Published: July 10, 2023
The Young Lords were founded in 1968. They were led by a Chicago street activist named Cha Cha Jiménez, who organized the group to fight local gentrification, police brutality, and racism. He pioneered the use of the Lords’ signature purple berets (perhaps inspired by the Sharks’ colors in West Side Story) and semi-military code of conduct. Some major events that marked their activism include the Garbage Offensive, in which they forced the Sanitation Department to clean the streets in Spanish Harlem; two takeovers of the neighborhood’s Methodist church; and a couple of brief occupations of Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx.
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