Young Patriots Organization

Last updated
Young Patriots Organization
AbbreviationYPO
Founded1968;56 years ago (1968)
Dissolved1973;51 years ago (1973)
Succeeded by Patriot Party
Headquarters Uptown, Chicago, U.S.
Ideology
Political position Left-wing
Party flag
Confederate Rebel Flag.svg

The Young Patriots Organization (YPO) was an American leftist organization of mostly White Southerners from Uptown, Chicago. Originating in 1968 and active until 1973, the organization was designed to support young, white migrants from the Appalachia region who experienced extreme poverty and discrimination. [1] [2] The organization promoted Southern culture and used a Confederate battle flag as a symbol. [2] [3] Along with the Illinois Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, the Young Patriots Organization formed the Rainbow Coalition, a group of allied but racially separate organizations each focused on helping with issues of poverty and discrimination among their local community while working together towards internationalist and anti-capitalist goals. [4] [5]

Contents

History

Precursors

Chicago was one of many American industrial cities that experienced an influx of White Southerners who came seeking employment throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1970, Chicago and the neighboring city of Gary had about 280,000 residents who had been born in the South; they were particularly concentrated in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, where they made up 80% of the population. The group was culturally isolated, treated as outsiders by other Chicagoans. They often experienced severe poverty and were targets of police brutality. They were derided as "hillbillies", particularly among the press: the group was summarized in a subtitle to a 1958 article in Harper's Magazine as "proud, poor, primitive, and fast with a knife". [2]

The Uptown neighborhood was home to several youth gangs in the 1950s and 1960s, a number of which formed among the Southern newcomers. [2] The gangs formed "not only along the color line, but also along interfaces between different European American groups—between, for example, communities of Irish and Poles, Poles and Italians, Swedes and Italians, Jews and Poles". [6] Inter-gang violence was particularly noticeable as Black Americans began to move into Chicago neighborhoods. [2]

Amidst this environment, community organizers tried to address the issues of poverty and unemployment in the area in groups like the Jobs or Income Now (JOIN) community union, which grew out of the Students for a Democratic Society organization that encouraged local activism in Uptown. Both co-founders of the Young Patriots, Jack "Junebug" Boykin and Doug Youngblood, as well as other members had been involved with JOIN. Boykin and other Young Patriots were also active in Youngblood's National Organizing Committee (later the National Community Union), an interracial and working-class group that rallied around issues including free medical and childcare, higher corporate taxes, rank-and-file union leadership, and the end of the draft. [2]

1968–1969: Formation of the Rainbow Coalition

When the Young Patriots Organization and Bob Lee of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party were accidentally double-booked to speak at the Church of the Three Crosses in Lincoln Park on the same night, the two ended up discussing poverty among impoverished White Southerners in Chicago, shared experiences between White Southerners in Uptown and Black people in the South and West Sides, and comparisons between poverty in Chicago and the Vietnam War. This meeting, which was captured on film and later included in the 1969 documentary film American Revolution 2 , was the precursor to the spring 1969 formation of the Rainbow Coalition by Bob Lee and Fred Hampton. [2] [5] At the outset the coalition was made up of the Young Patriots, the Illinois Black Panthers, and the Young Lords, and over the years they were joined by other community organizations. [5] As the coalition expanded, so did the groups themselves, with the Young Patriots earning new members including the skilled speaker William "Preacherman" Fesperman, who would go on to become a leader among the Patriots. [7] After joining the Rainbow Coalition, The Young Patriots maintained their focus on White Southerners and those in the Uptown, but usually were joined by one or both of the Black Panthers or the Young Lords in public appearances. [2]

