Chicago 1969: When Black Panthers Aligned with Confederate-Flag-Wielding, Working-Class Whites

[guno]

Real history



Assumed to be natural enemies, these groups united in their calls for economic justice. In the Aug. 9, 1969 issue of The Black Panther newspaper, the party’s chief of staff, David Hilliard, admiringly called the Young Patriots “the only revolutionaries we respect that ever came out of the mother country.” Recalling his work with the YPO, former Black Panther Bobby Lee explained that “The Rainbow Coalition was just a code word for class struggle.”

In the end, the Illinois Panthers brought together various elements of the black community, Confederate flag-waving southern white migrants (Young Patriots), Puerto Ricans (Young Lords), poor white ethnic groups (Rising Up Angry, JOIN Community Union, and the Intercommunal Survival Committee), students and the women’s movement. The disparate groups under the coalition’s umbrella pooled resources and shared strategies for providing community services and aid that the government and private sector would not. Initiatives included health clinics, feeding homeless and hungry people, and legal advice for those dealing with unethical landlords and police brutality.

When Black Panthers Aligned with Working-Class Whites

 

[the_human_being]

I saw on the Jeff Session confirmation hearings where a Democrat put on his KKK garb to protest. They are still butt hurt because Jeff Sessions destroyed the Democrats Klan in Alabama.

 

[William Joyce]

This is complete liberal/conservative fantasy. Occasionally radical groups will say admiring things about one another -- usually for self-serving purposes -- but there is no natural alliance between black and white.