The Young Lords Organization in Chicago: A Short History
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The Young Lords Organization was a street-gang-turned-political-entity that originated in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago. Emerging as a gang in 1959, the Young Lords organized in response to the verbal and physical abuse Puerto Ricans were enduring from white gangs in the neighborhood. The Young Lords shifted direction in 1968 after their leader, Jos Cha Cha Jimnez, experienced a political conversion during a sixty-day stint in Cook County Jail on drug charges. Befriended by a black Muslim librarian while in jail, Jimnez began reading widely, most importantly the works of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. He also
