Black Panthers And Hillbillies---A Hidden History, An On-Going Hope

I don't know how many people migrated out from Appalachia to the north or moved east and west from their homes in search of work after the Second World War and into the 1970s. I don't if anyone knows, or if it's even possible to count, but I bet that it was at least in the hundreds of thousands. Their numbers included my father, who left the coal regions of Northeastern Pennsylvania, and many of the kids who I went to school with who came from Western North Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia or who had parents who did.

If you are not from some part of Appalachia, or if you never encountered these people, then you probably have no image of them or ever thought much about them. And since we don't know the numbers of people involved, and because Appalachia is so large and is so diverse, any stereotypes that we have fail. I do remember from my childhood and teen years that the kids who came from Southern and Central Appalachia seemed tough and ready to fight, racist, and fatalistic. They chose hard drugs and hard drinking pretty early on. On the other hand, the kids from the Northeastern Pennsylvania coal regions in these years seems depressed and bored and not so much given to rebellion. They were often sadly resigned to finding low-paying and union-represented factory jobs or, possibly, making it into community college or a trade or using family connections to move away with the hope of doing better. I only began to come to terms with this and how I fit in and didn't fit in the late 1970s.

I did get to know a little about the hillbilly community in Baltimore and thought that I would move there when I was in my late teens. Working at the Sparrows Point steel mill or the Wilmington GM plant didn't seem like bad ideas at the time. Only the postwar recession killed those plans. I was also aware of the movements for social change that were developing in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood among uprooted Appalachians and Southerners (yes, the two groups are different) and I still credit the Young Patriots and Rising Up Angry groups with helping my political development as a teenager. You can read about this in Hy Thurman's hands-on autobiography Revolutionary Hillbilly and follow him on Facebook for a full account and a look into where that movement is at today. The movement in Uptown seemed to challenge almost everything when I encountered it.

The white and Southern Young Patriots allied with the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords Organization, a revolutionary Puerto Rican organization, and the three groups founded what is today thought of as the first Rainbow Coalition. The film American Revolution II captures some of the excitement and the methods of organizing used in those years. It remains instructive. The film and Thurman's book both center Black Panther Party organizer Bobby Lee. Whether you agree with the politics involved or not, the movement in Uptown in part of modern Appalachian history. There are many entries about this on this blog. For me the bottom line is that people of color are not demanding anything that white working-class people don't absolutely need.

No movement for social justice every loses on every count. Those movements may not win, but it's a good bet that when people struggle against oppression they always gain ground, even if their gains are in developing new ways of relating to one another or deeper self-confidence or new ideas. The first Rainbow Coalition and the groups within it did not fail.

Hy Thurman had an interesting piece on Bobby Lee in the April 13, 2017 issue of Counterpunch. Please give that a good read. The following parable from Bobby Lee appears in that article:

The White Panther and the Black Panther Story
By The Black Panther Man, Bobby Lee

Every day in Africa, the Zebra and the Gazelle wake up. They know they must run faster than the White Panther that hunts in the day and the Black Panther that hunts in the night or they will be killed. Every morning, the White Panther wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest Zebra or Gazelle or it will starve to death. Every night the “Black Panther” rises up. It too knows that it must outrun the slowest Zebra or Gazelle or his family will starve also.

It does not matter whether you are a White Panther or a Black Panther or a Zebra or a Gazelle: When the sun rises and when the sun sets, you better be strong and running.