1969–1970: Young Patriots Uptown Health Service

The Young Patriots were one of several groups in the Rainbow Coalition to mimic various activities of the Black Panthers. In addition to providing free breakfast programs for children, organizing clothing drives, and monitoring police activities, the Young Patriots also followed the Panthers' model of providing social services such as medical clinics directly to their communities. [2] [5] [8] In October 1969, the Patriots opened a medical clinic to provide free care to Uptown residents. The Young Patriots Uptown Health Service's medical staff were primarily volunteer medical personnel from outside the group, and each patient also was assigned a Patriot as a patient advocate who would provide home visits and accompaniment to later appointments. The clinic provided dental and medical care to about 150 people in the first few months it was open, but by December it had been forced to close due to noise complaints from neighboring tenants. The Patriots alleged the closing was solely due to continued harassment from the police, which they said had scared away clients and staff alike. The clinic relocated, though many of their volunteers did not return. After reopening, the unlicensed clinic faced issues with the Board of Health, who were concerned the Patriots would use the facility to "treat gunshot wounds, hand out drugs irresponsibly, perform abortions or give shots with unsterile needles". As the Patriots battled with the Board of Health, they alleged that police harassed their patients, seizing prescribed medications and arresting them for narcotics possession. The Patriots also claimed the police harassed their members by crashing meetings between the Patriots and medical staff and arresting the Patriots for trespassing in their own buildings or for allegedly assaulting other members of the organization. Eventually the clinic was allowed to remain open and unlicensed in a July 10, 1970, decision that determined that "ordinance covering dispensaries was so vague as to be unenforceable". The clinic treated nearly 2,000 people by November of that year and came to be the most well-known accomplishment by the Young Patriots. [2]

In 1969, a new branch of the Young Patriots emerged, calling themselves the Patriot Party. Over the next year, branches of the Patriots emerged in several cities across the United States, though they generally dissolved fairly quickly due to lack of momentum or were absorbed by other radical groups. [2]

1970–1973: Splintering and eventual dissolution

The groups in the Rainbow Coalition had already suffered a major blow with the 1969 assassination of Fred Hampton during a police raid of his apartment. In late 1970, the internal security subcommittee of the United States Senate charged a local church association, the North Side Cooperative Ministry, with financially supporting both the Young Patriots and the Young Lords. Although the consortium maintained that they had only supported free breakfast programs and legal defense funds and rebutted the claims that they had been supporting violent revolutionaries, the press coverage widely describing the two groups as "street gangs" reduced outside support for the community services run by the Patriots and other groups. [2]

Media attention to the Young Patriots diminished following the success of their medical clinic, and though they continued to provide community services, none would be as effective or widely known as the clinic. The strongly Appalachian Uptown neighborhood gradually became more diverse as people from other countries immigrated to the area, and White Southerners moved elsewhere. By 1973, the Young Patriots Organization was, for the most part, defunct. [2]

Platform and ideology

In 1970, the Young Patriots formed an 11-point platform similar to the Black Panther Party's 1969 Ten-Point Program. The Patriots' platform shared the Panthers' opposition to the Vietnam War, police oppression, and capitalist exploitation. The two platforms also shared welfare-related goals including improved education, housing, medical care, and access to clothing, and union reform that would address issues of racism and inefficacy in the existing unions. The Young Patriots' platform included points that spoke about cultural nationalism and revolutionary solidarity, and denounced racism. [2]

The Young Patriots' condemnation of cultural nationalism has since been described by Martin Alexander Krzywy, publishing in the Journal of African American Studies , as somewhat incongruous with their strong focus on Appalachian and southern heritage and their adoption of symbols including cowboy hats and the Confederate battle flag. However, according to Krzywy, this was not dissimilar from inconsistencies between the Black Panthers' and Young Lords' stated beliefs on cultural nationalism and the practices of some of their members. [2] The Confederate battle flag also served the Young Patriots as a recruiting tool, attracting other white southerners. Though the multiracial groups among the Rainbow Coalition did not raise the Confederate imagery as an issue in the intergroup organizing, many radicals outside of the coalition saw the flag as incompatible with solidarity with the Black Panthers. [5]

The Young Patriots were extremely focused on class and were critical of activist groups like the Students for a Democratic Society and the Southern Student Organizing Committee, who were largely focused on campus organizing. The Patriots denigrated their work as "petty bourgeoisie" and their members as having "had all the education, had all the schooling." [5]

Membership

The Young Patriots Organization described their membership as a diverse collection of people including Italians, Latinos, and American Indians. However, the backgrounds of its leaders and the symbols adopted by the group made it clear that the group was primarily centered around shared White Southerner identity. The Patriots were largely perceived by outsiders to be a group of white hillbilly gang members turned revolutionaries. [2]

