Rainbow Coalition (Fred Hampton)

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.

Other prominent members of the Rainbow Coalition included Young Patriot members Jack "Junebug" Boykin, Bobby Joe Mcginnis, and Hy Thurman, as well as Field Marshall Bobby Lee of the Black Panthers.

The Rainbow Coalition's first alliance was between the Young Patriots and the Black Panthers by Bob Lee.^[1] Hampton then incorportated the Young Lords. The Rainbow Coalition soon included various radical socialist community groups like the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition, and Rising Up Angry. The coalition was later joined nationwide by the Students for a Democratic Society ("SDS"), the Brown Berets, the American Indian Movement, and the Red Guard Party. In April 1969, Hampton called several press conferences to announce that this "Rainbow Coalition" had formed. The Rainbow Coalition engaged in joint action against poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and substandard housing. The participating groups supported each other at protests, strikes, and demonstrations where they had a common cause.

The coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the assassination of Hampton.^[2]

Formation[edit]

Chicago was very segregated, separated by whites, Puerto Ricans, and blacks. Following the release of West Side Story, Puerto Ricans started dying their clothes purple, and that became their “colors." It was very difficult to get a job in Chicago, some would donate blood because that was the only way they could bring in a profit. Students for a Democratic Society came in and formed a JOIN Jobs or Income Now, and introduced the civil rights movement, which started the progress for change. When the west and south side of Chicago combined it was the largest contiguous area of 90 or more percent black population in the world outside of Africa. Mayor Daley used virtually every instrument of government he could to keep Chicago segregated. He served as mayor from 1955 to 1976. At his peak, he was the “most powerful and most influential urban figure in America.”^[3] Martin Luther King Jr. believed that southwest Chicago was a closed society in terms of race. The “white flight” went to the suburbs to flee the minorities coming into the communities, and Mayor Daley wanted to bring them back into the city. “Urban renewal was a racist plan, and was supported by the federal government with funds.”.^[3] Some of the activists in the Puerto Rican community came across a Community Conservation Council meeting in their community, and inside there were models of the city with the Puerto Rican areas of the city being vacant, and the meeting was run by about 12 white men. So the activists said they had to hold these meetings with some representatives from different minorities if they wanted to continue to hold meetings in that venue. When the representatives refused, the Puerto Ricans picked up chairs and started throwing them around, and ended up shutting down the Department of Urban Renewal for about three months.

Police brutality really started to take off during this point. The police had a bench with the handcuffs on the side so they could cuff you, and beat you with whatever they wanted to hit you with as long as they didn’t leave any marks. Many minorities would get beat up before they ever even got into jail, and there was nothing they could do about it. Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, Daley showed his power through the force of his police during the Democratic Convention in 1968. Daley stated on broadcast, “Shoot to kill any arsonists, or anyone with a molotov cocktail in their hand in Chicago”. This caused the Young Lords to transform from a gang into a human rights movement. “The mission was self-determination for Puerto Rico. That meant that we were powerful as a people, and as a nation, to promote a sense of pride for being Puerto Rican.”^[3] The mission also included being patriotic to the community, not to the system. The demands of the people included, freedom, the power to determine individual destiny, true education, decent housing, fair trials with a jury of their peers, and an end to police brutality.

Fred Hampton was someone everyone in the community respected. The Black Panthers attended a community meeting with the JOIN organization in Uptown and asked where they could help in the community. At this point however, there were still many suspicions about the Panthers and their gun-carrying terrorist reputation. However, by showing they were dedicated to the community, the Panthers gained the trust of the JOIN organization, and the coalition started to take shape. In March 1969, the community went to the 18th District police station and performed a non-violent takeover of a police workshop meeting. The next day, the Panthers met Fred Hampton. Shortly after, the first official Rainbow Coalition meeting was held. “The Rainbow Coalition was about uniting communities so we could make revolutionary change.”^[3] The Coalition also started a free health clinic, which ran from 1969 to 1975 (Pien). The police department’s Gang Intelligence Unit formed a Panther squad, which would perform raids on the party, and often end up with Panther members and associates being incarcerated. Reverend Bruce Johnson was the pastor of Armitage Avenue United Methodist Church, which became the headquarters of the Young Lords. Following this partnership, the city of Chicago began to attack Reverend Johnson, and fined him $200 for every day the Young Lords were in the church. In Oakland, California, in July 1969, a three-day conference was held called the Conference for a United Front Against Fascism. Shortly after this conference, Reverend Johnson and his wife were brutally murdered. Because of this, the Black Panther party started to defend themselves from the police raids, and there were shootings that followed.^[3]

