Katherine Campbell is still feeding hungry children, 50 years and counting.
Half a century ago, Campbell was one of the chefs who scrambled the eggs and buttered the toast every morning for the Black Panther Party’s free breakfast program in San Francisco.
“A hungry kid can’t really think, or be creative, in school,” she said. “The only thing a hungry kid can think about is how hungry he or she is.”
Campbell, 68, was a member of the Panthers back then, and she wore the signature black beret and went to the meetings. But she said she was in the community service end of things, not the militant end.
Hundreds of kids got free meals in the two years that the program operated in San Francisco. Fifty years later, that effort seemed to be worth remembering, she said. So Campbell decided she would put together a breakfast celebration to re-create the program.
And that’s what happened the other morning inside the glow-in-the-dark skating rink on Fillmore Street that used to be Sacred Heart Catholic Church. Campbell rounded up a handful of volunteers and invited a few dozen third-graders from nearby John Muir Elementary School, her alma mater, to sit down and relive history — since most of them had already eaten breakfast and didn’t need another one.
The grownups cracked the eggs and buttered the toast and stirred the grits and poured the orange juice, like the old days. The kids ate it up, because a kid will eat scrambled eggs and toast under most circumstances. There was singing and speeches and a trumpet player.