The Lords of : The Puerto Rican Struggle in Postwar , 1950-1970

Garrett Gutierrez History 385: Chicago in America Dr. Timothy Gilfoyle December 6, 2017 In 1970, journalist Frank Browning labeled the as, “the most potent revolutionary organization of Puerto Rican Youth in the United States.”1 The Young Lords began as a Puerto Rican street gang and transitioned into a legitimate community organization by

1968. They actively attempted, and for a time succeeded, in overcoming social disparities by orchestrating successful political protests, providing free social services, creating a free health clinic and day care center, and instituting a breakfast program. They sought agency by protesting a perceivably oppressive mainstream sociopolitical order and intensified their antagonistic relationship with the Chicago Police Department and Chicago’s political machine. However, an in-depth analysis of the Puerto Rican diaspora in the United States reveals that the Young Lords were American-made. Hostility towards Puerto Ricans in daily interactions on the streets, in housing, and indirectly through urban renewal generated anger, resentment, and outrage among teenage youths. Puerto Ricans counteracted this prejudice by collectively creating the Young

Lords street gang – and eventually, the Young Lords Organization.

Immediately after settling in Chicago, Puerto Ricans realized their low place in

America’s prevailing racial hierarchy. Although some Puerto Ricans migrated to Chicago in the

1930s from , mass migration from occurred in the late forties and fifties. During this time, genuine efforts were made by the Puerto Rico’s Migration Division, whose role was to aid Puerto Rican assimilation, and the United States government to integrate the islanders in America. For instance, the Migration Division published educational pamphlets about how Puerto Ricans, as legal citizens, were already in a sense “American.” Their good- intentions, however, were not enough to change the reality of racism embedded in Chicago’s

1 Frank Browning, “From Rumble to Revolution: The Young Lords,” Ramparts Magazine, October 1970, 19-25. Accessed September 5, 2017. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/135

2 social, economic, and political institutions. The Young Lords origin as turf gang in 1959 was a reaction, in part, to the prevalent social hostility experienced by Puerto Rican teenagers on the streets. To understand their objectives, it is essential to understand the ways in which they were oppressed.

The rise of both the Young Lords gang and organization more broadly represented a pattern of social unrest in the United States. Chicago was only one of many American cities whose white residents fostered a hostile living environment for racial minorities. Puerto Ricans were pushed around in the streets, in their homes, and in and out of neighborhoods. They felt they had no other option but to radicalize themselves into an obstructive sociopolitical force. The

Young Lords Organization may not have lasted through the 1970s, but their tenure nevertheless embodied one of the most important lessons regarding urban space and race relations: If you push people around for long enough, they will eventually push back.

Lincoln Park was one of the most popular Puerto Ricans neighborhoods in mid-century

Chicago due to the availability of low-income and industry along its western borders. Many moved to either the industrial corner of southwest Lincoln Park or other streets south of

Armitage Avenue, such as Larrabee Street. Areas 114, 115, 116, 117, and 118 in the Lincoln

Park neighborhood map displays where a majority of Puerto Ricans lived (Map A). In 1940, a decade before Puerto Ricans arrived in mass, ten percent of Lincoln Park’s residential structures were already rundown and deteriorating. More than seventy-five percent of housing units predated 1920. After World War II ended, the neighborhood’s population began rising, hitting an all-time high of 102,000 in 1950. The number of housing units subsequently increased by 4,000 in the forties, although only 10 new housing units were built. To accommodate the population surge and generate higher profits, landlords converted their larger apartments into several

3 “kitchenette units.”2 These kitchenettes were small, run-down, and cheap to rent; they attracted more than 2,000 Puerto Ricans by 1960. Although Lincoln Park remained a predominantly white middle-class population, Puerto Ricans occupied their own small pockets of the neighborhood.

Map A: Chicago Factbook Consortium, Local Community Fact Book: Chicago’s Metropolitan Area 1960, (Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press, 1963), 29.

Puerto Ricans fell victim to the century-old urban practice of forced placement into sub- standard housing units headed by either unresponsive or absentee landlords. Personal accounts of the conditions of the homes and apartments occupied by many Puerto Ricans in the fifties are haunting. Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez’s mother, Eugenia Rodríguez, lived in the Puerto Rican “La

Clark” community near Clark and Division Streets before moving to Lincoln Park. She recalled her first night in her near northside apartment with her baby daughter: “I put the baby on the bed,

2 Evelyn Kitagawa and Karl E. Taeuber, Local Community Fact Book: Chicago’s Metropolitan Area, (Chicago 1960): 18.

4 but she kept crying. When I turned on the light, the bed was black [with bedbugs].”3 David

Hernández came to Chicago with his family from Puerto Rico in 1955 and moved into the basement of a “cold-water flat” in Lincoln Park near Clark and Wisconsin Streets. Hernández lived in one of many apartment units that had been converted into multiple kitchenette units. He remembered living in awful conditions where his landlord refused to fix any structural issues in the apartment. He also said most apartments, “were roach infested, you know, a lot of rats and all of that! […] My parents were always tired [because] they would stay up at night to flick the cockroaches of our faces while we were sleeping.”4

The dirty and crowded conditions Rodríguez and Hernández described were common factors of the Puerto Rican housing experience. A Chicago Tribune article from 1963 reported that two-hundred and forty-five Puerto Ricans, made up of one-hundred and twenty-five families, occupied an apartment building with only sixty-four units.5 Crammed apartments with poor sanitation and absent landlords, sometimes called ‘slumlords,’ characterized the lives of thousands of Puerto Rican Chicagoans in the mid-twentieth century. Unfortunately, moving out or evoking tenants’ rights were simply not options.

