Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power
Page 10
By the mid-Sixties, anticolonial struggles in the Third World lent tremendous inspiration to radicals in the United States. Rebellions by colonized peoples around the globe suggested that liberation movements among oppressed peoples in the U.S. were possible, even imminent. Stateside radicals watched national liberation struggles in China, Cuba, Vietnam, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau closely, drawing lessons and confidence in the legitimacy of their own struggle. The Black Panthers and Young Lords, along with I Wor Kuen, the American Indian Movement and other groups, formed a growing nucleus of self-defined Third World Liberation movements within U.S. borders. As the descendents of colonized nations still living under an imperial thumb, they understood themselves as oppressed nationalities within the United States, an idea with roots much earlier in the 20th century and popularized again in 1962 by Harold Cruse in his essay “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American.”6 As “nations within a nation,” Third World peoples within the U.S. claimed their right to real self-determination for their communities, while drawing strength from their part in an unprecedented global struggle.7
The growth of these movements represented a tactical shift from the integrationism of the civil rights movement. Civil rights reforms had failed to produce the wholesale change many envisioned, and racially integrated organizations had allowed white activists too much control. Expressed concretely in the call for Black Power, organizations like SNCC and the Black Panthers insisted on the need for organizational autonomy. During the latter half of the Sixties, radicals of color tried to define the short-term function and long-term goals of autonomous organizations. In doing so, they evolved different strands of nationalism. Where cultural nationalism centered cultural pride, most famously expressed in the refrain “Black is Beautiful,” its adherents generally took a strict approach to ethnically separate movements. Revolutionary nationalism and revolutionary internationalism, while distinct from each other, each held a vision of multiracial collaboration, in theory if not in practice. It was versions of these two ideologies that most shaped the Black Panthers’ and Young Lords’ interest in working with the Young Patriots. Drawing inspiration from Third World Marxism and Maoism, the Rainbow Coalition in Chicago was the Panthers’ most concrete attempt to put internationalism into practice. According to its leaders, the Rainbow Coalition was “the first living proof of a new revolutionary classless society in the making.”
Standing beside the Panthers and Lords, members of the Young Patriots Organization set out to show that poor whites were ready to fight for this new society. JOIN Community Union had instilled a deep sense of radical purpose in these younger members. Their political coming of age in the Sixties forced them to reckon with more rapid social upheaval than almost any generation prior, and the dramatic civil unrest they witnessed changed more than unjust laws. It fostered an impetus toward change that burst forth with such momentum it completely reshaped the self-image of a generation. For Uptown’s young organizers the movement promised a political home as important as any physical one. And just like they fought landlords for building improvements, they continued fighting for their own place within the broader Left. “We’re sick and tired of certain people and groups telling us ‘there ain’t no such thing as poor and oppressed white people,’ ” the Young Patriots announced. “The so-called ‘movement’ better begin to realize, that—first of all—we’re human beings, we’re real; second—we’ve always been here, we didn’t just materialize; and third—we’re not going away, even if you choose not to admit we exist.”8
Founded by former JOIN members Junebug Boykin and Doug Youngblood, the Young Patriots was an organization of, by and for poor whites, just the kind of independent project JOIN activists had hoped to create by splitting from SDS the prior year. Junebug Boykin had been one of JOIN’s more respected young leaders. His experience at JOIN helped him grab occasional work in War on Poverty service programs around Uptown, but he always matched that with part-time work hustling in pool halls. The same strategic thinking that earned him considerable respect for his billiards skills also made him a pretty good organizer, and his relaxed self-confidence made him a likeable leader. Through him, the pool hall became one of the more reliable places to go if you wanted to chat about revolutionary politics.
Boykin and Doug Youngblood had been good friends for years, yet Youngblood was a much more private person who worked most of his ideas out in poetry and political essays. While he struggled with hotheadedness and often provoked a good heated debate, in other moments he revealed his softer side. He had his mother Peggy Terry’s sense of justice and believed in meeting people where they were. Rather than admonish poor whites for being hesitant or even outright disinterested in movement politics, he took a long view of community organizing. His own path to radicalism had more than a few twists and turns. Youngblood was in his mid-twenties before he even warmed to the idea of civil rights. He was almost thirty by the time he found his purpose as an organizer and traveling guest speaker on class politics among middle-class leftists. At one rally in Uptown Youngblood revealed his own approach after fellow organizers scolded a crowd of seemingly apathetic white southerners. “I can’t get as mad as these people here,” he said. “I went for 24 long years myself not caring, just looking out for myself, before I finally saw the light. You just come on out for the clean-up party, you hear? We’ll have us a lot of fun.”9 And with that he reminded everyone that radical progress with poor whites took both patience and diligence. That day was a day for patience.
