Being a Part of History -Renita’s Experience with Operation Breadbasket & its Impact on Communities.

little bit right well a little bit back in the 60s um the black panther party was very very active and they were active in uh and and i believe their roots were also in chicago so um many of their social centers community centers or one in particular operation bread basket um was a uh it was meant primarily for children who um who may not who may have gone to school without breakfast or things like that and uh and so you know you're on your way to school and you know uh and they say hey you know after school will come by come and play you know they had games and things like that and come and have something to eat if you want or you know things like that but they were very very active in the community and making sure that um that black children were getting believe it or not their vaccinations i mean i know that's the thing now um but they were very active in that they were very active in uh making certain that that children ate they had you know that they had food because sometimes dinner was a problem for some kids um but also just that we could go and have some place to safely play because the other thing is um this was a time where some of the uh continued to be most notorious um uh gangs were rising you know uh um you know i mean i can't recall the names uh the names of the games but they were the chicago gangs were really starting to rise yeah and they gave children a safe place to be and i know this is one little strange thing but um when they were beginning to rise uh they would have what they called recruiting day oh my god and and so any boys aged 12 and above who were outdoors were automatically recruited into these various gangs well um uh the black panthers gave them a safe place to be and they also gave them the opportunity to say no we're you're they're not going to be a part of this you know these are these are good kids they're not going in that direction and so um just you know to and i didn't realize at the time that i was a part of history until i was in a history course and i was explaining this to my instructor and he was just so fascinated he's you have to write about that you have to tell about that and i actually um wrote a short story for another class called recruiting day because he inspired me to uh to to do this because of what the black panthers did for our community in particular so you