When the bulldozers came to Lincoln Park, a young man named José “Cha Cha” Jiménez decided to get political. Puerto Ricans, such as Jiménez, were frequently displaced throughout the 1960s due to the relentless pace of urban renewal projects in Chicago. Jiménez, who was part of a Puerto Rican youth street gang called the Young Lords, transformed his gang into a political organization that fought against displacement and police brutality and fought for affordable housing, child care, and health services for their neighborhood. The group used disruptive techniques similar to those of the Black Panthers – with whom they formed an alliance – to achieve their goals, particularly during the summer of 1969 when some of their boldest actions made headlines. Though the fight to stop gentrification in Lincoln Park was ultimately a losing battle, the Young Lords made their mark on their community... Read more
There was a time, from the late 1940s through the 1960s, when the now-upscale Lincoln Park neighborhood served as the beating heart of Chicago’s huge Puerto Rican community, and the base of operations for a band of Puerto Rican revolutionaries known as the Young Lords. Led by a young man named José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, the activist group – which evolved from a social club to a street gang to a political force – banded together with the Black Panthers as the Rainbow Coalition to wage war against what they called Mayor Richard J. Daley’s “urban removal of the poor” and the area’s eventual gentrification.