Through word-of-mouth the Young Patriots soon attracted new members beyond the JOIN family tree. One Southerner, Andy Keniston, ended his long search for a political home once he found the Young Patriots.10 A few days after King’s assassination, Keniston drove out to an Ohio farmhouse for a gathering of radicals concerned about the future of the movement. Emotions ran high, but the meeting’s main speaker, former JOIN member Mike James, kept people focused on the potential still ahead of them. James encouraged Keniston and his wife to move to Chicago and organize. Keniston arrived a few months later, broke and unemployed, on Junebug Boykin’s doorstep. Boykin almost turned him away. For years most eager newcomers had arrived in Uptown looking for JOIN’s well-known student leaders. With the exception of Peggy Terry and Doug Youngblood, there had only been one or two movement newspapers with any other poor white Chicagoans named in the byline. Boykin assumed Keniston was looking for Rennie Davis and the JOIN days of radical legend. Prevailing on Boykin to let him stay a while, Keniston spent the next year helping build the Patriots.
Following the Panthers’ lead, the group released its own Ten-Point Program, including demands for full employment, decent housing, prisoners’ rights and an end to racism. The original Patriots platform never used the word “white,” but explained issues of police brutality, unions, the war draft and run-down schools in terms of class politics. A later version more closely echoed the Panthers’ program, though, replacing the word Black with white. “We demand power to determine the destiny of our oppressed white community.… We demand an immediate end to police brutality and murder of oppressed white people, and that the people of our community control the police.” In defining these oppressed white people, the Patriots asked questions of their audience: Were urbanized Appalachians a separate nation within a nation in the same way Blacks and American Indians were oppressed nationalities within the U.S.? The Patriots reasoned yes, they were. Influenced by the politics of the time, the Patriots asserted that oppressed whites, particularly poor white southerners, constituted “a people,” and in doing so carved out a rare and controversial claim to white ethnic revolutionary nationalism. As “hillbilly nationalists” they claimed white southerners’ right to determine their destiny and oppose the “pig power structure” that created slavery and the capitalist North–South divide. While the term was never thoroughly defined and it was never clear what they thought a Hillbilly Nation would look like if indeed the revolution ever arrived, it was clear they hoped to build
a new brand of southern pride.
Despite the vagueness of their positions, the Patriots’ message might be one of the few times in U.S. history that anyone uttered the phrase “White Power” as a rallying cry for racial justice. The Patriots’ early leaflets highlighted the phrase on the cover to capture attention. Inside, the contents spelled out what they really meant. As the Panthers’ slogan went: “Black Power to Black People, Brown Power to Brown People, Red Power to Red People, Yellow Power to Yellow People.… White Power to White People.” The Patriots soon took this message a step further. “The South Will Rise Again,” read one of their early manifestos, accompanied by the caveat, “Only this time in solidarity with our oppressed brothers and sisters.” As proof of that solidarity, the Young Patriots devoted page after page of their new tabloid-size newspaper, aptly titled The Patriot, to the release of political prisoners including Panther founders Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. The Patriot appealed to whites to abandon racism, unite with the political vanguards of other oppressed communities and “fight the real enemy.”
Both Patriots and Panthers saw new member William “Preacherman” Fesperman as the firebrand who might truly win over poor whites. As a student of theology from North Carolina, Fesperman was inspired by the Patriots’ emphasis on reaching white southerners and immediately saw ways to take their message nationwide. Fesperman was a fiery orator with a magnetic charisma and the integrity to back it up. “Preacherman would have stopped a bullet for me, and nearly tried,” Bob Lee recalls. “He was one of the best human beings I ever met.” Every time he spoke, someone approached asking how they could start a Patriots chapter where they lived. He conveyed a rare clarity about white people’s purpose in the fight and shared how hundreds of poor whites felt newly freed once they let go of learned racism. Confronting its machinations was not only logical, he said, but also empowering. “Check out what this country is,” Fesperman wrote. “Let racism become a disease. I’m talking to the white brothers and sisters because I know what it’s done. I know what it done to me. I know what it does to people everyday. And we’re saying that’s got to end, it’s got to stop and we’re doing it.”11
With new members like Fesperman, the Patriots crafted their rhetoric and public image. In a decade when symbolism mattered like never before, most Left groups chose their radical dress code—whether the dignified suits of civil rights leaders or the sleek leather jackets of the Panthers—to consciously send a message. For better or worse, the Patriots adopted the Confederate flag as a symbol of southern poor people’s revolt against the owning class. In the Patriots’ analysis, the Confederate flag opened discussion about the nation’s history of capitalist land grabs and divide-and-conquer. They argued that the Civil War was a pissing match between a feudalistic slave-holding southern planting class and the newly industrialized capitalist North. The divide between North and South, they argued, was not created by the common people, but rather by businessmen and wealthy politicians. By this logic the Confederate flag, originally a cultural symbol of the South, was no more offensive than the stars-and-stripes.12 “From historical experience, we know that the people make the meaning of a flag,” they wrote in their newspaper. “This time we mean to see that the spirit of rebellion finds and smashes the real enemy rather than our brothers and sisters in oppression.”
