[News] Remembering Black Panther Bob Lee

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/03/29/an-arc-of-solidarity-remembering-bob-lee-1942-2017/ 



  An Arc of Solidarity: Remembering Bob Lee (1942-2017)

Jakobi E. Williams 
<https://www.viewpointmag.com/author/jakobi-e-williams/> March 29, 2017
<https://i0.wp.com/www.viewpointmag.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Bob-Lee.jpg?ssl=1>Bill 
“Preacher­man” Fes­per­man, Bob Lee, Lamar Bil­ly “Che” Brooks, and Fred 
Hamp­ton at a Rain­bow Coali­tion ral­ly in Grant Park, 1969.

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 March 21, 2017 after a bat­tle with can­cer. He was 74 
years old. 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.

I last saw Bob Lee less than two weeks before his death in his 
hos­pi­tal room in Hous­ton, Tex­as. Still the con­sum­mate orga­niz­er, 
he was try­ing to orga­nize the hospital’s nurs­es and din­ing staff 
from the con­fines of his hos­pi­tal bed! As I watched his efforts in 
amaze­ment, Bob remind­ed me that “one should nev­er pass up an 
oppor­tu­ni­ty to orga­nize those in need.”

Bob Lee, named Robert E. Lee, III, was born on Decem­ber 16, 1942, to 
Robert and Sel­ma Lee. 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.

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. Lee once declared, 
“I was raised around orga­niz­ing. Any night­club in the South dur­ing 
seg­re­ga­tion; all the con­ver­sa­tions that I lis­tened to in the club 
were orga­niz­ing work. So, I had an instinct by being raised in an 
orga­niz­ing world.”

Lee moved from Hous­ton, Tex­as, to Chicago in 1968 as a VISTA 
(Vol­un­teers in Ser­vice to Amer­i­ca) vol­un­teer sta­tioned at the 
Isham YMCA. He was the recre­ation lead­er of the facil­i­ty dur­ing the 
day and a coun­selor at night. Lee worked exclu­sive­ly with gang 
mem­bers in the area, includ­ing African Amer­i­cans, Puer­to Ricans, 
and South­ern whites. After the assas­si­na­tion of Rev. Mar­t­in Luther 
King Jr. in 1968, Lee joined the Illi­nois chap­ter of the Black 
Pan­ther Par­ty for the pur­pose of con­duct­ing com­mu­ni­ty 
orga­niz­ing. 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. The North Side con­sist­ed most­ly of 
seg­re­gat­ed, non­black neigh­bor­hoods.

In late 1968, Fred Hamp­ton and Bob Lee indi­rect­ly cre­at­ed the 
orig­i­nal Rain­bow Coali­tion. Led by the ILBPP, the Rain­bow 
Coali­tion includ­ed the Young Lords 
<https://www.gvsu.edu/library/specialcollections/young-lords-in-lincoln-park-22.htm>, 
a social­ly con­scious Puer­to Rican gang; and the Young Patri­ots 
Orga­ni­za­tion 
<http://www.youngpatriots-rainbowcoalition.org/ypo-resources/> (YPO), a 
group of Con­fed­er­ate flag-wear­ing south­ern white migrants. This 
polit­i­cal for­ma­tion lat­er became famous when Harold Wash­ing­ton 
used it as a base for his suc­cess­ful bid for may­or of Chicago in 1983.

Lee was joined by fel­low Pan­thers Hank “Poi­son” Gad­dis, Jer­ry 
Dun­ni­gan, and Ruby Smith in orga­niz­ing with the Young Patri­ots 
<https://www.viewpointmag.com/2015/08/10/young-patriots-at-the-united-front-against-fascism-conference/> on 
Chicago’s North Side, specif­i­cal­ly Uptown 
<http://areachicago.org/uptown%E2%80%99s-join-community-union/>, 
unbe­known­st to Hamp­ton and oth­er Illi­nois Pan­ther lead­er­ship. 
After Lee informed Hamp­ton of their activ­i­ties, the two men met on 
the roof of the Pan­thers’ head­quar­ters alone. Both were well aware of 
the great promise but poten­tial fragili­ty of mul­tira­cial 
coali­tion-build­ing. Bob Lee remem­bered:

    [Fred Hamp­ton and I] believed that sol­i­dar­i­ty in Chicago was
    stronger than any­where else. We knew our orga­ni­za­tion would not
    last long, and we knew that we had to move fast. We didn’t fool
    our­selves… There was a mys­tique in the Par­ty about my cadre
    because no one knew what Poi­son and I were doing. I only dia­logued
    with Fred.

