"This stand I make is not alone": Uncovering the Chicago Young Patriots Organization Women, 1968-1973 Open Access
McGuire, Lola (Spring 2026)
Abstract
After the mining industry in the U.S. South collapsed thousands of Southern migrants moved to Uptown, Chicago looking for higher-paying jobs. Yet, upon arrival, they found conditions just as abysmal as those they had left. Simultaneously, the Students for a Democratic Society group Jobs or Income Now (JOIN) began organizing Southern migrants against the issues plaguing Uptown. The efforts of JOIN were appreciated, but many neighborhood residents became frustrated by JOIN's patronizing nature. From the streets came the Goodfellows, a gang made up of mostly poor, White southern migrants. In 1968, the Goodfellows organized their own march protesting police brutality and morphed into a radical organization. JOIN and the Goodfellows came together to form the Young Patriots Organization (YPO). The YPO was a leftist group of Southern migrants living in Uptown who fought for “All Power to Poor People” and neighborhood self-determination. Short-lived, the YPO was wiped from the historical record due to policing by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and internal bickering among YPO members.
This thesis seeks to uncover the women of the Chicago YPO, through a feminist historiography of the Organization’s lifetime of 1968-1973. Framing women as formidable actors in the YPO, advances a narrative — one that is reliant on the women’s Southern, migrant identity. In JOIN, women participated in unconventional political labor like theater work, provided the foundation for the multiracial coalitions the YPO would shortly form, and shaped the group’s anti-urban renewal campaigns and free health clinic. Lastly, through women’s care labor, a longtime goal of multiracial coalitions was actualized and sedimented for future generations in the Rainbow Coalition — the coalition between the YPO, the Black Panther Party, and the Young Lords Organization. This study aims to challenge scholarly interpretations of the YPO as male-dominated, and redirects the blame towards an archive that actively silences those most marginalized. By better understanding the role of women in the YPO, historians and politicians can better understand the role White women play in the radical politics of the South today.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Following “Hillbilly Highway” ………………………………….. pg. 1
Chapter One: “Stage is Set”.................................................................. pg. 14
Chapter Two: The Women of the Young Patriots Organization …………… pg. 33
Chapter Three: Women’s Political Acts ……………………………………….... pg. 58
Conclusion: The Patriot Party and Care Labor’s Resistance ……………….. pg. 80
Epilogue: Power and Politics …………………………………………………...... pg. 86
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………......... pg. 91
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