The first encounter between Lee and the Young Patriots actually happened by accident. Lee was out in the street politicizing North Side groups and introducing them to the Black Panther Party. Hampton gave speeches and sat for interviews on behalf of the organization, but it was Bob Lee who was the mover and shaker of the group. Lee would insist that “Fred Hampton introduced class struggle” to the growing movement in Chicago, citing “rallies and his speeches that set up the ideology in which I was able to apply.” Fred Hampton was the face of the Rainbow Coalition, and Bob Lee served as the legman. there was a mystique in the Party about my cadre because no one knew what Poison and I were doing. We knew our organization would not last long, and we knew that we had to move fast. believed that solidarity in Chicago was stronger than anywhere else. Both were well aware of the great promise but potential fragility of multiracial coalition-building. After Lee informed Hampton of their activities, the two men met on the roof of the Panthers’ headquarters alone. Lee was joined by fellow Panthers Hank “Poison” Gaddis, Jerry Dunnigan, and Ruby Smith in organizing with the Young Patriots on Chicago’s North Side, specifically Uptown, unbeknownst to Hampton and other Illinois Panther leadership. This political formation later became famous when Harold Washington used it as a base for his successful bid for mayor of Chicago in 1983. Led by the ILBPP, the Rainbow Coalition included the Young Lords, a socially conscious Puerto Rican gang and the Young Patriots Organization (YPO), a group of Confederate-flag-wearing Southern white migrants. In late 1968, Fred Hampton and Bob Lee indirectly created the original Rainbow Coalition. The North Side consisted mostly of segregated, nonblack neighborhoods. Due to Lee’s familiarity with and experience as an organizer of white youth on Chicago’s North Side, ILBPP deputy chairman Fred Hampton appointed Lee as field secretary and section leader for the area. Martin Luther King Jr in 1968, Lee joined the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party for the purpose of conducting community organizing. Lee worked exclusively with gang members in the area, including African Americans, Puerto Ricans, and Southern whites.Īfter the assassination of Rev. He was the recreation leader of the facility during the day and a counselor at night. Lee moved from Houston, Texas, to Chicago in 1968 as a Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA) volunteer stationed at the Isham YMCA. So, I had an instinct by being raised in an organizing world.” Any nightclub in the South during segregation all the conversations that I listened to in the club were organizing work. Lee once declared, “I was raised around organizing. He acquired effective grassroots organizing skills by observing activists in his mother’s nightclub, the civil rights activism of his father, and the labor struggles of the Longshoreman’s Union that was directly across the street from his childhood home. He grew up in Houston, Texas where he attended Phillis Wheatley High School along with two other deceased infamous classmates, Houston congressman Mickey Leland, and Carl Hampton, slain leader of People’s Party II, a local black revolutionary group inspired by the Black Panthers whose name was suggested by Lee to avoid police repression, all to no avail. Lee, III, was born on December 16, 1942, to Robert and Selma Lee. As I watched his efforts in amazement, Bob reminded me that “one should never pass up an opportunity to organize those in need.”īob Lee, named Robert E. Still the consummate organizer, he was trying to organize the hospital’s nurses and dining staff from the confines of his hospital bed. I last saw Bob Lee less than two weeks before his death in his hospital room in Houston, Texas. He leaves behind his wife Faiza, two brothers, a son, and a long list of activists and organizers influenced by his dedication to the poor and underserved. Bob Lee, a key member of the Illinois Chapter of the Black Panther Party (ILBPP), founder of the original Rainbow Coalition in Chicago, and self-described lifelong community organizer, passed away Tuesday Maafter a battle with cancer.
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