Why I pick lettuce for the Black Panthers

I worry that Alice Waters' crusade for local, seasonal food isn't reaching the people who really need it.

By Novella Carpenter

Read more: Black Panthers, Civil Rights, Oakland, Obesity, Life, Eat and Drink, Food and Travel

Aug. 1, 2007 | Thursday's my harvest day for the Black Panthers. I begin in West Oakland, Calif., at an urban garden run by the not-for-profit City Slicker Farms. The beds are chock-full of roaming squash plants, beets and collard greens. I'm here for the lettuce. I might choose the red frilly Outredgeous, or the chartreuse black-seeded Simpson, or the Bronze Arrow; whichever looks the largest and healthiest, I pick five heads. Then I bike back to my own backyard plot 20 blocks away, in a run-down area of Oakland called Ghost Town, where I pick basil, marjoram, mint, wild arugula and edible flowers (nasturtiums and borage) to add to the mix.

I want the Panthers to enjoy a gourmet salad, you see.

In the Bay Area, home of Alice Waters, the high priestess of seasonal food, and slow food's ground zero, boutique grocery stores evangelize about eating fresh and local. Browse around one of these sedate shops and you'll find local hand-molded goat cheeses, fresh bundles of escarole and rustic bottles of cold-pressed olive oil from Napa Valley. All organic, all regional and all expensive.

"For any salad greens, you're looking for the ones that have just been picked," Waters is quoted as saying in a new biography by Thomas McNamee. "Ones that have an aliveness about them. Ones that don't have any little discolored ends. I don't mind the ones that have a little dirt on them because they just came out of the field."

I think about Waters' words while I triple-wash my lettuce and herbs, then pack them into plastic bags. She's right that when you eat a salad fresh from the garden, it tastes vital and truly nourishing. But the kids in my neighborhood eat Cup-a-Soup for breakfast and Cheetos for lunch. Eldridge Cleaver once said, "Black children who go to school hungry each morning have been organized into their poverty." The chances of my neighbors encountering a salad that has "an aliveness" to it are slim.

When most people think of the Panthers, they think of black men wearing leather jackets and carrying guns, or the famous photo of founder Huey Newton sitting in a wicker throne with a spear in one hand, a shotgun in the other. What have been forgotten are the free medical clinics, the bus service for visiting prisons, the breakfast programs for kids and the thousands of bags of food handed out to needy folks. David Hilliard's photographic history of the party, "The Legacy of the Panthers," quotes a Black Panther newspaper: "It is a beautiful sight to see our children eat in the mornings after remembering the times when our stomachs were not full, and even the teachers in the schools say that there is a great improvement in the academic skills of the children that do get the breakfast." In the 1970s, a school run by the Panthers called the Oakland Community Learning Center served breakfast, lunch and dinner to all of its students.

I first met the Panthers six months ago on the UC-Berkeley campus, where I attended graduate school. A young guy with cornrows yelled from his booth, "Support the Panther Party!" My mom was active in the civil rights movement, so I went over to have a look. "So I can help?" I cautiously asked the other man at the booth, Melvin Johnson -- all the while remembering a scene from the Malcolm X movie where a blond lady's help is rejected.

"Yes, we aren't segregationist anymore," Johnson answered, handing me a copy of the Black Panther Party "Ten-Point Program."

"Well, I don't have time or money, but how about vegetables?" I asked.

"Sure," he answered.

I wrote down my name and number and in a few days Johnson called me back. Turns out Melvin Johnson is a very tenacious fellow. A writer friend of mine said he gave Melvin his number in order to volunteer, and every week for a year, Melvin called. I was glad I hadn't made my offer of vegetables without having something to back it up.

Willow Rosenthal, the founder of City Slicker Farms, and a dear friend, grows tons of vegetables (literally) on her urban farms. With her organization's help, once a week I can deliver enough salad for the entire Panther literacy program. When I first told her about the project, she admitted that the Panthers were one of her great inspirations. "Hell," she said, "we'll plant a Li'l Bobby Hutton memorial plot of lettuce!"

Next page: One salad on one day isn't going to save a life or a city