Landlords often ignored demands of their low-class residents and faced zero legal repercussions. Moving out into a different apartment building was also not an option as many landlords refused to rent to Puerto Ricans on account of their race. For example, Monse Lucas-

Figueroa’s mother, a lighter-skinned Spaniard whose accent was mistaken as Italian, met a

3 Lilia Fernández, Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 138. 4 David Hernández. “David Hernández video interview and biography,” March 29, 2012, Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24551. 5 “The Harsh New World of Our Puerto Ricans.” 1963. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file), Nov 24, 1963. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/179331442?accountid=12163

5 landlord at a prospective housing unit and put a deposit down on the apartment. However, she explained, “When my mom took my dad—my dad is Puerto Rican, but el es trigueño [he is brown skinned/mixed]—the guy said no. He gave my mother back her deposit, and we were without an apartment.”6 Figueroa’s story represents a broadly felt pattern of housing discrimination that plagued Chicago’s minority populations. Before settling in a converted kitchenette in the 1950s, another Puerto Rican Chicagoan recalled seeing rental ads in the newspaper that read “no se admiten Puertorriqueños. [Puerto Ricans are not allowed]”7 Blatant attempts to keep Puerto Ricans out of white middle and upper-class neighborhoods were fueled by popular political ideas about urban blight. In 1958, the annual report from the Chicago branch of the Puerto Rican Migration Division noted housing discrimination as one of the major problems Puerto Ricans faced in the city. The report confirmed that the individual accounts mentioned were not outliers, but indicators of a wide-ranging Puerto Rican struggle in Chicago.

The report also contradicted the popular notion that Puerto Ricans represented a ‘model migrant’ who had been assimilating into American life with ease. Despite the poor conditions and lack of power over their housing situation, some Puerto Ricans did their best to create communities amongst each other.

Many Puerto Ricans stayed optimistic about their situation and strived to overcome their poverty. Puerto Rican neighbors bonded over their shared cultural backgrounds and second-rate urban experiences. They fondly referred to their neighbors of the same ethnic kin as mi gente

(my people). David Hernández recalled a sense of community his family felt with other Puerto

Rican families in Lincoln Park. He stated, “We were all in the same boat, struggling to make it

6 Fernández, Brown in the Windy City, 147. 7 Felix M. Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago, (Notre Dame, IN University of Notre Dame Press, 1987), 59.

6 better.”8 Modesto Rivera explained how his uncle, Mario Rivera, helped the struggling Puerto

Rican community in southwest Lincoln Park. As the owner of Los Campos Food Market near

North and Sheffield Avenues, one of the few Puerto Rican owned business in the 1960s, he allowed his poor Puerto Rican costumers to purchase food on credit and have their mail delivered to his grocery store.9 Puerto Rican life was a struggle, but relying on each other alleviated dire circumstances. However, crowding together in run-down housing units and living in cheap neighborhoods were not matters that could be completely resolved by cultural or class solidarity; they were part of a larger systemic pattern of spatial organization dictated by a dominant white society. Puerto Ricans may have persisted through hard times and made ends meet, but they were still living in neighborhoods structured by slumlords who adhered to an order that favored the wealthy and white.

The number of Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park fluctuated greatly from 1950 to 1980. Their population went from being indistinguishably small in 1950 to more than 2,000 in 1960, then doubling to more than 5,000 in 1970. Only after 1980 did the population decline.10 Beginning in the 70s, the process of urban renewal quickly pushed Puerto Ricans out of their homes in Lincoln

Park, which explains the downward trend. Puerto Rican displacement was not simply the result of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but rather a consequence of being set up for failure. Years of social discrimination in Lincoln Park preceded their relocation by urban renewal. As a racial minority heavily outnumbered, they were often harassed by white neighbors.

8 Hernández, “David Hernández video interview and biography.” 9 Modesto Rivera, “Modesto Rivera video interview and biography,” February 7, 2012, Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24604. 10 Fernández, Brown in the Windy City, 177.

7 Puerto Ricans experienced local forms of discrimination immediately after arriving in

Chicago. In 1956, Ada Nivía López and her family migrated from Puerto Rico to the near northside community in Chicago. She remembered the overwhelming struggle of being Puerto

Rican in the city—claiming racism and rejection from the established white community was very overt. As one of two Latinos in a class of about 150 students, she was lectured at the University of Illinois Chicago about how American education is essential to aiding, “culturally deprived groups of people,” which took aim at non-Anglo countries like Puerto Rico.11 Her settlement experience, similar to many new minorities, was heavily shaped by the same racist stereotypes that targeted African Americans for centuries. Another Puerto Rican shared one of his first experiences his with racism in the fifties: “I remember this one time, I went to a tavern with a friend and the owner of the bar refused to serve us. I said to the guy, ‘We want two beers,’ and he said, “We don’t serve niggers here.’ I replied that we were Puerto Ricans and he just said,

‘That’s the same shit.’”12 Despite coming from an entirely different ethnic background than

African-Americans, Puerto Ricans were placed near them on the color line. Racial conflicts between Puerto Ricans and white Chicagoans were seen not just in bars, but across various socioeconomic spaces.

Martha López moved to Lincoln Park near Larrabee Street and Dickens Avenue in 1958.

She remembered being constantly bullied at school by white classmates on account of her Latino heritage. She noted: “They used to beat-up my brothers. I was out front [of the school] waiting

11 Ada López, “Ada Nivía López audio interview and biography,” August 24, 2012, Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24642. 12 Padilla, Puerto Rican Chicago, 59.

