The Rainbow Coalition was an antiracist, anticlass multicultural movement founded April 4, 1969 in

Chicago (''City in a Garden''); I Will , image_map = , map_caption = Interactive Map of Chicago , coordinates = , coordinates_footnotes = , subdivision_type = List of sovereign states, Count ...

Illinois Illinois ( ) is a state in the Midwestern United States. Its largest metropolitan areas include the Chicago metropolitan area, and the Metro East section, of Greater St. Louis. Other smaller metropolitan areas include, Peoria and Rock ...

Fred Hampton Fredrick Allen Hampton Sr. (August 30, 1948 – December 4, 1969) was an American activist. He came to prominence in Chicago as deputy chairman of the national Black Panther Party and chair of the Illinois chapter. As a progressive African Ame ...

of the

Black Panther Party The Black Panther Party (BPP), originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, was a Marxism-Leninism, Marxist-Leninist and Black Power movement, black power political organization founded by college students Bobby Seale and Huey P. New ...

, along with William "Preacherman" Fesperman of the

Young Patriots Organization 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 Appal ...

and José Cha Cha Jiménez, founder of the

Young Lords 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-det ...

. It was the first of several 20th century

black Black is a color which results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without hue, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness. Black and white ha ...

-led organizations to use the "rainbow coalition" concept. Some members of the Young Patriots included Jack (Junebug) Boykin, Bobby Joe Mcginnis and Hy Thurman who worked with Field Marshall Bobby Lee of the Black Panthers. The founder of the coalition, Fred Hampton, first met Jose Cha Cha Jimenez of the Young Lords in Chicago's

Lincoln Park Lincoln Park is a park along Lake Michigan on the North Side of Chicago, Illinois. Named after US President Abraham Lincoln, it is the city's largest public park and stretches for seven miles (11 km) from Grand Avenue (500 N), on the south, ...

neighborhood the day after the Young Lords were in the news, after they had occupied the police community workshop meeting of the 18th District Police Station.

was arrested twice in February 1969 with Jose Cha Cha Jimenez at the Wicker Park Welfare Office. Both were charged with Mob Action during peaceful pickets of the welfare office protesting mistreatment of the patrons. The Rainbow Coalition soon included various

radical Radical may refer to: Politics and ideology Politics * Radical politics, the political intent of fundamental societal change *Radicalism (historical), the Radical Movement that began in late 18th century Britain and spread to continental Europe an ...

socialist Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the ...

community groups like the

Poor People's Coalition, later, the coalition was joined nationwide by the

Students for a Democratic Society Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was a national student activist organization in the United States during the 1960s, and was one of the principal representations of the New Left. Disdaining permanent leaders, hierarchical relationships ...

("SDS"), the

Brown Berets The Brown Berets (Spanish: ''Los Boinas Cafés'') 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 Par ...

, the

American Indian Movement The American Indian Movement (AIM) is a Native American grassroots movement which was founded in Minneapolis, Minnesota in July 1968, initially centered in urban areas in order to address systemic issues of poverty, discrimination, and police br ...

and the

Red Guard Party The Red Guard Party was a Chinese-American youth organization formed in February 1969. It was named after the Red Guards of the Chinese Cultural Revolution. Origins The Red Guard formation resulted from several societal and economic pressures com ...

. In April 1969, Hampton called several press conferences to announce that this "Rainbow Coalition" had formed. Some of the things the coalition engaged in joint action against was 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 later included many other local groups like

Rising Up Angry ''Rising Up Angry'' was a radical youth movement organized as a militant community organization based in working class communities in Chicago, parallelling but not part of the Weatherman Underground and Revolutionary Youth Movement currents in Ne ...

, and Mothers and Others. The Coalition also brokered treaties to end crime and gang violence. Hampton, Jimenez and their colleagues believed that the Richard J. Daley Democratic Party machine in Chicago used gang wars to consolidate their own political positions by gaining funding for law enforcement and dramatizing crime rather than underlying social issues. The coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Fred Hampton.

Legacy

The phrase "rainbow coalition" was co-opted over the years by Reverend

Jesse Jackson Jesse Louis Jackson (né Burns; born October 8, 1941) is an American political activist, Baptist minister, and politician. He was a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1984 and 1988 and served as a shadow U.S. senato ...

, 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 Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, Obama was the first Af ...

built his political career upon. 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 are things one can learn from him. However, Haas was critical towards the way Hampton ran the BPP hierarchical organization. Haas praised the horizontal structure of

Black Lives Matter Black Lives Matter (abbreviated BLM) is a decentralized political and social movement that seeks to highlight racism, discrimination, and racial inequality experienced by black people. Its primary concerns are incidents of police bruta ...

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."

References

*Hy Thurman, Revolutionary Hillbilly, Notes From The Struggle On The Edge Of The Rainbow, Regent Press Publishing, 2021.

External links

National Young LordsGrand Valley State University: Young Lords in Lincoln Park CollectionThe (Original) RaThe Young Patriots & the original Rainbow CoalitionThe Rainbow Coalition at BPP 50th Oakland
{{Black Panther Party American Indian Movement Black Panther Party Defunct American political movements Defunct left-wing political party alliances Defunct political party alliances in North America Defunct socialist organizations in the United States Political history of Illinois Political party alliances in the United States Politics and race in the United States

Legacy

See also

References

External links