The 1968 broadcast of Hunger in America returned hunger to the center stage in American politics. References to hunger had been part of the War on Poverty and the Poor People’s Campaign, but the CBS documentary exposed malnutrition as an aspect of everyday life. The program detailed the harmful effects of malnutrition on children’s physical and cognitive development, introducing an 11-year-old child forced into sex work to feed her family, and overturning the fallacy that all malnourished people are skinny. Hunger in America also emphasized the shortcomings of the Food Stamp Program, which fed only 5 million out of the estimated 15 million hungry people in the country. Personal stories added moral and emotional weight to the documentary, providing a shocking yet vital education about the persistence of hunger. And it roused viewers to take action, including a bipartisan array of legislators ranging from liberal Senator George McGovern to conservative Senator Robert Dole.