Long before B.L.O.O.O.D., people in Illinois showed what it looks like when groups that were supposed to be enemies choose to work together.
An Unlikely Alliance
In 1968, Fred Hampton helped lead the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party on Chicago’s West Side. In February 1969, he went looking for José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, the young leader of the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican organization that had grown out of a street gang and turned toward community organizing. The Young Lords had just made headlines by occupying a police building to protest police violence and the displacement of Puerto Rican families.
Hampton and Jiménez became close, and their groups joined forces. They were soon joined by the Young Patriots, an organization of poor white families who had migrated to Chicago from Appalachia. Together the three groups called themselves the Rainbow Coalition, one of the first multiracial alliances of its kind in the city.
What They Did Together
Black, Puerto Rican, and white neighbors worked side by side on what they had in common: poverty, poor housing, and a lack of basic services. The coalition’s youth launched free breakfast programs for children and ran free daycare for neighborhood families. Hampton also worked to ease tensions between rival street gangs, and accounts describe a truce in the spring of 1969.
It was not easy. Many members on every side were wary of working with people they had been taught to distrust. They did it anyway.
A Life Cut Short
On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton was killed in a predawn raid by Chicago police on his apartment. He was 21 years old. The coalition faced heavy pressure afterward, but its example did not disappear. Later Chicago coalitions that crossed racial lines are often traced back to it.
Why It Matters to Us
A Black organizer, a Puerto Rican organizer, and poor white families found that their struggles were connected. That is the heart of B.L.O.O.O.D.: when we stop seeing each other as rivals, we find we have a great deal to build together.
Sources: Newberry Library, “The Forming of Chicago’s First Rainbow Coalition”; WTTW, “The First Rainbow Coalition”; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Fred Hampton”; South Side Weekly, “The Rainbow Coalition.”
