What Are The Young Lords In Lincoln Park Essay
“The Young Lords in Lincoln Park”
Final Report: Student Summer Scholars Program, 2012
José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez
Liberal Studies Department, Grand Valley State University
In the fall of 1968 in Chicago, Patricia Devine and Dick Vision, members of a church organization called the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park approached me to see if I could help them bring people to an upcoming housing meeting of the Lincoln Park Community Conservation Council. At the time, I was still president of a loose knit street gang, the Young Lords. I had recently come out of jail and wanted to get back with my girlfriend and daughter and settle down. During the day I was studying for my G.E.D. while also working as a janitor at the Argonne National Laboratory in an ex-offender program. It was not an easy task to get a group of relatively undisciplined young people to attend a formal, political meeting. Convincing them bruised not only my ego, but my face. But when the evening of the meeting arrived, about 40 young people from the neighborhood showed up.
The young people were quiet, to avoid police detection, walking in small groups one behind another, traveling down Armitage Avenue for about six blocks to 2020 North Larrabee Street. Once inside they stopped and gazed briefly at a glass and wooden …show more content…
Few also understand how their unsupervised sons and daughters did not initially have the support of any city or church programs and had to fend for themselves. The oral histories in this collection describe how the first youth formed social sports and cultural clubs and played at the boys’ club and Y.M.C.A. As more Puerto Ricans were displaced and forced to move into previously white-only areas of Chicago, clashes became more frequent and these social clubs turned to become
Final Report: Student Summer Scholars Program, 2012
José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez
Liberal Studies Department, Grand Valley State University
In the fall of 1968 in Chicago, Patricia Devine and Dick Vision, members of a church organization called the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln Park approached me to see if I could help them bring people to an upcoming housing meeting of the Lincoln Park Community Conservation Council. At the time, I was still president of a loose knit street gang, the Young Lords. I had recently come out of jail and wanted to get back with my girlfriend and daughter and settle down. During the day I was studying for my G.E.D. while also working as a janitor at the Argonne National Laboratory in an ex-offender program. It was not an easy task to get a group of relatively undisciplined young people to attend a formal, political meeting. Convincing them bruised not only my ego, but my face. But when the evening of the meeting arrived, about 40 young people from the neighborhood showed up.
The young people were quiet, to avoid police detection, walking in small groups one behind another, traveling down Armitage Avenue for about six blocks to 2020 North Larrabee Street. Once inside they stopped and gazed briefly at a glass and wooden …show more content…
Few also understand how their unsupervised sons and daughters did not initially have the support of any city or church programs and had to fend for themselves. The oral histories in this collection describe how the first youth formed social sports and cultural clubs and played at the boys’ club and Y.M.C.A. As more Puerto Ricans were displaced and forced to move into previously white-only areas of Chicago, clashes became more frequent and these social clubs turned to become