Can you imagine the Black Panthers standing up to a group of poor whites whose symbol is the Confederate flag? It seems impossible, doesn't it? Well, it happened in Chicago in the '60s, when fed up with police brutality and poor access to education, health care, and housing, a group of so-called "white trash," the Young Patriots, decided to make a truce with their Latino rivals, the Young Lords--a gang that had been turned into a community group--and the famous Black Panthers to fight together against the discrimination that made them equal. 

This is the extraordinary story told by "The First Rainbow Coalition," a documentary by San Antonio filmmaker Ray Santisteban, which will air on PBS, and features a young Black activist, Bobby Lee, who mustered the courage to go north of segregated Chicago to the poor white area with the firm purpose of sealing an alliance with his fiercest racial enemies –in pursuit of the common good.

"You know when they say reality is stranger than fiction," said Santisteban. "If someone had written it (as fiction), you would laugh and say, 'That's ridiculous.”

But it was real.

According to Hy Thurman, a resident of the "white man's" neighborhood, he and his fellow "rednecks" were considered "dangerous" by the mayor of Chicago at the time, Richard Daley, and by the police department in general, and were suffering the effects of "unjust" and prejudiced justice that prevented them from even getting a job. 

So Bobby Lee brought peace between gangs and got the first meeting between the Young Patriots, the Young Lords, and the Black Panthers, proving, according to Thurman, that "whatever happens in their neighborhood, happens in ours. And we weren't going to change anything by hating each other. The quickest way to do that was to bring the neighborhoods together."

"What I hope is that people see the potential of thinking about alliances as a way to transform society," Ray Santisteban.

Also, Young Lords leader Jose "Cha-Cha" Jimenez will declare at one point in the documentary: "Our communities were fighting for the same cause... in unity there was strength."

Because of their interracial alliance, the newly formed Rainbow Coalition adopted a yellow, white, red, brown and black striped flag as a symbol of diversity in these oppressed communities. 

What began as a sporadic union, out of necessity, soon developed into a political movement that came to forge ties with other communities, such as the Asian collective I Wor Kuen, the American Indian Movement, and Students for a Democratic Society.