You know, I’ve heard it said that the Panthers' free breakfast programs elevated the idea of free school breakfast into social consciousness. We take for granted today that lots of kids at school get breakfast, and if their parents fall below certain income levels, they get it for free.

I remember when that was a radical idea. "Parents need to feed their own damn kids," people would say. "I don’t want my tax money going to feed kids whose parents are too lazy to work." Obviously, there was a huge racist element in that sentiment. White people then as today often insisted Black people were poor because they were lazy.

But community organizers and activists ran with the Panthers' idea about free breakfast, and today we take it for granted. States and the federal government now fund it.

Today kids who don’t eat well at home can count on at least two nutritious meals at school, and the entire nation owes the Black Panthers an enormous debt of gratitude.

It’s really sad, though, that the Panthers are still demonized in public consciousness to a large extent. The FBI and other federal law enforcement agencies spread intentional lies about them, lies that have come down to us as received truth.