The Patriot Party was a socialist organization of the early 1970s in the United States that organized poor, rural whites in the Appalachian South and Pacific Northwest. The party was formed after a split with the Young Patriots Organization. The YPO's membership was drawn from street gangs of Appalachian whites in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois; it became politicized after working with the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican activist group, and the African-American Black Panther Party.
Founding
The Patriot Party was founded in 1970 after infighting among members of the leftist Young Patriots Organization in Chicago.
The Patriot Party believed that whites would abandon racist beliefs after identifying the capitalist system as their true enemy.
Use of the Confederate flag
Despite the Confederate flag's association with white supremacism, the Patriot Party used it as a symbol. In addition to easy access at military surplus stores, the flag was used, according to Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, "as a symbol of southern poor people's revolt against the owning class". Buttons with the slogan "Resurrect John Brown" – a reference to the avowed abolitionist – were also commonly used. Pamphlets contained slogans such as "The South will rise again, only this time with the North and all the oppressed people of the world." They later dropped the charges, but, by the mid-1970s, the FBI's COINTELPRO program had effectively suppressed the organization.
The group was also strongly opposed by far-right white militias.