This Black History Month, we’re highlighting Black individuals who have fought to feed kids. Their stories are part of a movement that for years has recognized the direct relationship between systemic racism and childhood hunger. We hope their stories inspire people to fight childhood hunger and its disproportionate impact on communities of color.
Today we feature Coleman Young, the first Black mayor of Detroit and a forefather of urban farming as a tool to fight hunger.
Young became mayor in 1974, when the US was experiencing a deep recession, and the Motor City fell into decline.
Decades of discriminatory policies had segregated Detroit, pushing its majority Black residents into economic hardship and hunger. The 1967 race riot had left much of the city in shambles and intensified the white exodus to the suburbs.
“Nowhere has the impact of these problems been felt more by Detroiters than in the area of trying to feed their families,” Young said in 1975.
In response to the crisis, Young created the Farm-A-Lot Program, in which the city provided training, equipment and access to land, encouraging residents to grow their own food.
The program was especially concerned with feeding the city’s children.
“With 140,000 city residents unemployed and food costs up a dramatic 41% in the past three years, tens of thousands of Detroiters, including large numbers of children, are eating at levels far below minimum nutrition standards,” read the project summary.
By the end of the 1970’s, thousands of residents were cultivating gardens in otherwise empty lots.
Young is one of the most debated people in the history of Detroit. Most Black Detroiters consider him a hero, while others – mainly whites living in the suburbs – blame him for the decline of the city, according to the Detroit Free Press. Young was brazen, controversial and known for his indecorous language.
Rochelle Riley from the Detroit Free Press wrote, “He was unapologetically Black. He didn’t change who he was, whose he was or how he operated to make anyone else feel comfortable.”
Young, who also served in the Tuskegee Airmen Unit, remained in office until 1994 and passed away three years later.
Devita Davison, executive director at FoodLab Detroit and a speaker in Share Our Strength’s Food Justice Series, said, “Even today, the blatant racial separation in Detroit affects food access and drives health disparities.”
She is one of the people carrying the torch of urban farming and equal food access in a city that embodies the disproportionate effect of hunger on people of color.
Eighty percent of Detroit’s population is Black, and according to research before the pandemic, as many as 1 in every 2 kids in the city could be living with hunger.
When asked about his legacy, Young said, “I'd like to be remembered as the mayor who served in a period of ongoing crisis and took some important steps to keep the city together, but left office with his work incomplete."
1 in 4 kids in our country may be living with hunger right now because of the pandemic. In times of crisis and not, communities of color live with disproportionate rates of childhood hunger, with systemic racism a root cause.
That’s why No Kid Hungry is prioritizing grants and support to these communities. More than two thirds of our emergency grant funds have gone to organizations working primarily in communities of color.
The work to feed children in cities like Detroit continues, thanks to leaders like Young and Davison. Join us to help feed hungry kids nationwide today and stay tuned for more Black individuals fighting childhood hunger.