8 for them every day so we could get home safely. Practically every day we had to run home.”13

Being chased home after school was one of the common ways white delinquents antagonized

Puerto Rican youths. Another Puerto Rican who moved near Clark and Wisconsin Streets in

1955 expressed frustration over being denied service at white-owned local businesses, such as barber shops.14 These ordinary incidents reflect how Puerto Ricans were racialized by their personal experiences in Lincoln Park. Seemingly mundane activities, such as getting a haircut or attending school, turned into painful experiences. The racism against minorities was so strong that violent encounters with white neighbors became commonplace.

Three separate instances of deadly arson targeted Puerto Rican housing near southwest

Lincoln Park between 1954 and 1955. The Puerto Rican residents suspected local white youths, who had referred to them as “colored” ever since they moved in, were behind the attack.15

Numerous Puerto Ricans cited getting picked on at school, harassed at local sporting events, beaten-up in the streets, and having their homes vandalized and attacked as examples of white hostility in Lincoln Park. Similar encounters occurred all over Chicago, such as when two Puerto

Ricans were chased out of a public park by a white mob. One of the mob members interviewed afterwards claimed, “We don’t want Negroes in our park.”16

13 Martha López, “Martha López video interview and biography,” March 30, 2012, Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24575. 14 David Hernández. “David Hernández video interview and biography,” Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24551. 15 Andrew J. Diamond. Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969, (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009), 198. 16 Bill Van Alstine. 1966. "Puerto Ricans March, Present Demands." Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), Jun 29, 1. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search- proquestcom.flagship.luc.edu/docview/494229667?accountid=12163.

9 Even public spaces meant for leisure were thus turned into de facto ‘white only’ zones.

Such blatant acts of racism were nothing new for ethnic minorities in Chicago and, as historian

Andrew Diamond argues, “violent actions perpetuated by white groups elicited reactions by those perceived as being on the other side of the color line.”17 Puerto Ricans came to Chicago much later than most major migrant groups, but their experiences reflected a continuum of minority oppression in America. Following the pattern of Irish, Mexican, and African American youth sub-cultures, Puerto Rican youths quickly established their own gangs to defend themselves against racial aggression inflicted by whites on the streets and in public spaces.

The Young Lords and other gangs on the northside of Chicago, such as the Latino

Paradigms and white Roma Boys, initially organized in the mid-twentieth century as ‘social clubs.’ The YMCA, along with the Chicago Area Project, helped organize these youth groups in an attempt to prevent juvenile delinquency. The YMCA assigned each social club a social worker advisor, hosted athletic programs, such as basketball tournaments, helped draft club rules and elect officers, and donated money for club sweaters. In the Arnold Upper Grade Center, in what is now Lincoln Park High School near West Armitage Avenue and North Orchard Street, seven Young Lords held many of their first meetings with a social worker from the YMCA.18

Each social club had their own distinct identities, which included sweaters as uniforms.

Donning black sweaters with a single purple stripe and purple berets, partly inspired by the purple wearing Puerto Rican ‘Sharks’ gang from the musical Westside Story, the Young Lords simultaneously asserted themselves in street fights with white gangs and participated in local

17 Diamond, Mean Streets, 7. 18 Angel del Rivero, “Angel “Sal” del Rivero video interview and biography, interview 1,” Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University, https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24606.

10 YMCA social and athletic events.19 The YMCA’s efforts to prevent delinquency were doubtlessly well-intended, but, as Young Lords founder Angel “Sal” del Rivero explained, “it in fact didn’t do away with any of the gang activity, […] it intensified the hatred between these groups.” One of the fundamental flaws in the YMCA’s approach was that it did not integrate youth groups. Instead, each social club remained largely segregated and developed based on racialized ideas of identity.20 Gang activity and conflict between youth groups therefore persisted outside of YMCA sponsored events and fostered the Young Lords’ aggressive approach towards countering racial hostility.

The Young Lords maintained their status as a street gang for the first half of the 1960s to defend Puerto Rican pride and safety in the Lincoln Park community. Original gang member

Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez recalled being constantly picked on and chased home from school by white youths. After the Young Lords were created, he was eager to get back at his white aggressors: “We now wanted to chase those who originally harassed us. It was like calling them out ‘come on, and let’s fight here… let’s see how bad you are.”21 Two of the white gangs the

Young Lords frequently clashed with for access to parks, street corners, restaurants, and beaches were the Roma Boys and the Dayton Street Boys. For instance, the Young Lords successfully won Puerto Rican youth access to North Avenue Beach and Fullerton Beach through a series of fights with these rival gangs. These fights were not simply criminal activity. Instead, as historian

19 Michael Robert Gonzalez, "Ruffians and Revolutionaries: The Development of the Young Lords Organization in Chicago," 2015, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Theses and Dissertations. 807, 6. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/807 20 Angel del Rivero, “Angel “Sal” del Rivero,” https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24606. 21 "The Young Lords, Puerto Rican Liberation, and the Black Freedom Struggle: Interview with Jose ‘Cha Cha’ Jimenez," OAH Magazine Of History 26, no. 1, (January 2012): 61-64. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

11 Michael Gonzales argues, “these fights should be understood as fitting within a broad spectrum of resistance to colonial subjugation among Latinos in Chicago.”22 Many members of the Young

Lords, such as their leader Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenez, remained committed to the gang lifestyle and had frequent run-ins with the law for drug use and assault. However, using force to assert and empower themselves laid an important foundation for combatting white authority in Lincoln

Park.

