White Lightning (six scarce issues)

Bronx: White Lightning, 1970-74. White Lightning was a white activist group founded in the Bronx in 1970 by ex-drug addicts from the residential drug treatment program, Logos, who opposed the program’s rigid and increasingly cultlike tendencies. Recovering heroin addict Gil Fagiani and a group of multiracial residents formed Spirit of Logos, but after the group’s Third World section left to join groups like the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement, Young Lords, and Black Panthers, Fagiani and Willie Everich formed White Lightning “to build a revolutionary movement among oppressed white people” (from the editorial in the inaugural issue included here). White Lightning continued to operate as a section of Spirit of Logos until approximately 1972 when it became an independent organization. Although the group primarily focused on drug addiction and recovery, stopping the inner city drug trade, and combating the harsh drug criminalization policies of New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, it was also involved with healthcare, housing issues, legal aid, and women’s issues through its short-lived women’s group, Women Hold Up Half the Sky! Frustrated by the racially segregated organizing of the 1970s, denounced as racists by upper class born members of the New Left, and crippled by member defections to New Communist Movement groups, White Lightning quietly dissolved in 1976.

Included are six issues of the group’s irregularly published newspaper, which was clearly modeled after Rising Up Angry. Issues include the unnumbered first issue, Vol. 1, No. 3, Vol. 1, No. 6 (June-July 1972), No. 17 (June 1973), No. 27 (November-December, 1974), and No. 28 (August-September, 1974).

Tabloid format, printed in black (later issues in color) on newsprint, 8-16 p., illus. Light wear to a few issues, one issue nearly split along the centerfold with wear and chipping to spine. Any issue scarce in the trade.

Reference: Sonnie, Amy and James Tracy. Hillbilly Nationalists, Urban Race Rebels, and Black Power: Community Organizing in Radical Times. Brooklyn: Mellville House, 2011. Chapter 4: Lightning on the Eastern Seaboard: October 4th Organization and White Lightning. Item #12633

Price: $600.00