Churches and the March on Washington
Volunteers making box lunches for the March in 1963 (National Archive Image)
August is national sandwich month. Here is a related story from US history. For the August 1963 March on Washington to be a success, those attended needed food and beverages. Spokesmen for the National Council of Churches and the Council of Churches of Greater Washington called for all-out participation from member churches. For example, Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church and Sharp Street Memorial Church in Baltimore provided a hot breakfast with eggs, bacon, muffins and coffee to caravans of buses passing through Baltimore in route to the March. The Church of the Epiphany in Washington made coffee available to marchers the day of the event. The Knights of Columbus supplied $25,000 to help with the cost of feeding and sheltering marchers. 300 volunteers worked in shifts making box lunches at Riverside Church in Harlem; they made 80,000 box lunches that organizers sent to Washington on a refrigerator trucks for overnight storage. They planned to sell the lunches on the Wednesday August 26, the day of the March, below cost and the funds raised for the march would cover the deficit.