Krzywy, publishing in the Journal of African American Studies, wrote that "the Young Patriots tended to conflate Southernness and whiteness, to the exclusion of both poor white ethnics in Chicago and black Southerners who had moved to the city and shared many folkways with the Uptown residents." However, despite the group's exclusive intragroup identity, through the Rainbow Coalition the group organized effectively along with Blacks and Latinos in Chicago. [2]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee</span> Largest student-led civil rights organization during the American Civil Rights Movement

The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee was the principal channel of student commitment in the United States to the civil rights movement during the 1960s. Emerging in 1960 from the student-led sit-ins at segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, the Committee sought to coordinate and assist direct-action challenges to the civic segregation and political exclusion of African Americans. From 1962, with the support of the Voter Education Project, SNCC committed to the registration and mobilization of black voters in the Deep South. Affiliates such as the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the Lowndes County Freedom Organization in Alabama also worked to increase the pressure on federal and state government to enforce constitutional protections.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Fred Hampton</span> African-American activist (1948–1969)

Fredrick "Chairman Fred" Allen Hampton Sr. was an American activist. He came to prominence in his late teens and very early 20s in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African American, he founded the anti-racist, anti-classist Rainbow Coalition, a prominent multicultural political organization that initially included the Black Panthers, Young Patriots, and the Young Lords, and an alliance among major Chicago street gangs to help them end infighting and work for social change. A Marxist–Leninist, Hampton considered fascism the greatest threat, saying, "nothing is more important than stopping fascism, because fascism will stop us all."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Young Lords</span> Civil and human rights organization

The Young Lords, also known as the Young Lords Organization (YLO) or Young Lords Party (YLP), was a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. The group aims to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-determination for Puerto Rico, Latinos, and colonized people. Tactics used by the Young Lords include mass education, canvassing, community programs, occupations, and direct confrontation. The Young Lords became targets of the United States FBI's COINTELPRO program.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Helen Shiller</span> Chicago politician

Helen Shiller is a former Alderman of the 46th ward in Chicago, Illinois. Shiller is also a published author, having written a 500-page book on her politics and activism in Chicago from 1971 to 2011. Shiller served in the Chicago City Council for six four-year terms, from 1987 to 2011. Shiller was elected to the City Council on her third attempt, as Harold Washington, Chicago's first black Mayor, was re-elected to his second term, and her election as alderman helped close the Council Wars era in Chicago government. Shiller has been described as "a reformer unafraid to take on the boys in power." A less flattering description is that she is "committed to liberal causes and destroying all within her path". Among her most significant impacts on Chicago were her advocacy for diverse, inclusive, affordable housing and helping craft Chicago's response to the HIV/AIDS crisis. Her commitment to fostering community development without displacement often brought Shiller into contention with some constituencies, real estate developers, and editorial boards. Shiller's oral history was collected by Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Uptown resident Studs Terkel in his 2003 book, Hope Dies Last. As she details in her own book, among her policy victories as a City Council member was: getting human rights legislation passed, having Chicago implement anti-apartheid legislation, creating a City Council Subcommittee on Domestic Violence, and building a unique mix-used development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Patriot Party (1970s)</span> Minor American political party

The Patriot Party was a socialist organization of the early 1970s in the United States that organized poor, rural whites in the Appalachian South and Pacific Northwest. The party was formed after a split with the Young Patriots Organization. The YPO's membership was drawn from street gangs of Appalachian whites in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois; it became politicized after working with the Young Lords, an ethnic Puerto Rican gang, and the African-American Black Panther Party.

The New Communist movement (NCM) was a diverse left-wing political movement during the 1970s and 1980s. The NCM were a movement of the New Left that represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution. The movement, according to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brown Berets</span> American Chicano rights organization

The Brown Berets is a pro-Chicano paramilitary organization that emerged during the Chicano Movement in the late 1960s. David Sanchez and Carlos Montes co-founded the group modeled after the Black Panther Party. The Brown Berets was part of the Third World Liberation Front. It worked for educational reform, farmworkers' rights, and against police brutality and the Vietnam War. It also sought to separate the American Southwest from the control of the United States government.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Free Breakfast for Children</span> American community service program