Despite the disruption caused by the Young Lords in Lincoln Park, the American media preferred to portray as a docile ‘model minority.’ In 1964, the Puerto

Rico’s Migration Division director, William Muniz, estimated “‘about 70 to 75 per cent’ of

Chicago Puerto Ricans live in the North or Northwest sections of the city and get along well with their neighbors.”23 This popular narrative advertised by the media was contrary to the daily reality of most Puerto Ricans. The Young Lords’ fight for access to two major public beaches on the northside of Chicago indicates the existence of their struggle. They may have prevailed in small victories against hostile whites on the streets, but housing discrimination and urban renewal initiatives were well outside the jurisdiction of a turf gang.

Thousands of Puerto Rican families lived in Lincoln Park and the near northside neighborhoods in 1960. The neighborhoods’ high rates of substandard housing units paired with a desirable location just north of downtown and near the lakefront made them easy targets for urban renewal. Instigated by the Federal Housing Act of 1949, urban renewal initiatives planned to redevelop and improve the moral and physical living conditions of cities through, “the elimination of sub-standard and other inadequate housing through the clearance of slums and

22 Gonzales, “Ruffians and Revolutionaries,” 52. 23 "Commonwealth Office Helps Puerto Rican New Arrivals." Chicago Tribune, Aug 27, 1964. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/179554520?accountid=12163.

12 blighted areas.” The end goal was to create, “a decent home and a suitable living environment for every American family.”24 In other words, as historian Arnold Hirsch and others argue, city politics, white community organizations, and real estate developers believed efforts to restore

‘deteriorating,’ low-income areas was necessary to prevent the loss of jobs, businesses, and tax revenue.25

The economic claims of urban renewal were backed by federally funded research, such

Lincoln Park’s General Neighborhood Renewal Plan (GNRP), that focused heavily on the aesthetic and economic benefits of renewal. The GNRP outlined renewal activities and boundaries (Map B), project feasibility, an estimated time table, and analyzed low-income resident relocation. The plan proposed that Lincoln Park undergo four major periods of renewal where the neighborhood’s “areas of blight” were to be torn down and replaced by modern commercial and residential spaces.26 Federal money helped cities purchase “slum property” and wrote down resale prices to make redevelopment more affordable for those investing in redevelopment plans. The money for buying out properties went to the building owners and absentee landlords who ran the low-income residential spaces. Money for clearance went to the private construction companies hired by the city, but the largest benefactors were the real estate investors or companies who purchased the land. Although families driven out by slum clearance were guaranteed sufficient relocation assistance, in practice this gesture was, as historian

24 The Housing Act of 1949, As Amended Through June 1961, 1961 (Public Law 171, 81st Congress), Sec. 2. 25 Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940 – 1960, (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983). 26 Steps in Proceeding with the General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, 1960, Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1863 ; Gonzales, “Ruffians and Revolutionaries,”119-120.

13 Kenneth Fox argues, “largely ineffective.”27 The federal and municipal governments worked together to implement urban renewal all over the United States. Just before coming to Lincoln

Park, redevelopment plans hit Old Town, where many Puerto Ricans were introduced to the adverse effects of urban renewal.

Map B: Department of Urban Renewal, “Boundaries of the Area,” Map in Lincoln Park General Neighborhood Renewal Plan (Chicago: Department of Urban Renewal, 1962), 2-3.

27 Kenneth Fox, Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States 1940- 1980, (New Brunswick, NJ Rutgers University Press, 1985), 96-97.

14 Many large-scale housing and business redevelopments preceded those in Lincoln Park.

The Carl Sandburg Village renewal project, for instance, displaced numerous Puerto Rican families living in the “La Clark” community on Clark Street in the near northside neighborhood.

The four-block long, thirty-four-acre luxury complex received an $8.1 million federal loan and a

$5.2 million capital grant. In 1977, Paul Gapp of the Chicago Tribune described the Carl

Sandburg Village as, “simultaneously a buffer zone, a wall, and a piece of healthy connective tissue in a still potentially vulnerable section of Chicago.” Gapp concluded that the displacement of 854 families, hundreds of whom were Puerto Rican, was, “miniscule compared with the threat of spreading blight.”28 The luxury apartments in the Carl Sandburg Village represented a systematic effort to replace low-income housing with middle to upper-class housing in Chicago’s northside neighborhoods. The massive project provided a taste of how urban renewal benefitted middle- and upper-class Chicagoans, but doomed the low-income residents by displacing them into either worse housing projects, such as the infamous Cabrini-Green Homes, or into other neighborhoods, such as Lincoln Park and Humboldt Park. Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park, which was not even a mile north of the luxury redevelopment, realized urban renewal would soon become a significant part of their lives, whether they liked it or not.

Urban renewal was heavily supported by the middle- and upper-class community in

Lincoln Park. After the Urban Community Conservation Act of 1953, community organizations were allowed to participate in urban renewal plans. Shortly after, the Lincoln Park Conservation

Association (LPCA) was created by a group of residents to actively push for slum clearance. The

LPCA collaborated with six different middle- to upper-class neighborhood organizations

28 Paul Gapp, "Sandburg Village: A Success Story," Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), Sep 18, 1977. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/169579903?accountid=12163.

15 comprised mainly of white homeowners. These associations were motivated by the desire to

‘save’ their neighborhood from its perceived decline since the post-war era, which was roughly the same time Puerto Ricans began renting homes in the neighborhood. In a dramatic speech comparing the neighborhood’s pockets of blight to an enemy of war, LPCA member Paul J.

