By Dr. Edward DeVries
In 1969, the Black Panthers hosted a national meeting in Oakland, Calif. They called it a “Conference for a United Front,” and it attracted activists from numerous radical groups across the country. Speakers at the conference included representatives from the Communist Party USA, the Farm Workers Union, Students for a Democratic Society, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) and, of course, the Black Panthers.
The speaker from the YPO, William Fesperman, was an interesting fellow: He wore dark glasses, a military jacket, a beret and a belt buckle with crossed pistols and a Confederate battle flag. Both the jacket and the beret also had Confederate flag patches on them. Though a resident of Chicago, Fesperman spoke with a heavy, drawling Southern accent. The Young Patriots he represented were dislocated Southerners and Border Staters—many from coal country in West Virginia and Kentucky—who had migrated to Chicago to find work in the mills, only to end up unemployed and living in a northside ghetto commonly referred to by the city’s southside blacks and westside Hispanics as “Hillbilly Harlem.”