The Free Breakfast for School Children Program, or the People’s Free Food Program, was a community service program run by the Black Panther Party that focused on providing free breakfast for children before school. The program began in January 1969 at Father Earl A. Neil's St. Augustine's Episcopal Church, located in West Oakland, California and spread throughout the nation. This program was an early manifestation of the social mission envisioned by Black Panther Party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale along with their founding of the Oakland Community School, which provided high-level education to 150 children from impoverished urban neighborhoods. The breakfasts formed the core of what became known as the party's Survival Programs. Inspired by contemporary research about the essential role of breakfast for optimal schooling and the belief that alleviating hunger and poverty was necessary for Black liberation, the Panthers cooked and served food to the poor inner city youth of the area. The service created community centers in various cities for children and parents to simultaneously eat and learn more about black liberation and the Black Panther Party's efforts.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">I Wor Kuen</span> Asian-American Marxist group

I Wor Kuen was a radical Marxist Asian American collective that originally formed in 1969 in New York City's Chinatown. Borrowing from the ideologies of the Young Lords and the Black Panthers, IWK organized several community programs and produced a newsletter series promoting self-determination for Asian Americans. Initially consisting of students from Columbia University, the group worked in conjunction with residents of New York City's Chinatown to address the community's needs for healthcare reform, draft counseling, and childcare. The group expanded nationally with the Red Guard Party in San Francisco in 1972 to create a national organisation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Panther Party</span> US black power organization (1966–1982)

The Black Panther Party was a Marxist–Leninist and black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. Newton in October 1966 in Oakland, California. The party was active in the United States between 1966 and 1982, with chapters in many major American cities, including San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Philadelphia. They were also active in many prisons and had international chapters in the United Kingdom and Algeria. Upon its inception, the party's core practice was its open carry patrols ("copwatching") designed to challenge the excessive force and misconduct of the Oakland Police Department. From 1969 onward, the party created social programs, including the Free Breakfast for Children Programs, education programs, and community health clinics. The Black Panther Party advocated for class struggle, claiming to represent the proletarian vanguard.

The Rainbow Coalition was an anti-racist, working class multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969, in Chicago, Illinois by Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization and José Cha Cha Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords. It was the first of several 20th century black-led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept.

The Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) was a student activist group in the southern United States during the 1960s, which focused on many political and social issues including: African-American civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, workers' rights, and feminism. It was intended, in part, to be Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) for Southerners and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) for white students – at a time when it was dangerous for SDS to attempt to organize in the Deep South and when SNCC was starting to discuss expelling white volunteers. It was felt that students at the traditionally white and black colleges in the South could be more effectively organized separately than in an integrated student civil rights organization; however, this was controversial and initially opposed by advisors like Anne Braden. Sue Thrasher and Archie Allen of the Christian Action Fellowship were among the founders of the group, with the support of Bob Moses and others. At its inception, the group had close ties to controversial Louisville, Kentucky radicals Carl and Anne Braden and their organization, the Southern Conference Education Fund, but a deliberate effort was later made to put some distance between the SSOC and the Bradens to avoid the appearance that the SSOC was a Communist front.

José "Cha Cha" Jiménez is a political activist and the founder of the Young Lords Organization, a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. Started in September 23, 1968, it was most active in the late 1960s and 1970s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish Council on Urban Affairs</span> American nonprofit organization

Jewish Council on Urban Affairs (JCUA) is a nonprofit organization based in Chicago that mobilizes the Jewish community of the region to advance racial and economic justice. JCUA partners with diverse community groups across the city and state to combat racism, antisemitism, poverty and other forms of systemic oppression, through grassroots community organizing, youth education programs, and community development.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Marion Stamps</span> Chicago activist

Marion Nzinga Stamps was an African-American community activist who fought for equal rights of public housing residents in the Cabrini-Green housing project on the Near-North Side of Chicago, Illinois. She helped to elect Chicago's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington, by organizing a massive voter registration drive in 1983. She was aggressive in her fights to make sure that residents of housing developments had voices regarding their violent and harsh living conditions in public housing. In 1993, Stamps began working with many gang leaders throughout Chicago to help end growing violence. In 1994 she and others successfully navigated what remains the only citywide gang truce in Chicago's history.

