“Black History Is Every Day to Me”: Reflecting on Over 50 Years of Service during Black History Month 2025

Henry Wallace, the Chairman of the San Diego Original Black Panther Party, has been feeding his community for over 50 years. From joining the newly formed San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in 1967 when he was just 15 years old to running the current-day San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment, he knows the power of community work. Despite facing funding issues and losing critical members during the pandemic, Henry is committed to caring for the people. We’re proud to partner with Henry all year long and to feature his life of service in honor of Black History Month 2025.

Henry (left) jokes with community members while handing out food at their weekly distribution

Liberating the Mind and Feeding the Community

“There was a change happening in the world, and I wanted to be part of that,” says Henry when asked about the initial days of the San Diego Original Black Panther Party. “We as kids didn’t realize that we was actually living up on the apartheid. Once the Black Panther Party came into existence, they had what was called liberation schools, where they liberated your mind about what was going on. That got me very interested and then the fact that we were feeding children.”

Before free breakfasts and lunches, the Black Panther Party worked with local stores to provide early morning meals for neighborhood kids.

“We had a feeding the children program, which was a precursor to what the government does now with free lunches and stuff,” Henry explains. “So we were actually getting help from the community’s markets to get food, and then we take them to the Catholic church and cook it and feed the children early in the morning before they go to school because we found out that children weren’t learning very well in school, on an empty stomach. And once you fed them, they were more alert and ready to learn.”

Henry’s early work is very similar to the food rescue he does today with Feeding San Diego.

“A lot of people couldn’t afford chicken and stuff in my neighborhood. You were lucky to get chicken feet,” he recalls. “So, when the Black Panther Party showed us that the stores were willing to help out and help feed people that showed me a whole new world and I was eager, ready to jump into it.”

Rescued food ready for distribution

Reviving the San Diego Original Black Panther Party

After his early years with the Party, Henry took a few years off from “the work.”

“Then, after I retired from my job, I had to ask myself, ‘What are you gonna do during your retirement?’ So I said, ‘Okay, go do and do the things that made you happy.'” And what made Henry happy was serving the community. He returned to his roots and reactivated the San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment.

“I was able to come back with new ideas about how the Black Panther Party could serve the community,” Henry says. “Times change, so it’s no longer the San Diego Regional Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. We no longer had to police the police. We no longer had to go out and pump our fists. We reactivated in 2017 to go back to doing some of the things that helped the community: the food, the health, and telling oral history.”

For Henry, a critical part of their work is keeping Black history alive and present.

“The world has changed. Unfortunately, you got those that want to turn back the clock,” he explains. “They don’t want LGBTQ to be acknowledged for any of their contributions. They don’t want the blacks to be acknowledged for any of their contributions. So, we gonna be here as messengers also. Not only are we here to serve the community and help them, but we’re also going to be messengers and tell the truth about our country: where it’s been and where we don’t want it to go.”

The Need and the Work

Every Wednesday, Henry and his volunteers set up the Elk’s Lodge in Grant Hill. They stock the tables with food rescued through Feeding San Diego’s food rescue program and other partnerships with local organizations. For Henry, the need is familiar, but the tone has changed.

“It’s basically the same need. People were starving back then. They couldn’t afford to put food on the table,” he recalls. “The situation now is even worse than it was. Back then, they didn’t have food stamps. Now, they’ve got food stamps, and the price of living is still going up. They had large families back then. And if you were living off so-called minimum wage, you couldn’t possibly feed the kids, so you had to do other things to make up for that. Now, single adults can’t feed themselves because food is too expensive.”

During their weekly distribution, some volunteers pass out rescued food, while others package up cooked meals to distribute downtown.

“We got two different constituents that we’re serving on this day,” Henry explains. “That [the distribution]’s low income. Once that’s over with, then we all jump in the cars and we go downtown and give food to the homeless and hygiene kits and stuff like that.”

Volunteers package up premade meals to distribute to the unhoused

Partnerships and Funding Limitations

In 2017, the San Diego Original Black Panther Party partnered with Feeding San Diego for food rescue.

“They [Feeding San Diego] have been here at the right time for us, and it helps a great deal,” Henry said of the partnership. “I wish I could take more from Feeding San Diego. Because we could get more from Feeding San Diego if we had the ability to get around to these different communities to give it out.”

The scope of Henry’s work has changed in recent years due to funding and capacity issues.

“We used to have distributions almost countywide,” he explained. “And because we ran out of money and we ran out of manpower, we couldn’t keep it going. It was four days a week. Now we’re down to taking a whole week to hustle up for one good day that we can give out food and target the right populations, but it’s still a lot of people in need.”

Before the pandemic, Henry had a larger team. Now he relies on volunteers from the local community.

“The volunteers, they’re people that would be standing in line themselves at one time, but they saw that I needed help with the program because we lost several members during the pandemic. We need resources, and we also need human resources to come down and help. We need people to be able to recognize that people need help.”

Henry, with volunteers ready to pass out food to the community

Honoring Progress during Black History Month

In spite of frustrations and funding issues, Henry does “the work” from a place of hope. He’s seen a lot of change since joining the Party in 1967.

“Nothing has changed, but everything has changed,” he says. “Black history is every day to me. There’s always something that we are being denied: our humanity, our rights to exist, our right to be able to speak like everybody else and speak truth to power. And, for some reason, our country still has problems speaking to power. They don’t wanna hear nothing from people of color or LGBTQ. We have a lot of work to do in our country. But I have great hopes for our country because I’ve seen the change. Now we know better that it’s not how you look; it’s your character and how you act. So we have come a long way.”

Find out more about the San Diego Original Black Panther Party for Community Empowerment and how to support their work on their website.