Photograph by Naima Green for TIME
“Because it was Black families who had worked in the fields or chopped cotton, it was only Black families whose assistance was withheld,” says Elisa Minoff, a senior policy analyst at the Center for the Study of Social Policy. Through the 1970s, the federal food-stamp program also penalized the poor by making families buy food stamps, some of which could be used only on items that the Department of Agriculture had deemed surplus, like cornmeal and beans.