CBS aired a special news report called “Hunger in America” in 1968, which depicted a Black infant in the South dying from starvation. The report horrified both the public and governmental officials, including Florida Congressman Charles Bennett, who said that he “couldn’t sleep all that night” after seeing the documentary.
That same year, the Citizens’ Board of Inquiry on Hunger and Malnutrition in the United States conducted a study of food deprivation, and its consequences, in the United States. The report issued by the citizens’ board found that only 17 percent of eligible people in the country were participating in either the commodities or food stamp program, primarily because “the poorest of the poor could not afford to meet the requirement that they purchase food stamps.” The report acknowledged that even its researchers were “somewhat startled by our own findings, for we had been lulled into the comforting belief that at least the extremes of…[lack of basic necessities] had been eliminated in the process of becoming the world’s wealthiest nation.”
At the time, seven counties in Florida (Franklin, Gilchrist, Holmes, Jackson, Levy, Madison, and Sumter) were refusing to participate in either the Food Stamp Program or Federal Surplus Commodities Program. These Florida counties, along with 27 of the other poorest counties in other states in the South, were notified by USDA that, unless they were willing to participate in federal efforts to feed poor families, the federal government would step in and do their job for them without their cooperation.