Abstract
This article considers the possibilities and limitations of multiracial alliances and antiracist organizing in and beyond the USA by analyzing the Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity in Chicago from 1969 to 1972. The article argues this coalition—involving the Black Panther Party, Young Lords, and Young Patriots, among other diverse organizations—demonstrated a powerful model of organizing across race for revolutionary social change, which structured self-determination in communities-of-color alongside white communities’ responsibility for ending white supremacy.
Highlights
The process of reunification—uniting mind and body individually and collectively within and across racial groups—according to Newton, could be accomplished through practical involvement in on-the-ground movement work against racism and white supremacy. This theory is supported by a history of political and personal transformation occurring among white and black organizers who challenged the white supremacist system, such as the multiracial organizing work done by Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Southern Student Organizing Committee (SSOC) in Mississippi, and in the Rainbow Coalition organizations in Chicago
A multiracial coalition, based on similar ideas, was in the works in Chicago under the direction of Fred Hampton—Deputy Chairman of the Illinois State Chapter of the Black Panther Party (BPP), that would come to be known as the Rainbow Coalition of Revolutionary Solidarity
They outlined the role of organization in such a movement-building process as follows: It is hoped that eventually there will be a coalition of poor blacks and poor whites...and we see such a coalition as the major internal instrument of change in American society
Summary
The Black Panthers’ organizing of poor and working-class black people fueled attempts to politicize and unite with black organizations such as the Blackstone Rangers; Puerto Rican organizations, such as the Young Lords; and white organizations, such as the Young Patriots. Within the BPP’s approach to work across race, white revolutionaries could fulfill the movement’s objective of challenging the white supremacist system in racially separate organizations, while at the same time being in alliance with the efforts of radical, people-ofcolor organizations such as the BPP. The effectiveness of the model, in the case of the BPP and the Rainbow Coalition that developed in Chicago, was largely due to the BPP’s focus on black leadership and black self-determination in their organization This approach did not discount alliances with whites or other people of color groups; it prioritized the work and strategy of black people. Radical whites who opted to organize white people toward antiracist and anti-imperialist ends were explicitly included in these black-led organizations’ understandings of multiracial alliances and were welcomed as allies
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