The Young Lords Organization was a Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalist group, born in 1960’s Chicago. Originally started as a politicized inner-city gang, the group would later fashion itself after the Black Panther Party (BPP) and ardently championed the independence of Puerto Rico. Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, group leader, redirected the energies and focus of the gang in the late 1960’s. After its transformation, the YLO went on to lead militant, community-based campaigns in both New York and Chicago to alleviate the most visible manifestations of the new poverty in American cities: chronic unemployment, the intractable crisis of public health care, childhood lead poisoning, poor sanitation, drug addiction, hunger, racism, and police brutality. Legendary in movement circles, the history of this little known organization challenges dominant interpretations of the civil rights and black power movements, the U.S. urban crisis, and the character and complexity of the black Diaspora. BibliographyDownload the Young Lords bibliography (88 KB PDF file) |