The Young Patriots Organization (YPO) was an American leftist organization of mostly White Southerners from Uptown, Chicago. Originating in 1968 and active until 1973, the organization was designed to support young, white migrants from the Appalachia region who experienced extreme poverty and discrimination. The organization promoted Southern culture and used a Confederate battle flag as a symbol. Along with the Illinois Black Panther Party and the Young Lords, the Young Patriots Organization formed the Rainbow Coalition, a group of allied but racially separate organizations each focused on helping with issues of poverty and discrimination among their local community while working together towards internationalist and anti-capitalist goals. History Precursors Chicago was one of many American industrial cities that experienced an influx of White Southerners who came seeking employment throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1970, Chicago and the neighboring city of Gary had about 280,000 residents who had been born in the South; they were particularly concentrated in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, where they made up 80% of the population. The group was culturally isolated, treated as outsiders by other Chicagoans. They often experienced severe poverty and were targets of police brutality. They were derided as "hillbillies", particularly among the press: the group was summarized in a subtitle to a 1958 article in Harper's Magazine as "proud, poor, primitive, and fast with a knife". The Uptown neighborhood was home to several youth gangs in the 1950s and 1960s, a number of which formed among the Southern newcomers. The gangs formed "not only along the color line, but also along interfaces between different European American groups—between, for example, communities of Irish and Poles, Poles and Italians, Swedes and Italians, Jews and Poles". Inter-gang violence was particularly noticeable as Black Americans began to move into Chicago neighborhoods. Amidst this environment, community organizers tried to address the issues of poverty and unemployment in the area in groups like the Jobs or Income Now (JOIN) community union, which grew out of the Students for a Democratic Society organization that encouraged local activism in Uptown. Both co-founders of the Young Patriots, Jack "Junebug" Boykin and Doug Youngblood, as well as other members had been involved with JOIN. Boykin and other Young Patriots were also active in Youngblood's National Organizing Committee (later the National Community Union), an interracial and working-class group that rallied around issues including free medical and childcare, higher corporate taxes, rank-and-file union