It Is Not Enough to Survive

The Young Patriots Story

Jesse Montgomery

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9781469683249
• Print ISBN:
  9781469693965
  9781469693958
• Subtopic: North American History

Formed in the late 1960s, the Young Patriots Organization was a Chicago-based radical group made up of young white migrants from Appalachia and the South who helped found Black Panther activist Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition. The YPO grew from a local street gang into a powerful political and social force in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, where it fought against police brutality, racism, economic exploitation, and displacement through community organizing, the establishment of survival programs, and working-class cultural organizations.

In this first stand-alone history of the YPO, Jesse Montgomery presents the group as one of the New Left’s most enigmatic anti-racist organizations—one inspired by the moral and political power of the civil rights movement and the street corner socialism of the Black Panthers but also one that embraced regressive Southern identifiers, such as Confederate flags, that belied its liberatory message. Though the YPO’s existence was short-lived, its story helps us to reimagine radical unity in the face of dislocation, political oppression, and the brutal incentives of racial capitalism. As Montgomery argues, its work to cross racial and class lines and build coalitions for the greater good is a symbol of the America that could still be.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• publication
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• CHAPTER 1 The Mountains in Chicago: Migration, ERAP, and the JOIN Community Union
• CHAPTER 2 Radical Hillbillies: Birth of the Young Patriots Organization
• CHAPTER 3 Storming Hillbilly Heaven: Rise and Fall of the Rainbow Coalition
• CHAPTER 4 Love of the Common People: Time of the Phoenix and the Politics of the Culture of Poverty
• CHAPTER 5 Sing Me Back Home: Country Music and Community Organizing
• CHAPTER 6 Surviving Uptown: People Removal, Social Reproduction, and the Hank Williams Village
• EPILOGUE On the Other Side of the Rainbow
• Acknowledgments
• Notes
• Index