
Lunch Program. The 1971-1972 Meeting Minutes announce the participation of PPS in the 1972-
1973 Free and Reduced Price School Lunch Program.91 Starting that school year, Pittsburgh
operated the NSLP in all sixty-seven of their schools, forty-seven of which were elementary and
twenty of which were secondary.92 All of the secondary schools that year provided hot Type A
lunches, while nine elementary schools provided hot Type A lunches.93 The other thirty-eight
elementary schools, lacking adequate kitchens to cook hot food, provided cold Type A lunches
which still met the nutritional requirements.94 Notwithstanding this minor limitation regarding
cafeteria facilities, the new federal requirement forced the Board to pay attention to all poor
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children, regardless of whether they attended a school in a low-income area, by requiring it to
operate a Free and Reduced Price Lunch Program in all of its public schools.
The Board’s alteration of their school lunch programs reflected the new national concern
of the welfare of the poor, ultimately creating a more equitable school lunch program which would
make the American Dream more accessible to impoverished Pittsburgh schoolchildren. A New
Pittsburgh Courier article published in September 1974 announces Pittsburgh’s continuation of
the NSLP into the 1974-1975 school year.95 It includes a table indicating the free and reduced price
lunch income criteria, stating that “families falling within these income scales or those suffering
from unusually high medical expenses, shelter costs in excess of 30 percent of reported income,
special expenses due to the mental or physical condition of a child, or disaster or casualty losses,
are urged to apply for free and reduced price lunches for their children.”96 The article also includes
a statement claiming that officials determining eligibility will not discriminate based on “race,
color, sex, national origin, or inability to pay the full price of a meal,” while also providing contact
information for people not satisfied with the decision.97 Evidently, PPS officials, over the course
of the 1970s, became committed to better providing assistance for the poor schoolchildren of the
city, meeting the federal requirements and turning their local school lunch program into a welfare
program. Thus, the Board made the American Dream of educational opportunity more accessible
to the impoverished.
Justifications for school lunch programs, both nationally and locally in Pittsburgh,
consistently correlated to articulations of the American Dream and freedom between the 1930s
and 1970s. However, as this paper argues, the rationale for school lunch programs and the view of
the programs in relation to freedom changed throughout these decades. With the birth of the
National School Lunch Program, constructed within the aftermath of World War II, school
Millure 20
officials, school lunch advocates, and politicians defined freedom in the sense of national defense
and of providing equal opportunity to educational success and thus future occupational mobility
to all American schoolchildren. However, consistent with Great Society changes in the mid-1960s,
a moral interpretation of freedom emerged, involving providing access to opportunity through free
and reduced price school lunches for needy schoolchildren specifically. Throughout these years, a
number of debates erupted within the Pittsburgh Board of Public Education regarding limitat ions
of the federal NSLP and the obstacles in addressing national requirements. While initially aiming
to distribute low-cost lunches to all schoolchildren universally with goals of facilita t ing
educational opportunity and improving national defense in the 1930s and 1940s, the Pittsburgh
Board of Public Education transformed its school lunch programs in the 1960s to advance equity
in its schools and make educational and thus occupational opportunity more attainable for low-
income schoolchildren. Ultimately, in expanding programs to cover all of its schools and focusing
attention on impoverished students, Pittsburgh Public Schools administered equity-based
educational opportunity to Pittsburgh schoolchildren, thus making more accessible to the poor
future success and some sort of realization of the American Dream.
