Hy Thurman originally comes from Tennessee and now resides in Alabama. In the late 1960s, when he was 17, he moved to Chicago and settled in the predominantly Southern white Uptown community. He became a community organizer and co-founded the Young Patriots, a group of displaced anti-racist Southern white youth that created health care services and breakfast for children programs, and fought police brutality and urban renewal plans to destroy their homes. He also cofounded the Rainbow Coalition, which was made up of the Young Patriots, the Young Lords (a Puerto Rican gang turned political) and the Illinois chapter of the Black Panther Party, to fight for self-determination in their communities. He is presently working with the Second Rainbow Coalition and directs of the North Alabama School for Organizers. Hy is the author of Revolutionary Hillbilly: Notes from the Struggle on the Edge of the Rainbow (Regent Press, 2020).