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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

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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.