UPDATED AND REVISED EDITION
THE LITTLE-KNOWN
STORY OF POOR AND WORKING-CLASS WHITES, URBAN ETHNIC GROUPS AND BLACK
PANTHERS ORGANIZING SIDE BY SIDE FOR SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE 1960S AND
’70S
Some of the most
important and little-known activists of the 1960s were poor and
working-class radicals. Inspired by the Civil Rights movement, the
Black Panthers, and progressive populism, they started to organize
significant political struggles against racism and inequality during
the 1960s and into the 1970s.
Historians of the
period have traditionally emphasized the work of white college
activists who courageously took to the streets to protest the war in
Vietnam and continuing racial inequality. Poor and working-class
whites have often been painted as spectators, reactionaries, and,
even, racists. But authors James Tracy and Amy Sonnie disprove that
narrative.
Through over ten
years of research, interviewing activists along with unprecedented
access to their personal archives, Tracy and Sonnie tell a crucial,
untold story of the New Left. Their deeply sourced narrative history
shows how poor and working-class individuals from diverse ethnic,
rural and urban backgrounds cooperated and drew strength from one
another. The groups they founded redefined community organizing, and
transformed the lives and communities they touched.
Hillbilly
Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels and Black Power is an important
contribution to our understanding of a pivotal moment in U.S.
history.
Among the groups in
the book:
+ JOIN Community
Union brought together southern migrants, student radicals, and
welfare recipients in Chicago to fight for housing, health, and
welfare . . .
+ The Young
Patriots Organization and Rising Up Angry organized self-identified
hillbillies, Chicago greasers, Vietnam vets, and young feminists into
a legendary “Rainbow Coalition” with Black and Puerto Rican
activists . . .
+ In Philadelphia,
the October 4th Organization united residents of industrial
Kensington against big business, war, and a repressive police force .
. .
+ In the Bronx,
White Lightning occupied hospitals and built coalitions with doctors
to fight for the rights of drug addicts and the poor.