Millure 21
Notes
1 David J. Saari, 1995. Too Much Liberty?: Perspectives on Freedom and the American Dream (Westport, CT:
Praeger, 1995), xvi-xvii. 2 Susan Levine, School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program (Princeton:
University of Princeton Press, 2008), 11. 3 Ibid., 41. 4 Louise Stevens Bryant, School Feeding: Its History and Practice at Home and Abroad (Philadelphia: University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1914), 9. 5 Ibid., 9. 6 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 6. 7 James Truslow Adams, The Epic of America. (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1931), 404. 8 Jennifer L. Hochschild and Nathan B. Scovronick, The American Dream and the Public Schools (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2003), 1. 9 Ellen Richards, in Levine, School Lunch Politics, 22. 10 Harvey A. Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty: A Social History of Eating in Modern America (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1993), 56. 11 Ibid., 6. 12 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1948-1949 (hereafter, Annual Report, 1948-
1949) (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1949), 98. 13 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 32. Researchers and advocates of early urban school lunch programs considered hot
lunches superior to cold lunches and essential to a student’s ability to learn in the afternoon. 14 Bryant, School Feeding, 14. 15 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1947-1948 (hereafter, Annual Report, 1947-
1948) (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1948), 71; Gordon W. Gunderson, The National School Lunch
Program: Background and Development (Hauppauge, NY: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 2003), 8-14. Philadelphia’s
School Board in 1912 established a Department of High School Lunches to be operational in all high schools in the
city. Boston’s School Board began serving lunches to a few elementary schools in 1910. In 1920, New York City’s
Board of Education took responsibility of lunch programs previously supported by volunteer social orga nizations. The
1914-1915 school year in Cleveland saw all but two high schools with lunch programs. Chicago, in 1921, had school
lunch programs operational in all high schools and 60 elementary schools, constituting the largest and most expansive
program in the United States at the time 16 Carolyn Sutcher Schumacher and Diane Rometo, Pittsburgh Public Schools Archival Survey Project (Pittsburgh:
The Board of Public Education, 1982), 1-41. This figure of 157 may be more schools than actually operated at the
time. This researcher has found discrepancies between the listing of schools and their years open in the Archival
Survey Project and other sources which are discussed in later paragraphs. 17 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 6. 18 Ibid., 41. 19 Annual Report, 1948-1949, 98. 20 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1932-1933 (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public
Education, 1933), 89; Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1933-1934 (hereafter, Annual
Report, 1933-1934) (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1934), 112; Annual Report of the Superintendent of
Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1934-1935 (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1935), 109. 21 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1940-1941 (hereafter, Annual Report, 1940-
1941) (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1941), 200-202. 22 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 6. The volunteer organizations which contributed efforts to school lunches in the
country before the 1930s and during the Depression generally included teacher’s and mother’s clubs. 23 Annual Report, 1940-1941, 202. 24 Annual Report, 1933-1932, 112. 25 Annual Report, 1940-1941, 202. 26 Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 54. 27 The Division of Field Studies, Institute of Educational Research Teachers College, Columbia University. The Report
of a Survey of the Public Schools of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College,
Columbia University, 1940), 404. 28 Annual Report, 1940-1941, 202.
Millure 22
29 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 61. 30 Annual Report, 1940-1941, 200. 31 CoinNews Media Group, LLC, “US Inflation Calculator,” accessed December 3, 2016,
http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/. 32 Schumacher and Rometo, Archival Survey Project, 1-41. This statistic, again, may be skewed, which does
complicate this research. It is likely that this figure is closer to 80 total schools, based on the totals this researcher has
gathered from other sources in the 1970s, discussed below. 33 The Division of Field Studies, Report of a Survey, 405-406. The PPS Department of Hygiene was responsible for