Holland described urban renewal as, “needed for the health of the community. This is done by acquisition, demolition, and resale… At most, it would require some spot clearance and I am sure you know where the problem areas exist.”29 Larrabee Street and southwest Lincoln Park,

Puerto Rican enclaves, were both listed in the GNRP for redevelopment.30 The same sociopolitical order that provoked white aggression and hostility through social and housing discrimination now labeled poor residents as the producers of blight.

The intentions of the LPCA were on full-display in Holland’s speech and echoed the popular opinion of many of Lincoln Park’s middle- and upper-class residents. In 1960, the city’s

Department of Urban Renewal approved the LPCA’s requests and awarded them a $300,000 grant to create the GNRP, which was approved in 1962. On June 9, 1965, the Federal Housing and Home Finance Agency approved a capital grant of more than $10 million for renewal projects in the area. After the plan was approved by the federal government, a mayoral appointed group called the Lincoln Park Community Conservation Council (LPCCC) was created to oversee renewal efforts. The LPCCC was a council made up of residents tasked to represent the community. They hosted meetings open to the community every six weeks and voted to approve

29 Paul J. Holland, Speech Delivered to Lincoln Park Conservation Association, 1960, Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1860 30 Department of Urban Renewal, Lincoln Park General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, (Chicago, Department of Urban Renewal, 1962), Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1041

16 proposed renewal plans, such as those outlined in the GNRP. There were initially nine council members in the LPCCC; of the nine members, eight were white and one was Latino.31

The LCPA, interestingly, made several small gestures suggesting they were aware of how race and housing discrimination influenced the poor neighborhoods marked for clearance. For instance, one of the “problems” listed in the GNRP as causing deterioration was “the emphasis on ethnic structure.”32 Ethnic spatial patterns were, therefore, recognized by the LPCA. LPCA organizations also made mention of how poor conditions were frequently fostered by a failed adherence to building codes and laws. The president of the Mid-North Association, a community organization that supported the LPCA, argued, “the difficulties of enforcing building and maintenance laws resulted in some illegal and unsafe overcrowding and deterioration of some of our buildings.”33 However, instead of holding the unlawful landlords accountable—by regulating the construction of shoddy kitchenette units and ensuring they fix structural problems when asked—or attempting to build affordable and integrated housing, the LPCA believed tearing down and rebuilding blighted areas was the best solution. This “solution” was tied to the fact that

LPCA members and supporters, who were primarily home owners, would benefit from raised property values after renewal.

By the mid-1960s, Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park grew anxious and feared displacement.

While the LPCA and its supporters had only excitement for the renewal plans, Puerto Ricans all asked themselves a similar question: “Where would we go if we have to leave, and why should

31 Brian C. Mullgardt, ""Don't come to Chicago...:" The Events Surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention as Experienced by Chicago Residents," (2008). University of Connecticut Doctoral Dissertations. AAI3304543, 28, http://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/AAI3304543 32 Department of Urban Renewal, Lincoln Park General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, 52. 33 Mullgardt, ""Don't come to Chicago,” 30.

17 we have to keep moving while other people stay?”34 “Cha Cha” Jimenez’s mother, Eugenia

Rodriguez, was one of the many Puerto Ricans forced to move out of the “La Clark” neighborhood due to the Carl Sandburg Village project. She settled in Lincoln Park after being forced out of Old Town and was outraged when redevelopers in Lincoln Park more than doubled her monthly rent from $140 to $300.35 However, urban renewal in Lincoln Park would not occur as quickly and smoothly as it did in Old Town, as it prompted serious resistance from local residents.

Puerto Ricans were not alone in their frustration with the plans to replace their parts of the neighborhood with middle- and upper-class attractions, such as a new private tennis club and upper-class units. Notable organizations of made up of progressive middle-class white residents sympathized with the poor residents, some of which include the Concerned Citizens of Lincoln

Park (CCLP) and the Neighborhood Commons Corporation (NCC). For instance, the Concerned

Citizens sent a letter to the LPCA in 1966 writing that they were, “deeply shocked at the failure of the Lincoln Park Conservation Association to provide any provision of housing for low- income residents.”36 Richard Brown, a member of the NCC and later member of the LPCCC, similarly expressed concerns about the lack of representation poor residents had in renewal planning. After his comments were brushed aside by the council members at a LPCCC meeting, he proclaimed, “The [LP]CCC is concerned with profit and not people. […] What we want is housing for working-class people, low-rise, low-rent housing.”37 These efforts to advocate for

34 Padilla. Puerto Rican Chicago. 120. 35 Fernández, Brown in the Windy City, 184. 36 Brian Mullgardt, “Don't Come to Chicago,” 69. 37 “Fight Today at Lincoln Park Meeting,” Chicago Today, July 30, 1969. Box 386, Folder 259F- 2, Red Squad Collection, Chicago History Museum Archives and Manuscripts.

18 those at risk of relocation played an important role in the Puerto Rican resistance to urban renewal.

Richard Brown invited “Cha Cha” Jimenez to a LPCCC meeting in late 1968. At the meeting, Jimenez was shocked to find out the council meeting was full of middle- and upper- class home owners and no poor residents. “I asked why there was no one from the community, and they said it was hard to get people to come…I told Dick Vision and Pat Devine [two white residents who opposed renewal] to find out when the next meeting was and I would get some people to come.”38 The fight against renewal reached new heights when Puerto Ricans decided to take matters into their own hands. Building off of their foundation as a disruptive turf gang in the early to mid 60s, the Puerto Rican Young Lords legitimized themselves into a community organization to fight against the institutional, top-down injustices of urban renewal.

