THE FIRST
RAINBOW COALITION (PBS)

In 1969, the Chicago Black Panther Party, notably led by the charismatic Fred Hampton, began to form alliances across lines of race and ethnicity with other community-based movements in the city, including the Latino group the Young Lords Organization and the working-class young southern whites of the Young Patriots. Finding common ground, these disparate groups banded together in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America to collectively confront issues such as police brutality and substandard housing, calling themselves the Rainbow Coalition. The First Rainbow Coalition tells the movement’s little-known story through rare archival footage and interviews with former coalition members in the present-day. It premiered at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2019 and aired on PBS in January 2020. It is available now on Independent Lens to stream. Directed by Ray Santisteban, conform, color, sound edit, mix and deliverables by Stuck On On.