Patriot Party (1970s)

The Patriot Party was an American socialist organization that organized poor, rural whites in the Appalachian South and Pacific Northwest during the late 1960s and early 1970s. They are not to be confused with the Neo-Nazi White Patriot Party. The party was formed after a split with the Young Patriots Organization. The YPO was an urban Appalachian street gang in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago that became politicized after working with the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party.

The Patriot Party was a member of the original Rainbow Coalition, an attempt to form a broad-based multi-racial revolutionary coalition that formed after the United Front Against Fascism conference held in Oakland, California in 1969. The coalition also included the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords, the Brown Berets and I Wor Kuen. The name was later co-opted by Jesse Jackson in 1982 for the purpose of supporting liberal candidates for public office.

Many of the strategies that the Patriot Party employed were borrowed from the Black Panthers, with whom they were especially close. They had a Free Breakfast for Children program and the Eugene, Oregon chapter garnered much community support with their "Free Lumber" program. At this time many poor mountain-dwelling people still used wood-stoves and cheap wood was hard to come by. In 1970 the entire central committee of the Patriot Party was arrested and charged with various felonies. Charges were later dropped but the organization was effectively suppressed though the FBI's COINTELPRO by the mid-1970s.

For additional reading: The Original Rainbow Coalition