Celebrating Black History Month | Mickey Leland

Representative George Thomas “Mickey” Leland (TX) was one of the co-founders of the House Select Committee on Hunger, and the namesake of the 1993 Mickey Leland Childhood Hunger Relief Act that strengthened the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). The impact of this committee would grow with Leland’s ability to create awareness of the complexities of […]

Shirley Chisholm (NY) was the first Black women to serve in Congress. She represented New York’s 12th District beginning in 1968. While in Congress, she was assigned to the House Agriculture Committee (Project Bread). During her work on the Committee, she helped to protect and expand food assistance programs. She’s known as the Architect of […]

John Lewis (GA), the esteemed civil rights leader and long-serving Member of Congress, had a long history of activism against injustice. When he was 23, he was already a nationally recognized civil rights leader, and spoke at the March on Washington in 1963. Elected to Congress in 1986, Rep. Lewis was a strong advocate of […]

Born in 1917 in Mississippi to sharecropper parents, Fannie Lou Hamer is better known as a civil rights and women’s rights icon of the 1960s and 1970s and was also one of the pioneers of the food justice movement. Hamer grew up knowing what it meant to be hungry: “Poverty and poor health form an […]

During Black History Month, we honor and acknowledge the work of Black advocates who have been leaders in civil rights, anti-poverty and anti-hunger initiatives. We are indebted to these individuals who have led the movement to ending hunger and poverty through a lens of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Each Monday in February we will profile […]