[FOOD INSECURITY]. "Children Who Need Free School Lunches" (handwritten menus and lists of food-insecure students)

Brownwood, TX, 1940. Fair. Ruled letter size paper (8.5" x 11"). Together 7 pp. handwritten on 7 leaves (fair condition only, tears and soiling along top edges which are brittle and with some text loss, soiling - SEE IMAGES). A GRAPHIC REPRESENTATION OF THE CHALLENGES OF RURAL SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS AND NUTRITIONISTS OF THE 1940s TO PROVIDE AT LEAST ONE MEAL A DAY TO IMPOVERISHED CHILDREN, BEING LISTS OF THE NAMES OF FOOD-INSECURE STUDENTS IN THE SMALL TEXAS TOWN OF BROWNWOOD, PLUS VALUABLE HANDWRITTEN LUNCH MENUS. WE ARE UNABLE TO EXPLAIN HOW OR WHY THESE PARTICULAR PAGES WERE SAVED FOR SEVENTY YEARS.

Dating from the 1940s, we can positively identify the school district as Brownwood, Texas, located in the enter of the state which today has a population today of about 18,000. The typed lists of students who need free school lunches are particularly interesting; some students simply do not go to school but apparently receive free school lunches anyway. Others are as residing at the "City Dump" or "Near Brick Plant." The names of a number of students are written by hand, and many of them do not have an address indicated. Latino surnames such as Salasar, Mendosa, Torres, and Romero appear.

The handwritten menus are of further interest, being a detailed list of "School Lunch Menus for One Week." For example, on Monday each student was provided "Vegetable soup" (one cup each) which actually contained meat-ground potatoes, as well as onions, rice, tomatoes, carrots and macaroni; one half-pint milk each; a sweet (cinnamon roll or cookie); and two slices of bread. Thursday's menu contained Chili (stew substituted); one half-pint milk each; bread or crackers; and a sweet (cinnamon roll or cookie). These menus reflect the difficulties in providing children with adequate sustenance and balanced nutrition on a seriously constrained school budget, a tension that has not changed in American schools.

It is noteworthy that in 1946 the National School Lunch Program was enacted by Congress, but as early as 1940 Rowena Schmidt Carpenter and Fanny Walker Yeatman issued the USDA's groundbreaking report on "School Lunches Using Farm Surpluses," with which our menus closely confirm. (Inventory #: 4356)