Here is my long overdue review of “Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times,” by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy (Melville House Publishing, 2021). Long overdue, but particular timely, with the recent passing of José "Cha Cha" Jiménez (August 8, 1948 - January 10, 2025), activist and founder of the Young Lords Organization, one of the key figures in the book. Particularly timely and, quite possibly, even more relevant and urgent today than when it first came out, thirteen years ago, as it provides an antidote for the fear, anger, dismay, and disillusionment so many are feeling with the re-election of Donald Trump and the rise of white supremacy and fascism in the United States.
“Hillbilly Nationalists” is a well-researched and superbly written history of radical, poor white social movements of the 1960s and ‘70s, and their interracial solidarity with the Black Panthers, Young Lords and other groups of the era. This fascinating and largely forgotten piece of history debunks the myth that poor whites, hillbillies, and rednecks, the “deplorables” as Hilary Clinton derisively referred to them, are incurably racist and incapable of organizing beyond their immediate needs. Rather, Sonnie and Tracy not only provide numerous historical examples of revolutionary and anti-fascist working-class white organizations (e.g., Chicago’s JOIN, Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry; Philadelphia’s October 4th Organization; and White Lightning, from the Bronx), but also describe how these organizations were built through community organizing, providing insight as to how activists can accomplish the same today.
Perhaps the most well-known, or best remembered, of the radical, multiracial alliances was the Rainbow Coalition, an anti-racist, working-class movement founded in Chicago, in 1969, by Fred Hampton and Bob Lee, of the Black Panthers, William “Preacherman” Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization, and Jose Cha Cha Jimenez of the Young Lords. The coalition engaged in protests, demonstrations, and direct actions to fight poverty, corruption, racism, police brutality, and in support of tenants’ rights and other causes. The coalition’s first alliance was between the Black Panther Party and the Young Patriots Organization (YPO), putting into action the famous Fred Hampton quote: “You don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.”
While most readers are probably quite familiar with the Black Panthers, and possibly the Young Lords, the YPO, or Young Patriots, were a less well-known part of the radical left of the late 1960s and early 70s. They were composed primarily of poor southern whites, Appalachian refugees from the Great Depression, who had migrated north and settled in in Uptown, Chicago, a neighborhood with so many Appalachian residents that it became known as Hillbilly Harlem. Young Patriots were proud of their Southern roots. They wore their hair greased back, sometimes covered with a cowboy hat. Some even wore Confederate flag patches on their jackets. Yet, they also wore buttons that read “Free Huey” and “Resurrect John Brown.” In a 1970 issue of “The Patriot,” they called for solidarity with Black Panther Bobby Seale (who was in prison for the Democratic National Convention protests and on trial for murder) and wrote, “Guns in the hands of the police represent capitalism and racism…. Guns in the hands of the people represent socialism and solidarity.”
It might seem shocking to many readers that the Panthers, known for their militancy and their opposition to racism, would embrace a group of hillbillies sporting Confederate flag patches. And initially, many did not. It was really through the vision, and hard work, of Fred Hampton and Bob Lee, that they were able to convince their comrades that all poor people, including poor whites, had far more in common with each other, than they did with rich people, even of their own ethnicity. That they were subjected to similar police violence, crooked slumlords, and abusive bosses, and therefore had far more to gain by working together, in solidarity with other poor and working-class people, then they did in accepting the bogus claims of the fascists and white supremacists that their problems were caused by other marginalized and oppressed people.
The challenge, of course, is how do you get people to make these connections and start working together in solidarity? The method Sonnie and Tracy so eloquently describe in “Hillbilly Nationalists” is community organizing, the most effective form of which occurring when organizers focused on building relationships, and really listening to the people, hearing their concerns, the things that mattered most to them, and turning them into actionable items that they could actually fight for and win, rather than coming in on their high horses and trying to impose their own agenda, as some of the early efforts by Students For a Democratic Society tried to do. Activists found that this relational organizing was much more successful at building trust, solidarity, and a feeling among their constituents that their organizations mattered, and were making a difference in their lives.
“Hillbilly Nationalists” begins with the story of Peggy Terry who, by the end of the 1960s, had become one of the leading voices speaking out for the rights of poor whites. She even ran for Vice President of the U.S., on the 1968 Peace and Freedom ticket, as the running mate of Eldrige Cleaver, from the Black Panthers. But Terry did not start out as a radical hillbilly. Quite the contrary. She grew up in Kentucky, in a segregated community where she rarely came into contact with any people of color. Her grandfather was a Klansman, who took her to a KKK rally when she was only three. Her father was a racist, too. As a young woman, she worked as an agricultural laborer, alongside black and Mexican workers, but without much interaction. It was not until she was 35, when she witnessed Martin Luther King Jr. getting savagely beaten by white vigilantes during the 1956 Montgomery Bus Boycott, that her path toward racial justice really started to change. After emigrating to Uptown, Chicago she became active in the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). Her first day with CORE, in 1962, she was arrested for blocking an intersection in protest of segregation in the Chicago schools.
A couple of years after joining CORE, her friend and comrade Monroe Sharpe encouraged her to start organizing among poor whites. “You have to really know who you are before you ever know who we are.” Initially, she resisted. On the one hand, she felt she could do far more good if she continued her work with CORE, fighting for racial justice. On the other hand, she knew her own people, and had doubts (just like many on the left do today) about whether she could have any success organizing them to support the rights of people of color. What she did know from her experience with CORE was that the dilapidated and overcrowded classrooms that black kids in Chicago attended looked very similar to the dilapidated and overcrowded classrooms her children attended, and that the disdainful treatment that poor black residents experienced at the hands of caseworkers and bosses was similar to her own experiences. Even the police abuse of white residents looked similar, particularly when her own son was almost shot to death by the cops. Ultimately, it became very clear that there was common ground for interracial solidarity, and joint organizing, particularly around issues like economic justice, education, and police violence.
Terry began working with JOIN (Jobs or Income Now), a project of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Some of their early efforts involved organizing tenants, encouraging them to withhold rent, and engage in building takeovers, when landlords failed to make repairs. In 1966, they won a collective bargaining agreement with one notorious landlord, the first such contract in the city. Victories such as these taught participants that organizing worked, that they could win small battles, and helped attract new members to the movement.
The growth of the movement was not without conflict. As early as 1964, women were starting to speak out against the sexism at meetings and in JOIN’s power structure. And tensions also developed early on between the local Uptown residents and the middle-class college kids from SDS who seemed to dominate the decision-making. At the 1967 SDS national convention, Terry told SDS student leaders that “We believe that the time has come for us to turn to our own people, poor and working-class whites, for direction, support and inspiration, to organize around our own identity, our own interests.”
You can read the complete review here:
Michael Dunn
Review of Hillbilly Nationalists - Michael Dunn
Review of Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times
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