Lee would insist that “Fred Hamp­ton intro­duced class strug­gle 
<http://areachicago.org/the-original-rainbow-coalition/>” 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. 
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 was out in the street politi­ciz­ing North Side groups and 
intro­duc­ing them to the Black Pan­ther Par­ty.

The first encoun­ter between Lee and the Young Patri­ots 
<http://www.youngpatriots-rainbowcoalition.org/ypo-resources/> actu­al­ly 
hap­pened by acci­dent. Lee was invit­ed to speak at the Church of Three 
Cross­es on the Near North Side by Char­lot­te Engel­mann, a white 
attor­ney. The con­gre­ga­tion of the church con­sist­ed of 
pre­dom­i­nant­ly upper-mid­dle-class whites. Engel­mann had also 
invit­ed the Young Patri­ots to speak that night. Lee remarked:

    In the­o­ry, one does not put south­ern whites and the Pan­thers
    togeth­er. It was a mis­take in pro­gram­ming. When I got a phone
    call and was asked to speak, I was not informed about the Young
    Patri­ots attend­ing. My inten­tion was to intro­duce the Illi­nois
    Black Pan­ther Par­ty because the orga­ni­za­tion was new to the
    city of Chicago… The event was my first speak­ing engage­ment.

The Young Patri­ots had been invit­ed to speak about police 
bru­tal­i­ty. Bob Lee was sur­prised by the intense hos­til­i­ty and 
class dia­logue between the two white groups, and he was unac­cus­tomed 
to the way that the mid­dle-class group ver­bal­ly attacked the Young 
Patri­ots.

    Com­ing from the South, it was a cul­ture shock for me. I had nev­er
    seen that before, because in the South whites were unit­ed around
    race… I had nev­er seen whites attack poor whites before. I had
    nev­er seen poor whites hav­ing to explain them­selves to oth­er
    whites before… When I was called upon to speak, I made my speech,
    and it was an emo­tion­al tie-in with the Young Patri­ots because I
    felt the hos­til­i­ty towards them. And that was the begin­ning of
    our alliance.

Bob Lee intro­duced the youth gath­ered that night to the ide­ol­o­gy of 
the Black Pan­ther Par­ty and its com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice pro­grams. The 
Young Patri­ots were eas­i­ly per­suad­ed to work with the Pan­thers, 
being recep­tive to the con­cept of class sol­i­dar­i­ty. The YPO’s 
intro­duc­tion to class sol­i­dar­i­ty that tran­scend­ed racial 
divi­sions, cour­tesy of Bob Lee, also forced mem­bers to reassess its 
ves­ti­gial iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the Con­fed­er­ate flag. As Lee and 
oth­ers helped orga­nize the Young Patri­ots around Pan­ther 
ide­ol­o­gy, the group quick­ly became the lead­ing polit­i­cal 
rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the Uptown 
<https://www.mhpbooks.com/revolutionary-hillbilly-an-interview-with-hy-thurman-of-the-young-patriots-organization/> 
neigh­bor­hood, an alter­na­tive to the elec­toral clien­telism of 
then-may­or Richard Daley. Togeth­er, the Pan­thers, the YPO, and the 
Young Lords in Lin­coln Park helped to form the Uptown Coali­tion of 
Poor Peo­ple. The com­mu­ni­ty coali­tion unit­ed res­i­dents again­st 
own­ers they now iden­ti­fied as slum­lords.

The first Rain­bow Coali­tion was short-lived, as it fell apart after 
Hampton’s trag­ic assas­si­na­tion in Decem­ber 1969. Lee wasn’t 
entire­ly bit­ter about Rev. Jesse Jackson’s appro­pri­a­tion of the 
con­cept for his own polit­i­cal gains and agen­das dur­ing the 1980s – 
in his opin­ion, Jack­son “gave it a new set of legs.” But he had a 
greater appre­ci­a­tion of Harold Washington’s may­oral cam­paign of 
1983, which rec­og­nized the his­tor­i­cal roots and pow­er of the 
ear­lier iter­a­tion of the Rain­bow. Accord­ing to Bob Lee,

    It was not until the elec­tion of Harold Wash­ing­ton that
    orga­niz­ers real­ized the actu­al strength of the Rain­bow
    Coali­tion, which also helped mem­bers to under­stand the local
    pow­er structure’s com­mit­ment to elim­i­nat­ing the group, as it
    was a real polit­i­cal threat to machine pol­i­tics in Chicago.

