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Young Lords (Organization)
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- Notes:
- Hilda Frontany is a long-time community activist whose family first lived in the Water Hotel in Chicago’s La Clark neighborhood when they arrived in Chicago from Puerto Rico. In the late 1960s and 1970s she devoted her work to addressing the housing crisis that was displacing Latinos and the poor from Chicago’s Lakeview Neighborhood, a community located just north of Lincoln Park. As a member of the Lakeview Citizens Council, Ms. Frontany provided a public voice for Latinos and helped support homeowners.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-30T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Rebecca “Buffy” Vance was friends with “Stony,” who was a white southerner and one of the main Young Lords from the Wieland branch of the group before they became human rights activists for Latinos and the poor. Stony was about 17-years-old then and lived across from Wieland on North Avenue. His sisters became members of the auxiliary group, the Young Lordettes. Wieland culture was completely different from the culture at Halsted and Dickens and Burling and Armitage where the other main group of Young Lords hung out. The difference was that on Wieland and North Avenue, they did not have to share space with the other Puerto Rican Clubs of Lincoln Park. Pockets of Puerto Ricans left behind from the destruction wrought by urban renewal in the Puerto Rican barrio of La Clark were still around then. Wieland Street was one of the streets that still survived. Masao Yamasaki, a man of Japanese descent, became friends with Stony and other Young lords and tried to help them with counseling and guidance. Mr. Yamasaki did this through the YMCA, where Young Lords would go for swimming and basketball. He owned a factory and started providing a few of them, including Stony, with jobs. And Stony remained in his packaging company for years, becoming a supervisor for the company. Ms. Vance was never in the Young Lords but grew up in Lincoln Park and attended Alcott Elementary at 2625 North Orchard. Alcott School then had an after school program that would supervise the youth at night to keep them out of trouble and off the streets. A few of the Young Lords attended Alcott and spread the word about the program. They would have to walk 8 to 10 blocks to attend but it did help some of them as they participated in sports, arts and crafts, and other activities. There were also the social dances, where youth danced to tunes such as “Wipe-out,” “Twine Time,” “Monkey Time,” and “Louie Louie.” Today Ms. Vance today works at the University of Illinois Circle Campus as Assistant to Communications and Development and Alumni Relations. Prior to joining the College of Law, she worked as a development Secretary for Will AM-FM-TV. Ms. Vance has also worked at Amdocs Inc. and in benefit planning.
- Date Created:
- 2012-04-20T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Gregorio Gómez is known as the “G Man” at one of Chicago’s longest running underground poetry venues, “Weeds,” at 1515 North Dayton Street. Opened in 1964, “Weeds” still serves the Lincoln Park neighborhood; the building has existed there since 1928. Today “Weeds” is known as “the neighborhood bar without a neighborhood.” In the 1980s, prior to the Harold Washington campaign, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez organized a reorganizing event at “Weeds.” It was a small party reunion and the place was packed. The purpose was to remember the Young Lords’ work and the Puerto Ricans who were displaced from Lincoln Park. Mr. Jiménez was assisted by Iris (Martha) Ramos, who, before the Young Lords were political, was one of three different presidents of the Young Lordettes. Ms. Ramos had previously been married to Benny Pérez, one of the original Young Lords club founders, who also turned political when the Young Lords became a human rights movement on September 23, 1968. She was also the sister of Manuel Ramos who was a Young Lord killed by off duty policeman James Lamb on May 3, 1969. Mr. Gómez emigrated from Vera Cruz, Mexico to Chicago in 1963. And he has been in the poetry community for nearly three decades. He has been the Managing Director of the Latino Chicago Theatre Company, which has been in the forefront of theatre and arts in Wicker Park. Mr. Gómez’s work has been published and recorded in numerous venues, including Stray Bullets: A Celebration of Chicago Saloon Poetry (1991) and Poetry for Peace Anthology, published by the Peace Museum of Chicago. In 1986, White Panther Party Minister of Information, Bob “Righteous” Rudnick, now deceased, approached the owner of “Weeds,” Sergio Mayora, about staging “Poetry Slams.”. Soon after that Mr. Gómez started to MC. Some of the patrons are a mix of newcomers and old timers, a few white pacifists and anarchists, some revolutionaries, primarily Blacks and Latinos. Early poets who presented their work at “Weeds” includes Chris “Man Defender” Chandler, “Sultry” Sue McDonald, and Susie “Mellow” Greenspan. Poet and Young Lord Alfredo Matias is a regular at “Weeds,” along with Sergio Mayora who always recites his two poems, and Mr. Gómez himself. As Mr. Gómez reiterates, “I stand for hundreds of Poets who will never be famous.”
