Overview

Formed in the late 1960s, the Young Patriots Organization was a Chicago-based radical group made up of young white migrants from Appalachia and the South who helped found Black Panther activist Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition. The YPO grew from a local street gang into a powerful political and social force in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, where it fought against police brutality, racism, economic exploitation, and displacement through community organizing, the establishment of survival programs, and working-class cultural organizations. In this first stand-alone history of the YPO, Jesse Montgomery presents the group as one of the New Left’s most enigmatic anti-racist organizations—one inspired by the moral and political power of the civil rights movement and the street corner socialism of the Black Panthers but also one that embraced regressive Southern identifiers, such as Confederate flags, that belied its liberatory message. Though the YPO’s existence was short-lived, its story helps us to reimagine radical unity in the face of dislocation, political oppression, and the brutal incentives of racial capitalism. As Montgomery argues, its work to cross racial and class lines and build coalitions for the greater good is a symbol of the America that could still be.

Full Product Details

9781469693965

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Reviews

""Essential reading for scholars and students interested in the history of the New Left and the various legacies of the 'first' Rainbow Coalition. There is no book that comes close to doing what Jesse Montgomery has now done for the Young Patriots Organization: The buck stops here, as they say.""--Max Fraser, author of Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class ""While much scholarship relegates the Young Patriots to the footnotes of the Black Panther Party's history, Jesse Montgomery positions the group as central to understanding the broader urban and racial politics of the late 1960s. By highlighting its disappearance from public memory, Montgomery addresses the need for critical grassroots historiography.""--Jakobi Williams, author of From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago

“Essential reading for scholars and students interested in the history of the New Left and the various legacies of the 'first' Rainbow Coalition. There is no book that comes close to doing what Jesse Montgomery has now done for the Young Patriots Organization. The buck stops here, as they say.”—Max Fraser, author of Hillbilly Highway: The Transappalachian Migration and the Making of a White Working Class “While much scholarship relegates the Young Patriots to the footnotes of the Black Panther Party’s history, Jesse Montgomery positions the group as central to understanding the broader urban and racial politics of the late 1960s. By highlighting its disappearance from public memory, Montgomery addresses the need for critical grassroots historiography.”—Jakobi Williams, author of From the Bullet to the Ballot: The Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party and Racial Coalition Politics in Chicago ""Jesse Montgomery treats us to a fascinating chapter in the long story of seemingly powerless people trying to win some control over their lives.""—John Sayles, author and filmmaker

Author Information

Jesse Montgomery is visiting assistant professor of English at Berea College.

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