Lincoln Park’s Puerto Rican turf gang rebranded themselves as the Young Lords

Organization (YLO) in 1968. They followed the structure of Huey Newton and Bobby Seale in their establishment of the (BPP)—using the principles of socialism, self- determination, and social-justice to combat institutional racism. They outlined their party platform in thirteen points, reminiscent of the BPP’s Ten-Point Program. Historian Andrew

Diamond argues a parallel existed between black and Puerto Rican struggles rooted in racial frustration with the “white power structure.”39 While this is an important point, one must be careful not to oversimplify the similarities between the black and Puerto Rican struggles.

The YLO the BPP may have both been motivated to fight against racial injustices enacted by the same white power structure, but the connections between the Puerto Rican and African

American experiences are not entirely similar. The Puerto Rican struggle in America was only

38 Gonzales, “Ruffians and Revolutionaries,” 124. 39 Diamond, Mean Streets, 296.

19 decades, not centuries, old. The YLO may have used the BPP as a template, but they primarily gathered inspiration from their own ethnic roots and experiences in the white-dominated streets of Lincoln Park. They also turned to their Puerto Rican roots and frequently marched to protest the American colonization of Puerto Rico. To brand themselves, they made their public motto

“Tengo Puerto Rico en Mi Corazon (I Have Puerto Rican in My Heart).” The Young Lords continued operating in the streets of Lincoln Park, but extended their reach and purposes beyond self-protection. The YLO’s efforts also quickly received invaluable support from white neighborhood organizations, such as the CCLP, NCC, and the Armitage Methodist Church.

The YLO established their headquarters in the basement of Armitage Methodist Church near Armitage and Dayton Streets. They renamed it the People’s Church in 1968 with the support of the head pastor, Reverend Bruce Johnson, and several white congregants. Shortly after occupying the church, they began providing free social services, creating a health clinic, a day- care center, and a youth breakfast program. The free health clinic was a particularly effective program and functioned with the help of progressive doctors, medical students, and nurses who volunteered on Saturdays to assist low-income patients.40 Several organizations, including the

Mid-North Association and the Sheffield Neighborhood Association, affiliated with the LPCA were outraged by the YLO’s activities. For instance, one member of the LPCA was interviewed by the Chicago Tribune for an article that claimed Lincoln Park’s “residents have been living in terror,” ever since the YLO took over Armitage Methodist. 41

Members and organizations affiliated with the LPCA passed around petitions and wrote letters to pressure Lincoln Park’s alderman, G. Barr McCutcheon, to prohibit the YLO from

40 Fernández. Brown in the Windy City. 193. 41 "Young Lord Terror in Lincoln Park Told," Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), December 8, 1969, 1. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/168950996?accountid=12163.

20 meeting in the neighborhood. McCutcheon heard their complaints and wrote a letter to the

Methodist Church of the Northern Illinois Conference, which oversaw all Methodist church activity in Chicago. The alderman was attempting to get the YLO evicted from the People’s

Church. However, after the superintendent of the Northern Illinois Conference consulted with

Johnson, he shut down the alderman’s complaints and wrote back that he believed, “this ministry to the Young Lords Youth Organization, endorsed by the proper local church officials of the

Armitage Avenue United Methodist Church is being engaged in creatively and democratically.”42 The failed attempt to evict the YLO from their headquarters reveals not only how they received invaluable support from white neighbors, such as Reverend Bruce Johnson, but also how LCPA organizations began to view the group as a threat to the sociopolitical order of Lincoln Park.

The YLO began protesting at LPCCC meetings in January of 1969 to voice their concerns over the council’s plan to allot only fifteen percent, the minimum legal amount, of housing units for the low-income families at risk of removal on a redevelopment site off of

Larrabee Street. At-risk residents on Larrabee Street had previously voiced their own frustrations with the LPCA’s plan and even legitimized their concerns by organizing the Larrabee Street

Neighborhood Improvement Association (LSNIA), which had more than two-hundred members.

Members of the LSNIA expressed their frustration at several LPCCC meetings and wrote numerous letters to Chicago’s Department of Urban Renewal expressing concern. On June 21,

1965, the LSNIA’s president, Harley Budd, even presented a detailed alternative redevelopment

42 Carl G. Mettling, To Whom It May Concern, September 22, 1969, Letter from Northern Illinois Conference of Methodist Church, Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/48

21 proposal to the LPCCC. However, the LPCCC ignored all of their pleas.43 The YLO initially took a relatively peaceful approach as well. They presented a detailed alternative to the fifteen percent proposal where forty percent of the new housing units on Larrabee would be dedicated to low-income family housing. Unfortunately, the council did not budge. With no other diplomatic route to take, the Young Lords began interrupting every LPCCC meeting in 1969, refusing to let them proceed until the council revised their plan. They also demanded more Latino or black residents be placed on the council to represent residents up for relocation.

After a month of protests, Felix Silva, the only Latino member on the LPCCC, resigned out of shame and publically supported the YLO. He agreed there was not sufficient representation for poor residents within the LPCCC and wrote: “The poor of the area deserve better treatment than this. They should have greater share in the decisions which are affecting their families and lives.”44 The YLO continued their protests throughout the year and resorted to aggression and obstruction as a way to assert themselves at the council meetings. LPCCC member Peter Bauer wrote a letter to his fellow members of the Mid-North Association, of whom he was formerly president of, after the YLO had completely shut down a LPCCC meeting.

