CBS Reports: Hunger in America

First telecast in May 1968, Hunger In America brought the many faces of hunger in America into the living rooms of this country, and made the problem “all too human.” The moving and horrible scenes of small children suffering from hunger, malnutrition, and related diseases that this country assumed had long been eradicated were filmed in the black belt of Alabama, the horse country of Virginia, the barrios of San Antonio, and the Indian reservations of Arizona. Although a Citizens Board had a month earlier documented in hard arithmetic the number of people in America suffering from hunger and malnutrition, it took the CBS-TV documentary to make the words, Hunger in America, come alive. It told the American people—as only television can—about the plight of some 10 million hungry people in our land, and goaded our nation to action—to begin to feed its hungry. In recognition, a Peabody Special Award.