Mutual aid has deep roots in Black communities in the US. In 1787, Richard Allen and Absalom Jones founded the Free African Society in Philadelphia to support free Black residents with help for the sick, widows and orphans. Black benevolent societies and burial associations followed, filling gaps left by a society that excluded Black people from insurance, banks and public aid. The Russian writer Peter Kropotkin made mutual aid a well-known idea with his 1902 book Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution.
In 1969, the Black Panther Party launched its Free Breakfast for Children program, which fed thousands of children in cities across the country. The party also ran free health clinics and sickle cell anemia screening. These programs met real needs while showing what communities could do for themselves.
Mutual aid surged in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, when neighbors organized grocery deliveries, rent funds and supply drives. Unlike charity, mutual aid is not one group giving to another. People share resources as equals and often connect that help to organizing for larger change. It matters because it builds the solidarity and networks that communities rely on when institutions fail them.