The Young Patriots and the Rainbow Coalition
While the U2 spy plane incident is
a classic Cold War story, the Rainbow Alliance which saw the Black Panthers
aligning with the confederate flag wearing members of the Young Patriots
organisation is a bizarre sight for most people today.
the Young Patriots were
from Chicago and made up of former members of the Students for a Democratic
Society and southern migrants. The organisation fought against the systematic
oppression they faced in the area of uptown Chicago which they inhabited and
that was referred to with names such as the ‘Hillbilly Ghetto’. The
eleven-point programme developed by the Young Patriots at this time outlined
their aims. This stated that ‘we believe that all people are entitled to
adequate food, clothing, shelter and medical care. We believe that businessmen
should not make profit on the things we need to survive.’[1]
Their core belief was that those with wealth were using this in order to keep
those in poverty in the position they were in and also take advantage of them.
Subsequently, it had been realised that
the systematic oppression that those in the Young Patriots faced was similar to
that which blacks and Latinos were facing at this time due to racial
discrimination. They too had been kept in a state of poverty because those with
power and wealth had deliberately charged exorbitant rates for property and
services which were poor in quality. This perpetuated the cycle of poverty and oppression
they were in. Consequently, the Young Patriots, the Black Panther Party and the
Latino Young Lords aligned with each other towards the end of the 1960s to
fight against the oppressive system.
The resulting ‘Rainbow Coalition’,
it was believed, would be more effective in fighting their struggles. However,
in order for the alliance to set in, it would have to overcome some obstacles. Members
of the Young Patriots maintained their own Southern pride which offended many
black panthers, who associated this with the racism in the South. Many members
of the YPO even had family members in the KKK. Although there were members of
both organisations who were against the coalition, and some who left, their
leaders remained committed to the idea. Bobby Lee, a leading member of the
Black Panther party stated that ‘to tell the truth, it was a necessary purging’.[2]
In order to make the alliance work, its leaders would have to fight the
attitude possessed by some of its membership.
Once
up and running however, the alliance, which had added the Young Lords to the
Rainbow Coalition, ran a number of programmes in order to aid the people in
their communities suffering from oppression. The organisations shared resources
and knowledge of how to set up services providing food, healthcare, education
and shelter. Moreover, the organisations showed solidarity with each other by
jointly and publicly condemning the oppression each of the communities faced. The
Rainbow Coalition highlighted the class aspect of the civil rights movement in
the 1960s how three organisations representing different races came together in
a decade full of racial tension to achieve their shared aims.
Mark Gibson
[1] ‘11
Point Program of the Young Patriots’, Young
Patriots (1968) https://static1.squarespace.com/static/543c0481e4b01845ad51ecd3/t/5512d0d4e4b0b2a9ab91d4e2/1427296468534/Young+Patriots+-+11+Point+program+of+the+young+patriot+organization.pdf
[2]
Bobby Lee, article by James Tracy, ‘The (Original) Rainbow Coalition’, Area Chicago, http://www.areachicago.org/the-original-rainbow-coalition/
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