this milk service. The Department distributed some milk free of charge, but most half pints sold for 3 ½ or 4 cents
each. 34 The School Lunch Program in Wartime: Suggestions for Using Volunteers (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Office of
Civilian Defense, 1941), 1. 35 Annual Report of the Superintendent of Pittsburgh Public Schools, 1941-1942 (hereafter, Annual Report, 1941-
1942) (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1942), 23-24. 36 Annual Report, 1941-1942, 124. 37 Ibid., 125. 38 Ibid., 124. 39 Ibid., 124. 40 Ibid., 161. 41 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 5. 42 Annual Report, 1941-1942, 125. The experiment conducted among the 2,400 high school children, “could not be
extended to the younger children because there [were] not cafeteria facilities in the elementary schools.” 43 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 30. 44 Ibid., 30. 45 Annual Report, 1947-1948, 72. 46 Annual Report, 1948-1949, 100. 47 Annual Report, 1947-1948, 37. 48 Annual Report, 1948-1949, 98. 49 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 32-33. 50 Ibid., 31. 51 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 39. 52 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 29-30. 53 Annual Report, 1947-1948, 72. 54 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 89. 55 Annual Report, 1947-1948, 72. 56 Ibid., 71. 57 Ibid., 72. 58 CoinNews Media Group, LLC, “US Inflation Calculator.” Twenty cents is approximately $2.01 in today’s dollar. 59 Annual Report, 1948-1949, 98-99. 60 Ibid., 100. 61 Ibid., 100. 62 Ibid., 100. 63 Ibid., 100. 64 “Pittsburgh Schools Continue National Lunch Program,” New Pittsburgh Courier, September 7, 1974, 8. Pittsburgh
Public Schools faced this issue of insufficient elementary school cafeteria facilities up through the 1970s. 65 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 45. 66 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 31. 67 Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 135. 68 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 110. In much of the rural South, for example, local control resulted in an unequal
distribution of funds to schools, with more meals going to white students than black students. Structural limitations in
urban areas such as those in Pittsburgh regarding cafeteria facilities also meant that the NSLP failed to reach many
students. 69 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 109. 70 Ibid., 112. 71 Ibid., 113. 72 Ibid., 113.
Millure 23
73 Lyndon B. Johnson, “A Proclamation,” Philadelphia Tribune, August 23, 1966, 9. 74 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 116-117. 75 Ibid., 116-117. 76 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 46. 77 Levenstein, Paradox of Plenty, 148. 78 Richard Nixon, “Proclamation 3939—National School Lunch Week, 1969,” October 3, 1969. Online by Gerhard
Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=105951.
Although President Nixon said “many thousands of children” did not receive lunches through the NSLP, as explained
in the above paragraph, it was actually millions of children who did not participate in the NSLP. 79 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 141. 80 Gunderson, National School Lunch Program, 57. 81 Richard Nixon, “Statement on Signing a Bill Expanding School Lunch and Child Nutrition Programs,” May 14,
1970. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=2501. 82 Pittsburgh Board of Public Education Meeting Minutes, 1968-1969 (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education,
1968-1969), 26. 83 Pittsburgh Board of Public Education Meeting Minutes, 1970-1971 (hereafter, Meeting Minutes, 1970-1971)
(Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education, 1971), 7. 84 Meeting Minutes, 1970-1971, 679. 85 Levine, School Lunch Politics, 164. 86 Meeting Minutes, 1970-1971, 679. 87 Ibid., 679. 88 Ibid., 679. 89 Kenneth Warren, Big Steel: The First Century of the United States Steel Corporation, 1901-2001. (Pittsburgh:
University of Pittsburgh Press, 2001), 279-281. 90 Meeting Minutes, 1970-1971, 679. 91 Pittsburgh Board of Public Education Meeting Minutes, 1971-1972 (Pittsburgh: The Board of Public Education,
1972), 706. 92 George A. Braley and Paul E. Nelson, Jr., “Effect of a Controlled Price Increase on School Lunch Participation:
Pittsburgh 1973,” American Journal of Agricultural Economics 57, No. 1 (1975): 90. According to the 1982 Archival
Survey Project, 107 schools operated in Pittsburgh during this school year, which presents a forty school discrepancy
and confuses research. It is possible that these forty schools were not at the time under direction of the Board or had
not been annexed into Pittsburgh proper. 93 Braley and Nelson, “Effect of a Controlled Price Increase,” 90. 94 Ibid., 90. 95 “Pittsburgh Schools Continue National Lunch Program,” 8. 96 Ibid., 8. 97 Ibid., 8.