He stated: “I don’t believe any of us [at the meeting] could have spoken without risk of immediate physical assault, and I, for one, was scared to do so.”45 The YLO protests subsequently delayed the LPCCC’s approval of the fifteen percent proposal for months. Despite their efforts, the plan was eventually passed by the Department of Urban Renewal in February of

43 Harley A. Budd, Larrabee Street Neighborhood Association to Chicago City Council, June 21, 1965. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/40 44 Felix Silva, “Latin Resigns from C.C.C.” Lincoln Park Press 2, no. 2 (March 1969): 2, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/125 45 Peter A. Bauer, Letter to Mid-North Association, August 4, 1969, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1488

22 1970. When the decision was announced at a community meeting, several Young Lords attempted to storm the stage, but were held back by the police.46

The YLO’s efforts to revise the Larrabee proposal failed, but their actions reflected an important transition in the politicization of Puerto Ricans in Chicago. The YLO was continuing to defend their “turf,” only now they were up against more than hostile white youths. The millions of federal dollars allocated towards Lincoln Park’s redevelopment were invested in the idea that the thousands of low-income residents designated for relocation were to blame for the decay of homes they rented. However, the YLO were unwilling to accept such a naïve explanation of their own struggles. They knew they had no other option but to radicalized themselves and obstruct the sociopolitical order if their demands were ever to be taken seriously.

As one Young Lord wrote, “Control and power must be won by the people thru force – the rich will never give up anything peacefully.”47 Although their aggressive and persistent tactics did not always yield success, their tactics achieved more than if they had sat idly by.

In May of 1969, the McCormick Theological Seminary was under pressure from the

YLO to reconsider their support of a renewal plan set to replace low-income housing units with middle- and upper-class units. The YLO had recently expanded its company by uniting with other local groups, such as the predominantly white CCLP and Young Patriots, to form the Poor

People’s Coalition (PPC). The PPC presented the seminary with a list of ten demands catering to the needs of poor residents, which included a donation of $600,000 for low-income housing.

After weeks of being pushed aside and denied face-to-face meetings with the executive committee of McCormick Seminary, members of the YLO decided to take action.

46 Browning, “From Rumble to Revolution,” 21. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/135 47 “McCormick Take Over,” Young Lords Organization 1, no. 2 (May 1969): 15. DePaul University Library. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/35

23 At midnight on May 14, about sixty members of the PPC occupied McCormick

Seminary’s brand-new building off of Halsted and Fullerton. Several Young Lords situated themselves along the building’s entrances and acted as a security team, using walkie-talkies to communicate back and forth.48 Hundreds more joined the next day, even a few of the seminarians from McCormick, and helped barricade the seminary doors as a press conference was held inside to voice frustrations. The take-over of McCormick Seminary was covered by almost all of Chicago’s major newspapers, including the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-

Times. Severe public pressure and the YLO’s threat to burn down the McCormick library eventually broke the McCormick administrators. After five days of occupying the building,

McCormick administrators agreed to meet several of the PPC’s demands, including publically supporting the PPC, the $600,000 donation for low-income housing, a children’s center, and

$25,000 for a free health clinic.49 The Chicago Tribune reported that the seminary’s president,

Dr. Arthur McKay, “termed the demands as genuine and said that seminary shares the concern of the sit-in leaders with the plight of the poor.”50 Although it is unclear how much of the $600,000 donation was actually delivered, McCormick followed through on enough of the demands to label the take-over as a victory.

The take-over of McCormick Seminary revealed how the YLO’s aggressive methods achieved some success that was otherwise absent. While the public labeled them as violent, a deeper analysis indicates that effective is a more appropriate term to describe the group. The

McCormick take-over was not senseless, but carefully executed and only occurred after the

48 Ibid., 4; Browning, “From Rumble to Revolution,” 20. 49 Gonzales, “Ruffians and Revolutionaries,” 128. 50 " Five-Day Sit-In at McCormick Seminary Ends,” Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), May 19, 1969, 7. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/168919513?accountid=12163.

24 seminary’s refusal to hear the poor residents out. Despite the momentum gathered from the

McCormick take-over, the YLO rapidly declined in 1970. The Chicago Police Department targeted them as a radical leftist organization that needed to be silenced. The YLO’s violent past and intensified relationship with the police ended in arrest for several key YLO members. For instance, the YLO’s leader “Cha Cha” Jimenez was arrested and sentenced to a year in prison for stealing fifty dollars-worth of lumber and refusing to comply with his arrest. Chicago Reverend

Gerald Watt’s response to the arrest encapsulated the reaction of many: “Even under primitive man’s law of ‘an eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth,’ how, in today’s society, can a man be put away for a year for stealing a pile of wood?”51

Many elements of the YLO’s history and legacy deserve credit. For instance, several original Young Lords and PPC members, including “Cha Cha” Jimenez, were key campaigners for Chicago’s first black mayor, . The YLO also went national and opened up a New York branch under a revised name, the Young Lords Party. The YLO in Lincoln Park, therefore, initiated a powerful shift towards political activism for Puerto Ricans across America.

They protested a variety of issues that went beyond Chicago’s borders, gaining national attention for protesting the Vietnam War and colonialism in Puerto Rico.52

Although their scope and influence was broadened, the YLO was originally founded to combat systemic issues in Lincoln Park. Their escalation from a street gang to a legitimate community organization was in conjunction with the rise of institutional racism justified by urban renewal initiatives. Young Lord Angie Navedo recalled how housing discrimination and urban renewal were at the core of their transition into political organization: “The change for us

51 “Theft’s Harsh Sentence,” Chicago Sun-Times, August 6, 1970, Box 304, Red Squad Collection, Chicago History Museum Archives and Manuscripts. 52 Diamond, Mean Streets, 310.