Lee left the Pan­thers and returned home in 1970, where he con­tin­ued 
his work as a grass­roots com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­er until his death. I 
first met him in 2007, at his home in Hous­ton, where I first 
inter­viewed him for my book, /From the Bul­let to the Bal­lot/. Before 
he would sit with me for an inter­view he want­ed to check my 
com­mit­ment to orga­niz­ing those in need.

Lee was bound to a wheel­chair lat­er in life, due to mul­ti­ple 
scle­ro­sis. Nonethe­less, he drove me around the Fifth Ward, where he 
was known as the “May­or.” An elder­ly African Amer­i­can wom­an flagged 
down our car, and we pulled over. She told Lee that she need­ed a pair 
of shoes, tak­ing care to men­tion her shoe size, and Lee told her he 
would find her a pair. A few blocks lat­er, an old­er African Amer­i­can 
gen­tle­man asked to have his lawn cut. Short­ly there­after, Bob Lee 
approached a young man who told us he had not eat­en in a few days.

A few hours lat­er, we bor­rowed a lawn­mow­er from a neigh­bor. Lee 
made a stop at a com­mu­ni­ty cen­ter and picked up a few pair of shoes 
for the wom­an. The young man who need­ed food mowed the old­er 
gentleman’s lawn, then he met us at the elder­ly woman’s home, who 
need­ed the shoes. We then sat down for a meal and all ate hearti­ly. 
Every­one he helped that day assured Lee that they would vote for El 
Fran­co Lee <https://tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fleee>, Bob 
Lee’s broth­er who pre­ced­ed him in death, for Har­ris Coun­ty 
Precinct 1 Com­mis­sion­er,and for oth­er can­di­dates that Lee sup­port­ed.

Lee did all this impor­tant work from a wheel­chair. His exam­ple 
inspired me to become the activist that I am today. He trained me how to 
con­nect with those in need, how to meet peo­ple at their lev­el, and 
the sig­nif­i­cance of rela­tion­ships in fos­ter­ing grass­roots 
com­mu­ni­ty orga­niz­ing. In our cur­rent cli­mate of racial and 
polit­i­cal polar­iza­tion, aggra­vat­ed by the elec­tion of our orange 
pres­i­dent, Lee’s work in orga­niz­ing across race with­in the class is 
all the more nec­es­sary.

If Bob Lee could unite folks across deep-seat­ed racial 
differences—especially folks like the Young Patriots—in the 
seg­re­gat­ed 1960s, then we have no excuse not to  equal, if not 
eclipse Lee’s suc­cess in our cur­rent polar­ized con­text. Speak­ing as 
an his­to­ri­an, I see no need to rein­vent the wheel in order to 
address Trump­ism today.

It was activists like Lee, his fel­low Black Pan­thers, and the 
orig­i­nal Rain­bow Coali­tion who cre­at­ed change in our nation, by 
dar­ing to enter dis­tant neigh­bor­hoods and forge alliances. It is 
through the con­tin­u­ing nuances of apply­ing the meth­ods of the past 
to the grass­roots orga­niz­ing tenets of today, includ­ing social 
media, data­bas­es, dig­i­tal archives, algo­rithms, and so on, that the 
extremes of our moment’s polar oppo­sites will be con­nect­ed to 
estab­lish a con­duit of under­stand­ing, com­mu­ni­ca­tion, and 
respect. As a polit­i­cal sym­bol, the Rain­bow didn’t refer just to a 
series of col­ors; it sig­ni­fied an arc of con­nec­tion 
<http://www.tikkun.org/nextgen/the-original-rainbow-coalition-an-example-of-universal-identity-politics> 
between dif­fer­ent places and peo­ple. For Lee and oth­ers who 
par­tic­i­pat­ed with him in strug­gle, this was the only pos­si­ble 
start­ing point for rev­o­lu­tion­ary sol­i­dar­i­ty.^1 
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