- Date Created:
- 2012-08-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Mike Lawson is a civil rights activist who first met Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez in 1968, after Mr. Jiménez was released from prison. At that time, Mr. Lawson was in charge of a G.E.D. program for ex-offenders that already had enrolled a number of Black Stone Rangers, Disciples, and Young Lords. The group met at Argonne National Laboratory. Because Mr. Lawson lived in Old Town, he helped some of the students who lived in Lincoln Park get to the classes. In the morning most of the students would work part-time as janitors; they would study part-time in the afternoons. As an extension of their classroom lessons, Mr. Lawson took some of his students on a field trip to Grant Park during the Democratic National Convention where they witnessed police beating up on hippies and reporters firsthand. These demonstrations helped to remind Mr. Jiménez of the goals he had set for himself while in jail. Today Mike Lawson lives on the south side of Chicago and is dependent on a wheelchair to get around, as he is plagued by muscular dystrophy.
- Date Created:
- 2012-03-29T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Lawrence Reyes, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez on 10/23/2016 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2016-10-23T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Hy Thurman arrived in Chicago when he was seventeen years old from a small farming town in eastern Tennessee. Mr. Thurman co-founded the Young Patriots. In 1969, the Young Patriots became part of the original Rainbow Coalition, along with the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party. Hy Thurman, Jack “Junebug” Boykin, William “Preacherman” Fesperman, and many of the Young Patriots had been involved with JOIN (Jobs or Income Now), a project run by Students for a Democratic Society, and the Goodfellows, JOIN’s de facto anti-police brutality committee, for several years which is what led them to form the Young Patriots. One of the Young Patriots’ main organizing efforts led to the Summerdale Scandal which exposed the then accepted criminal activities of eight policeman and put them in jail for burglaries, thefts, and extortions. Today, Hy Thurman has a B.A. in Cultural Anthropology, has conducted ethnology interviews with a prominent anthropologist, worked for VISTA and for the Uptown People’s Northeastern Illinois University Center, and has held benefits for community organizations via Bluegrass Inc. He is also a teacher who specializes in Appalachian history and migration.
- Date Created:
- 2012-01-22T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Dylcia Pagán was born to Puerto Rican parents in 1946 at Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, New York City and raised in East Harlem. She became a child star, performing every week on NBC’s “Children’s Hour.” After losing her parents at the age of 20, she became an activist, participating in voter registration drives and working for the Community Development Agency (CDA) evaluating poverty programs throughout the City of New York. In 1969, Ms. Pagán decided to attend Brooklyn College where she co-founded the Puerto Rican Student Union that resulted in the formation of a student-controlled Puerto Rican Studies Department that is still in existence today. She continued a long career in media, becoming the first Puerto Rican woman television producer in New York City. Ms. Pagán has worked as a producer, writer, and filmmaker, developing investigative documentaries and children’s program on nearly every major television network. She also worked as the English editor for the city’s first bilingual daily newspaper, El Tiempo, and authored a popular daily column in that same paper.In 1978, Ms. Pagán was subpoenaed by a Grand Jury to testify in connection with the arrest of her companion, William Morales. At the time, she was three months pregnant with her son, Guillermo, and she refused to testify. Sometime in 1979 she went underground with her son. She was arrested in 1980, charged with seditious conspiracy for fighting for the independence of Puerto Rico, and was sentenced to 63 years in prison. She was released from prison on September 10, 1999 after a long campaign in the United States, Puerto Rico, and internationally pressured President Bill Clinton to give she and nine of her co-defendants a Presidential Conditional Clemency. She lives and works in Puerto Rico.
- Date Created:
- 2012-05-15T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Oral history of Celso Rivera, interviewed by Jose 'Cha-Cha' Jimenez, on 03/28/2011 about the Young Lords in Lincoln Park.
