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Few Free Lunches. Paul Matthias, director of the South Carolina Council on Human Relations, told the committee that school-lunch programs have been stopped in six of the 15 South Carolina school districts where federal funds have been withheld for noncompliance with the federal school-desegregation law. This eliminated the only real meal that many poor children ever got during the day. Matthias also testified that in the town of Union, all schools were given additional federal food funds except one all-black high school, where only 300 of the 1,000 students receive lunches, and only ten children get them free. He reported that some Negro children, after switching to integrated schools, were told to go back to black schools if they wanted free lunches.
Too Big a Lump. Mrs. Landon Butler, a volunteer worker among the poor, testified that only 15% of the 18,000 people with incomes below $3,000 participated in the food-stamp program in Beaufort County. The stamps, which cost as little as $2 per month for those with incomes of less than $100 per month, were simply too high. Said Mrs. Butler: "The lump sum outlay of cash required to purchase the stamps makes it impossible for a majority of the low-income families to benefit from the program. The response I received from those eligible but not participating was the same over and over again: 'I can't afford it. It costs too much.' "
This problem may be at least temporarily relieved in some areas of South Carolina. Following his testimony, Hollings and South Dakota Senator George McGovern, chairman of the committee investigating hunger, met with Agriculture Secretary Clifford Hardin. Within a week, said Hardin, free food stamps should be available to needy families in Beaufort and equally deprived Jasper County. When Hollings walked into a Democratic Campaign Committee luncheon the day after Hardin's Anouncement. Ted Kennedy stood, shook his hand and said: "Well, I'll be damned!
You did in one day what Bobby tried to do for a year and a half."
While the testimony thus far has focused on South Carolina, the committee will investigate hunger in impoverished areas in a dozen states. In two weeks, the committee will hold hearings on hunger among migrant workers in Florida's Collier and Palm Beach counties.
Later in March, it will investigate Boston's school-lunch program. These field trips will be followed by others to Appalachia, to Indian reservations and to the Mexican American ghettos. By exploring and exposing the plight of the poor, sick and undernourished, the hunger committee will surely demonstrate that for a sizable segment of its populace, the U.S. is an underdeveloped country.