Unafraid to ruffle a few feathers, the choice of the Confederate flag also raised a blatant middle finger to the student Left. Most Patriots took pride in their ability to rattle the cage of middle-class politeness. They also needed a radical uniform they could actually afford. Flag patches were cheap from the local military surplus store and sewing them onto jean jackets and berets seemed easy enough. As the Patriots sat around discussing their options, Panther Bob Lee weighed in with his full blessing so long as members were up for all the explaining they would have to do. Lee even spent his first three weeks breaking bread with folks in Uptown without telling Chairman Fred Hampton. Once Lee had something to show for his effort, he took the idea of the coalition to Hampton who “got the idea” right away. Not everyone responded as Hampton did. Members of the Panthers and Lords questioned the choice of emblem and outsiders were simply confused about the seeming contradiction of Black radicals standing beside self-proclaimed hillbillies wearing Confederate flags. The Young Lords actually debated the matter at length when deciding whether to join forces with the Patriots. “It was really their choice to make,” explains Cha-Cha Jiménez. “In order to understand it, you have to understand the influence of nationalism.” The Chicago Lords ultimately decided there was enough shared vision to build upon, but demonstrating that camaraderie to their members took more time, however.
Late one spring evening Bob Lee, field secretary for the Chicago Black Panthers, stood in a North Chicago church where the Panthers and Patriots were supposed to spend the evening hammering out political points of unity. Instead, Lee and the Patriots spent the whole meeting trying to convince poor white residents that the Panthers were allies, not threats. The crowd of Uptown residents alternated between silence and vocal resistance to the proposal. Exhausted and knowing that the scene would be repeated on his own turf at a Panthers meeting later that night, Lee needed to get outside and walk.
Outside the church Bob Lee’s instinct told him he was being followed. He realized he made a big mistake by leaving alone. Almost immediately two police officers approached him from behind. “You know what to do,” they demanded. Lee put his hands up against the wall. Soon he was inside the squad car with a sneaking feeling he wasn’t going to be cited and released down at the station. Looking up he saw Patriots chairman William Fesperman ushering men, women and children out of the church. Were they hurrying home? Did they see Lee in the squad car? They did. With no hesitation, the entire community surrounded the car and began to yell at the police, demanding Lee’s release. Lee was awestruck as every single person from inside the church rallied in his defense. Despite their general fear about inviting Black radicals into their community and long-held misunderstandings about the intent of Black Liberation, there was one thing poor whites in Uptown understood: The police were a common enemy. The cops let Lee go. Unplanned and spontaneous, but fully aware of the risks, the Patriots’ rank and file helped un-arrest a virtual stranger. As Lee put it, “I’ll never forget looking at all those brave white motherfuckers standing in the light of the police car staring in the face of death.”
This proved the first of many risks the Patriots took as they tried to carve out a militant opposition to racism and capitalism in white communities. Bob Lee, too, was fearless as he immersed himself in other communities, building rapport with razor-sharp insight and unwavering patience. For a few weeks he lived alongside the Patriots in Uptown. He advised them on setting up community programs and chipped away at people’s ignorance one home-cooked meal at a time. “I had to run with those cats, break bread with them, hang out at the pool hall,” Lee said. “I had to lay down on their couch, in their neighborhood. Then I had to invite them into mine.”
Almost by accident, these early days of the Rainbow Coalition were immortalized in the independent film American Revolution II. Ironically, it started during a shoot for a Kentucky Fried Chicken commercial. As the 1968 Democratic Convention melee erupted in Chicago’s Grant Park, Colonel Harlan Sanders stood just blocks away in a television studio filming a commercial for the restaurant chain. As the film crew broke for lunch, word arrived that protesters and police were squaring off downtown. Impulsively ordering the film crew to scene, director Mike Gray was alarmed as he watched police officers removing their badges and readying riot gear. Over the next three days the Film Group documented the chaos including many of the incidents that earned radicals a newfound national sympathy. The cops’ overreaction was blatant. Gray and his film crew captured “Chicago Police wading into crowds of protesters and beating them senseless.”13
Eyes pried open by the violence, Gray decided to explore the events leading up to the violent clash during the convent
ion. He met with Bob Lee and convinced him to let him film the process of building the Rainbow Coalition. The grainy, black-and-white documentary captured both the potential and the awkwardness of the alliance, as neighborhood organizer Chuck Geary tried to explain the Panthers’ program to community residents in Uptown. “This is Poor People’s Park [referring to a local development campaign the Panthers, Lords and Patriots were fighting for] and that’s what this little button is all about,” Geary said holding a small, hand painted button of the rainbow for the crowd to see. He then introduced Bob Lee with the disclaimer, “He might be from another part of town, but he is fighting for a lot of the same things we are.” The crowd sat silently, as if waiting for a better explanation.
In the film we see Lee in action, explaining in a confident, slow tone what the Panthers were really about. He asked people what it was they wanted to change. At first, residents shifted in their chairs, but gradually he got a steady stream of responses. Uptown had seen its own share of rats, roaches, police, poverty, pimps and promises, people said. While most residents stayed quiet, a man named John Howard, who had been an active member of JOIN since 1964, exclaimed, “I’ll stick with the Black Panther Party if they will stick with me!” It was a start and with a small cadre of leaders the Rainbow Coalition grew stronger, in large part because of the quiet work Chuck Geary and Bob Lee did together to introduce people they knew to each other. Geary had a rare ability to work with all of Chicago’s competing factions, and it was Geary who originally seized the imagery of the rainbow as a way to describe the unique brand of unity under construction.14