- Date Created:
- 2011-03-28T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Felícitas Nuñez lives in Bermuda Dunes, California. She and Delia Ravelo are co-founders of Teatro de Las Chicanas. The concept began when women of Movimiento Estudíantil Chicano de Aztlán (MEChA) brought their mothers to a university setting. There they organized a “Seminario de Chicanas” so that the mothers could understand what their daughters were going through. They wrote and performed “Chicana Goes to College.” And as a result of the audience’s positive response, Ms. Nuñez and Ms. Ravelo formed the Teatro de Las Chicanas. In the beginning years the core group consisted of just Ms. Ravelo and Ms. Nuñez, but many young women participated in the Teatro. Though working in San Diego, they were influenced by the leftist political ideals of the San Francisco Mime Troupe. They also united with the objectives of the Chicano Movement which included, among other things, social justice, bilingual education, and unionization. It also went further to address women’s equality. Several of the plays written and performed by the Teatro as well as the memories of their core members have been published in Teatro Chicana: A Collective Memoir and Selected Plays (2008). Most of the women who joined the Teatro came from farming towns throughout California and most of them were the first of their families to attend college. Around the early part of June 1969, Ms. Nuñez traveled to Chicago and met with the Young Lords who were transforming themselves from a local Puerto Rican gang into a human rights movement. One month earlier, the Young Lords had occupied the administration building of McCormick Theological Seminary (today on the campus of DePaul University) with 350 neighborhood residents and held it for an entire week. The Young Lords won all their demands, including $50,000 seed money for two free health clinics, $25,000 to open up the People’s Law Office which still operates today, and $650,000 to be invested by the seminary in low-income housing. One week earlier, the Young Lords had occupied a huge United Methodist Church on Dayton and Armitage, which they were in the process of transforming to become the Young Lords National Headquarters. The church would also house their Free Community Day Care Center, Free Dental and Health Clinic, and Free Breakfast for Children Program. All these programs were modeled after the Black Panther Party programs, of which the Young Lords had recently also connected via Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition that Field Marshall Bobby Lee had also helped to broker. After the take-over of the church, the Young Lords quickly made amends. They did not want to disrupt any church service. When asked by the press if the Young Lords were going to allow the church to hold service, Mr. Jiménez quickly responded, “that it was not really a take over as the doors were now open to everyone, and that he and other Young Lords were planning on attending the services, being led by Rev. Bruce Johnson.” Some members of the congregation left but the Young Lords started meetings with the rest of the congregation, and together they designed the People’s Church symbol and produced a button that showed chains being broken. The Young Lords were cleaning up the church and adding needed paint when Ms. Nuñez arrived and volunteered to organize a group of muralists. Inside the church, Ron Clark and others were painting a mural of Puerto Rican history in the gymnasium. Outside, Ms. Nuñez’s group painted the Young Lords symbol of ”Tengo Puerto Rico En Mi Corazón” or “I have Puerto Rico in my Heart.” This lettering was in purple, with a green map of Puerto Rico, and a brown fist holding a rifle. (It had been designed by Ralph “Spaghetti” Rivera and Mr. Jiménez. The first buttons were printed at the Green Duc Button Company at Lake Street and Halsted). Other murals that Ms. Nuñez and her volunteers painted on the church walls were images of Adelita, Emiliano Zapata, Lolita Lebrón, and Don Pedro Albizu Campos. Someone else, probably Ron Clark, painted Che Guevara by the side entrance to the office, with the lettering “Young Lords National Headquarters.” These wonderful murals could not be overlooked in Lincoln Park. Not only were they featured in the news, but Lincoln Park residents would drive by and stop in to see the various programs and activities, making People’s Church the center of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. By then most Puerto Ricans had been forced out of Lincoln Park and there was also plenty of room for others to join the Young Lords Movement. Hispanos representing all Latino nations joined the Young Lords, including members of other minorities, middle class individuals, workers, the very poor, and students. The Lincoln Park Poor People’s Coalition was formed and Mr. Jiménez was voted president. The Northside Cooperative Ministry, of which Rev. Bruce Johnson was a prominent member, was also established during this period, and it supported the Poor People’s Coalition and the Young Lords. Just sixty days before Mark Clark and Fred Hampton were shot to death, assassinated in a predawn raid led by State’s attorney Edward Hanrahan, Rev. Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia were also discovered in their beds stabbed multiple times, in a cold case that remains unsolved. The Eulogy was given at the church with Young Lords fully participating, providing security and traffic control. There was also a spontaneous march through the Lincoln Park Community where Rev. Bruce Johnson worked with the poor. Ms. Nuñez left Chicago unaware of the impact she had made in the Puerto Rican community and in Lincoln Park. The Teatro Chicana did participate in the impromptu Lincoln Park Camp in Michigan in the 2000 and the Young Lords 40th Anniversary celebration in Chicago in 2008.
- Date Created:
- 2012-08-25T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
- Notes:
- Cathy Adorno-Centeno is the daughter of Angie Navedo-Rizzo, a Young Lord who also founded “Mothers and Others,” a sub-group within the Young Lords that organized around women’s rights issues. Born in Chicago, Ms. Adorno-Centeno describes growing up surrounded by Young Lords and in a home that was a central gathering for pot luck family dinners for members of the organization and their supporters. Following the brutal death of her Young Lord father Jose “Pancho” Lind, Ms. Adorno-Centeno and her brothers and mother went underground; staying at a rented farm near Tomah, Wisconsin that would become the Young Lords’ Training Camp. Her most vivid childhood memories are of the warmth and support she enjoyed as a member of the Young Lords community. It included block parties, farmworker pickets, demonstrations and social events held near or in the Young Lords headquarters on Wilton and Grace streets. She also spent time at Rico’s Club (which her mother owned) and enjoyed company for the Sunday pasta dinners in her home.
- Date Created:
- 2012-08-04T00:00:00Z
- Data Provider:
- Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
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