African Americans', or Black Americans', access and use of birth control are central to many social, political, cultural and economic issues in the United States. Birth control policies in place during American slavery and the Jim Crow era highly influenced Black attitudes toward reproductive management methods. Other factors include African-American attitudes towards family, sex and reproduction, religious views, social support structures, black culture, and movements towards bodily autonomy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">United Front Against Fascism</span>

The United Front Against Fascism (UFAF) was an anti-fascist conference organized by the Black Panther Party and held in Oakland, California, from July 18 to 21, 1969.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Redneck Revolt</span> American far-left political group

Redneck Revolt is an American far-left socialist political group that organizes predominantly among white working-class people. The group supports gun rights and members often openly carry firearms. Its political positions are anti-capitalist, anti-racist and anti-fascist. Founded in Kansas in 2009, members were present at several protests against Donald Trump and against the far-right in 2017.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nationalist Front (United States)</span> Loose coalition of white supremacist groups in the United States

The Nationalist Front is a loose coalition of radical right and white supremacists. The coalition was formed in 2016 by leaders of the neo-Nazi groups National Socialist Movement (NSM) and Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP). Its aim was to unite white supremacist and white nationalist groups under a common umbrella. Originally the group was named the Aryan Nationalist Alliance and was composed of neo-Nazi, Ku Klux Klan and White power skinhead organizations.

The city of Chicago, Illinois is home to a significant Appalachian population. The Appalachian community has historically been centered in the neighborhood of Uptown. Beginning after World War I, Appalachian people moved to Chicago in droves seeking jobs. Between 1940 and 1970, approximately 3.2 million Appalachian and Southern migrants settled in Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest. Due to immigration restrictions in the 1920s, personnel managers in Chicago encouraged working-class migrants from the Upland South to fill those jobs. The culture of Chicago has been significantly influenced by the culture, music, and politics of Appalachia. The majority of people of Appalachian heritage in Chicago are white or black, though Appalachian people can be of any race, ethnicity, or religion.

References

  1. ↑ "Chuck Armsbury with the Patriot Party" (PDF). It's About Time: Black Panther Party and Legacy. Fall 2002. p. 13. Retrieved August 4, 2013.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 Krzywy, Martin Alexander (September 16, 2019). "Chicago's White Appalachian Poor and the Rise of the Young Patriots Organization". Journal of African American Studies . 23 (4): 364–388. doi:10.1007/s12111-019-09438-6. ISSN   1559-1646. S2CID   204360801 – via SpringerLink.
  3. ↑ Abraham, Judson (2021-04-01). "No Justification for a "Symbol of Counterrevolution": Toward an Intersectional Reading of the Confederate Flag". New Political Science. 43 (2): 154–170. doi:10.1080/07393148.2021.1900691. ISSN   0739-3148. S2CID   233580621.
  4. ↑ Rivera, Marisol V.; Jeffries, Judson L. (December 2019). "From Radicalism to Representation: Jose 'Cha Cha' Jimenez's Journey into Electoral Politics". Journal of African American Studies . New York City: Springer. 23 (4): 299–319. doi:10.1007/s12111-019-09446-6. ISSN   1559-1646. S2CID   210452425 – via SpringerLink.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Middlebrook, Jeb Aram (December 2019). "Organizing a Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity". Journal of African American Studies . New York City: Springer. 23 (4): 405–434. doi: 10.1007/s12111-019-09454-6 . ISSN   1559-1646.
  6. ↑ Diamond, Andrew J. (June 10, 2009). Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 5. ISBN   978-0-520-25723-8. OCLC   259970292.
  7. ↑ McCanne, Michael (May 19, 2017). "The Panthers and the Patriots". Jacobin . Retrieved August 23, 2020.
  8. ↑ Arguello, Martha M. (November 19, 2019). "We Joined Others Who Were Poor: the Young Lords, the Black Freedom Struggle, and the 'Original' Rainbow Coalition". Journal of African American Studies . 23 (4): 435–454. doi:10.1007/s12111-019-09453-7. ISSN   1559-1646. S2CID   214487889 – via SpringerLink.

Further reading

Revolutionary Hillbilly.Hy Thurman, Regent Press, 2021.

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.