The Rainbow Coalition was an anti-racist, working class^[1] 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.^[2]

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. Hampton first met Jimenez in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood the day after the Young Lords were in the news, having occupied the police community workshop meeting of the 18th District Police Station. Hampton was arrested twice in February 1969 with 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 socialist community groups like the Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition,^[3] later, the coalition was 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. Some of the things the coalition engaged in joint action against were poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and substandard housing.^[4] The participating groups supported each other at protests, strikes, and demonstrations where they had a common cause.^[5][6]

The coalition later included many other local groups like Rising Up Angry, 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.^{[citation needed][7]}

The coalition eventually collapsed under duress from constant harassment by local and federal law enforcement, including the murder of Hampton.^[6]

History

Black nationalism changed around 1964–65 with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., began to radicalize his movement as he came to understand the importance of the ballot box, or electoral politics for social change. Malcolm X suggested that a mass convention could potentially help them decide between what he called a Black party and a Black army. While this specific convention never came to fruition, Malcolm X focused his energy on creating an intelligence for a Black political power. He came to understand it would be more difficult than he initially thought.^[8]

Malcolm X spent the last year of his life strategizing how to increase voter participation and provide widespread political education. At the same time, Dr. King was getting more militant. He believed they should have addressed political power previously, that Black people needed to be in power to address Black issues. He thought organizations needed to stop fighting and unite because they have a responsibility to the movement. It was important to not just increase Black votes but also to put their voices in powerful places.^[8]

Formation

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.”^[9] 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.”.^[9] 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.”^[9] 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.”^[9] 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.^[9]

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.^[10]

Legacy

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.^[12] 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."^[12]