25 wasn’t really theory. The change for us was reality. We lived through urban renewal…The housing issue really made us become a political organization…It was survival.”53 The lived experiences of Puerto Ricans, therefore, elicited the formation of the YLO out of a struggle to survive in urban America. Through close observation of their own local history of oppression and subjection to Chicago’s white power structure, it is clear that Puerto Ricans grew tired of being pushed around and realized if they were to be heard, they needed to be loud.

Bibliography

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53 Fernández, Brown in the Windy City, 193.

26 Bauer, Peter A. Letter to Mid-North Association. August 4, 1969. Digital Collections. DePaul University Archives. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1488

Browning, Frank. “From Rumble to Revolution: The Young Lords.” Ramparts Magazine, October 1970, 19-25. Digital Collections. DePaul University Archives. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/135

Budd, Harley A. Larrabee Street Neighborhood Association to Chicago City Council, June 21, 1965. Digital Collections. DePaul University Archives. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/40

Chicago Factbook Consortium. Local Community Fact Book: Chicago’s Metropolitan Area 1960. Chicago, IL University of Chicago Press. 1963.

"Commonwealth Office Helps Puerto Rican New Arrivals." 1964. Chicago Tribune (1963- Current File), Aug 27, 1-w9. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/179554520?accountid=12163.

Department of Urban Renewal. Lincoln Park General Neighborhood Renewal Plan. Chicago, Department of Urban Renewal. 1962. Digital Collections. DePaul University Archives. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1041

“Fight Today at Lincoln Park Meeting.” Chicago Today, July 30, 1969. Box 386, Folder 259F-2. Red Squad Collection Chicago History Museum Archives and Manuscripts.

“Five-Day Sit-In at McCormick Seminary Ends." 1969. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), May 19, 7. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/168919513?accountid=12163.

Gapp, Paul. 1977. "Sandburg Village: A Success Story." Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), Sep 18, 2-a1. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/169579903?accountid=12163.

Hernández, David. “David Hernández video interview and biograph.” Digital Collections. Grand Valley State University. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24551.

Holland, Paul J. “Speech Delivered to Lincoln Park Conservation Association.” 1960. Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1860

Kitagawa, Evelyn and Taeuber, Karl E. Local Community Fact Book: Chicago’s Metropolitan Area. (Chicago 1960).

López, Ada. “Ada Nivía López audio interview and biography.” Digital Collections. Grand Valley State University. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24642.

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López, Martha. “Martha López video interview and biography.” March 30, 2012, Digital Collections. Grand Valley State University. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24575.

“McCormick Take Over,” Young Lords Organization 1, no. 2 (May 1969): 15. DePaul University Library. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/35

Mettling, Carl G. To Whom It May Concern, September 22, 1969. Letter from Northern Illinois Conference of Methodist Church. Digital Collections. DePaul University Archives. http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/48

Rivera, Modesto. “Modesto Rivera video interview and biography.” February 7, 2012. Digital Collections. Grand Valley State University. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24604.

Rivero, Angel del. “Angel “Sal” del Rivero video interview and biography, interview 1.” Digital Collections, Grand Valley State University. https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/document/24606.

Silva, Felix. “Latin Resigns from C.C.C.” Lincoln Park Press 2, no. 2 (March 1969): 2, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/younglords/id/125

Steps in Proceeding with the General Neighborhood Renewal Plan, 1960, Digital Collections, DePaul University Archives, http://digicol.lib.depaul.edu/cdm/ref/collection/lpnc6/id/1863

“Theft’s Harsh Sentence.” Chicago Sun-Times. August 6, 1970. Box 304. Red Squad Collection. Chicago History Museum Archives and Manuscripts.

“The Harsh New World of Our Puerto Ricans.” 1963. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current file), Nov 24, 1963. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/179331442?accountid=12163

The Housing Act of 1949, As Amended Through June 1961, 1961 (Public Law 171, 81st Congress), Sec. 2.

"The Young Lords, Puerto Rican Liberation, and the Black Freedom Struggle: Interview with Jose ‘Cha Cha’ Jimenez." OAH Magazine of History 26, no. 1. (January 2012): 61- 64. Academic Search Complete, EBSCOhost.

Van Alstine, Bill. 1966. "Puerto Ricans March, Present Demands." Chicago Daily Defender (Daily Edition) (1960-1973), Jun 29, 1. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search- proquestcom.flagship.luc.edu/docview/494229667?accountid=12163.

28 "Young Lord Terror in Lincoln Park Told." 1969. Chicago Tribune (1963-Current File), Dec 08, 1. http://flagship.luc.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.flagship.luc.edu/docview/168950996?accountid=12163.

Secondary Sources:

Diamond, Andrew J. Mean Streets: Chicago Youths and the Everyday Struggle for Empowerment in the Multiracial City, 1908-1969. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2009.

Fernández, Lilia. Brown in the Windy City: Mexicans and Puerto Ricans in Postwar Chicago. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.

Fox, Kenneth. Metropolitan America: Urban Life and Urban Policy in the United States 1940- 1980. New Brunswick, NJ Rutgers University Press, 1985.

Gonzales, Michael Robert. "Ruffians and Revolutionaries: The Development of the Young Lords Organization in Chicago" (2015). Theses and Dissertations. https://dc.uwm.edu/etd/807

Hirsch, Arnold R. Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago, 1940 – 1960. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983.

Mullgardt, Brian C. ""Don't come to Chicago...:" The events surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention as experienced by Chicago residents" (2008). Doctoral Dissertations. AAI3304543. http://opencommons.uconn.edu/dissertations/AAI3304543

Padilla, Felix M. Puerto Rican Chicago. Notre Dame, IN : University of Notre Dame Press, 1987.

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