The original rainbow coalition was the idea of Fred Hampton and other Black Panther Party leaders. They saw the Young Lords and Young Patriots as established groups in their designated communities. The people that lived in Lawndale, Lincoln Park, and Uptown were treated and governed as crippling to the city as a whole. It was also difficult for these people to find jobs in the post-World War II era as they were looked at as an unwanted part of the population by employers. As these groups came together in the rainbow coalition it gave them more of a voice to fight with. Each of these groups wanted to help their people and work to get rid of the discrimination against them. Coming together helped these groups have more of an effect on local government and policies. It also gave their people the feeling of having a larger community that knew what each other were fighting.^[4]

Amy Sonnie and James Tracy argue that membership in the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, and then the Young Lords, declined after formation of this particular Rainbow Coalition, stemming from internal debates in both organizations over an alliance with the Young Patriots Organization. Lee and Jiménez later recalled that "it was a necessary purging", especially after July 1969, when Hampton replaced "white man" with "CAPITALIST" in the third point of the ILBPP Ten-Point Program.^[5]

On the one hand, the Young Patriots Organization chastised "poor and oppressed white people" for "blaming others for their poverty", such as "other oppressed white people or peoples of color---black and brown, who are just as oppressed or more, instead of blaming the real enemy---the Wealthy."^[6] On the other, the YPO, while not supportive of the "robber-baron-plantation-owning ruling class" still monopolizing modern display of the Confederate battle flag, did ultimately blame the U.S. Civil War on "the fascist-capitalist ruling class of the North" that had "attacked the feudal-slave-holding ruling class of the South. Victory for the North meant capitalism for the Union." The wartime cause of emancipation, as well as the racism that shaped and underpinned U.S. chattel slavery, were absent from this interpretation.^[7] Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, who worked with the YPO in her youth, applauded organizational leaders "who took their cues from black leaders." But she also "asked if they were teaching their members about past white populist movements in which anti-government sentiments were merged with Jew hating and racism. They argued that getting the poor white kids hooked up with Blacks and Puerto Ricans and Indians dissolved their racism."^[8][9] In both instances, Preacherman, chair of the YPO, warned that "if you can't see the necessity of that correction of history", connected to the "liberation of oppressed whites, then you will continue to endorse the lies of history rather than the truth of the people."^[10]

Legacy[edit]

The phrase "rainbow coalition" was co-opted over the years by Reverend Jesse Jackson, who eventually appropriated the name in forming his own, more moderate coalition, Rainbow/PUSH. Some scholars, including Peniel Joseph, assert that the original rainbow coalition concept was a prerequisite for the multicultural coalition that Barack Obama built his political career upon.^[11]

Jeffrey Haas, a lawyer who represented the BPP after Hampton's assassination, praised some of Hampton's politics, stating that his work in unifying movements is something one can learn from. However, Haas was critical towards the way Hampton ran the BPP hierarchical organization. Haas praised the horizontal structure of Black Lives Matter stating: "They may also have picked up on the vulnerability of a hierarchal movement where you have one leader, which makes the movement very vulnerable if that leader is imprisoned, killed, or otherwise compromised. I think the fact that Black Lives Matter says, 'We're leader-full, not leaderless,' perhaps makes them less vulnerable to this kind of government assault."

See also[edit]

• Political history of Chicago

References[edit]

• Hy Thurman, Revolutionary Hillbilly, Notes From The Struggle On The Edge Of The Rainbow, Regent Press Publishing, 2021
• Pierce, Paulette. 1988. “The Roots of the Rainbow Coalition.” The Black Scholar, vol. 19, no. 2, 1988, pp. 2–16
• Santisteban, Ray, director. The First Rainbow Coalition, 27 January 2020
• López, Antonio R. “‘We Know What the Pigs Don’t Like’: The Formation and Solidarity of the Original Rainbow Coalition.” Journal of African American Studies
• Jackson, Jesse. “THE RAINBOW COALITION IS HERE TO STAY.” The Black Scholar, vol. 15, no. 5, 1984, pp. 72–74. JSTOR, JSTOR 41067107. Accessed 29 March 2023.

External links[edit]

• National Young Lords
• Grand Valley State University: Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection
• The (Original) Ra
• The Young Patriots & the original Rainbow Coalition
• The Rainbow Coalition at BPP 50th Oakland