Young Lords - Founding

Founding

The Young Lords were first a Chicago turf gang in the 1960s in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. When they realized that urban renewal was evicting their families and saw police abuses, some like other Puerto Ricans became involved in the June 1966 Division Street Riots in Wicker Park and Humboldt Park. A couple of years later they were reorganized into a human rights movement officially, on September 23,1968 by Jose Cha Cha Jimenez and spread to other cities. Puerto Rican self determination and Gentrification or displacement became the primary focus early on in Chicago due to Mayor Daley's ruthless patronage machine that eventually evicted the entire neighborhood barrio of the first Puerto Rican immigrants and several Mexican communities of that city from prime real estate, near downtown and near lakefront areas.

On July 26, 1969, a New York regional chapter accepted neighborhood empowerment and Puerto Rico self determination as the unifying mission and was joined. The New York Chapter was sanctioned as the regional center of the Young Lords, after the entire Young Lords Movement gained national prominence leading protests against conditions faced by Puerto Ricans that lead to several takeovers nationally. In New York there was a takeover of the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem on December 28, 1969. This was right after September 1969, when the United Methodist Pastor Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia of the Chicago People's Church (where the Young Lords national headquarters was established in an earlier May,1969 church occupation) were both discovered stabbed multiple times in their parsonage home.Rev. Bruce Johnson was stabbed 14 times and Eugenia 19 times in a cold case that has never been solved. There was much resentment toward Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia because of their strong commitment to the Young Lords and the Puerto Ricans being displaced from the Lincoln Park neighborhood. A major service was held led by Bishop Pryor, the Northside Cooperative Ministry, Lincoln Park Poor People's Coalition and the Young Lords. According to a reporter, William C. Henzlik, Young Lords founder, Jose Cha Cha Jimenez was in Cook County Jail for a new charge of alleged bond jumping, at the time of the murders. A bail bond drive organized among churchmen enabled Cha-Cha Jimenez to leave the jail in time to tell worshipers: "Rev. Bruce Johnson came down from the mountaintops of the rich to be with the poor people... most people are like boats in a harbor, always tied up to the dock. Bruce and Eugenia Johnson left the safe harbor and tried to cross the ocean."

The organization drew front page headlines in new left tabloids,the national and local media. This was primarily due to the Young Lords ability to organize and to bring thousands of people to their actions. It was also because of the existence of chapters in various cities from the mid west to both coasts. The growth of the New York chapter,where one fourth of most Puerto Ricans then lived and the Chicago national office, where they originated and had become another Puerto Rican hub during the Great Puerto Rican Migration of the 1950's, led to the opening of more new branches including: Philadelphia, Bridgeport, Newark, Milwaukee, Los Angeles, Hayward and other Puerto Rican hub cities.

By March 1970, the Young Lords also opened up a South Bronx Information Center, establishing Pa'lante, a newspaper later printed and distributed in New York by the Young Lords. Geraldo Rivera a lawyer and later a journalist who while never an official member was committed to supporting the Young Lords Party.

By May 1970, the New York section under the leadership of its Central Committee: Felipe Luciano, Chairman; David Perez, Minister of Defense; Juan González, Minister of Education; Pablo Guzmán, Minister of Information; Juan Fi Ortiz, Minister of Finance; and Denise Oliver, Field Marshall, decided to separate from the Chicago Young Lords. This had begun only as a personal difference between two individuals Andre Nunez and Yoruba Guzman and then explained as an ideological difference. In fact, to this day there are no differences in politics or actions, except regional and the personal conflict was tossed to the wayside as being less significant than libertyfor Puerto Rico. The New York entity was then renamed the Young Lords Party. But even then the separation was not a hostile one, New York was also the eastern regional chapter and it collected several east coast groups. All the other groups remained with Chicago. A similar situation was taking place at the same time within the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society and many other new left movements. Most were believed to be growing pains, shaped also in part by the ongoing undercover work of the FBI's COINTELPRO. Repression became rampant in all these organizations.Frame-ups, beatings, killings, jailings, infiltrations and negative rumour campaigns were launched against the leadership, along with high bonds and these creation of divisions.

The Young Lords as a movement continued to focus its activity around Independence for Puerto Rico and the struggle for democratic rights for all Puerto Ricans and Latinos and poor, along with the empowerment of all barrios within the United States. The local aspect of mission was significant because the Young Lords saw themselves as a People's Struggle. Therefore the original issue that turned the Young Lords in Chicago into a bonafide human rights movement was the complete destruction and displacement of an entire Puerto Rican community in Lincoln Park, Chicago. They were also the first large barrio of the first Puerto Rican immigrants to Chicago. In New York the "Garbage Offensive" was utilized as an organizing vehicle or their local city service issue. Other key local organizing issues brought forward by the Young Lords, included: police injustice, health care, tenant's rights,free breakfast for children, free day care, and accurate Latino education. The Young Lords grew in numbers and influence from 1968 to 1983.

Their influence extended beyond politics, as the Young Lords inspired political leaders, professionals and artists, forming part of a Puerto Rican cultural renaissance in the 1970s nationally within the continental United States.In New York it was known as the Nuyorican Movement which also included poetry and music. Felipe Luciano, already a well-known poet within black liberation circles in Harlem, recited many of his well-known poems he wrote while a member of The Last Poets: Jibaro, Un Rifle Oración, Hey Now. Pedro Pietri wrote and publicly recited his best known poems, "Puerto Rican Obituary" and "Suicide Note of a Cockroach in a Low Income Project", at Young Lord events. The song "Qué Bonita Bandera" ("What a Beautiful Flag") was written by Pepe y Flora in Puerto Rico and was adopted by Chicago's national office as the Young Lords anthem. It was sung live many times during the take-over of McCormick Theological Seminary and the People's Church in Chicago's Lincoln Park Neighborhood and in New York's People's Church in Spanish Harlem. The impact on music was even more significant as groups such as Eddie Palmieri, Ray Barreto, Willie Colón, and others began to write and perform songs that addressed the Puerto Rican experience.