- [Narrator] Coming up... - During those years, the world was on fire.

(dramatic music) (crowds chanting) - [Narrator] In the turbulent streets of 1960 Chicago, a fierce struggle unfolded.

- They were driving us out.

They didn't want us.

They're killing us.

They literally want to kill us.

- [Narrator] On one side, the power.

- The city of Chicago, in effect, the federal government, was about to devastate their community.

- [Narrator] On the other side, the people.

- It was a perfect storm.

Communities were ripe for rebellion.

- They were a gang that turned into a political organization.

The first to do that.

- [Narrator] They called themselves the Young Lords.

Led by an 18-year-old Puerto Rican with a lengthy rap sheet, Jose "Cha Cha" Jiménez.

- [Melisa Jiménez] When my father left jail, he was ready for a revolution.

- They took a stand and said no, and that changed American history.

- [Narrator] "The Young Lords of Lincoln Park," next, on "Chicago Stories."

(melodious music) (suspenseful music) On May 15th, 1969, a group of teenage gang members were looking for trouble in Chicago's Lincoln Park neighborhood.

- I remember climbing the fence.

And we went into the building.

We barricaded ourselves in.

- [Felipe Hinojosa] They set up people across the building, at all of the doors.

- [Jose "Cha Cha" Jiménez] We broke in and chained the doors, and took it over.

(dramatic music) - [Narrator] But the intent of this takeover wasn't criminal.

The group, the Young Lords, was there to fight for social justice for the Puerto Rican community.

- The Young Lords, which later became the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party, was the first Latino youth resistance movement of the 1960s.

(melodious music) - To understand the Young Lords, you really have to understand the history of Lincoln Park and the history of the neighborhood.

- [Narrator] Lincoln Park today, is a high class bastion of wealth, luxury, and privilege.

One of the most affluent neighborhoods in Illinois.

- The streets are lined with, you know, multimillion dollar homes, lots of fancy shops and boutiques.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] But it wasn't always that way.

In the 1940s and early 1950s, Lincoln Park was home to a diverse population of poor people, mainly ethnic whites.

Then, Puerto Ricans started arriving.

- [Lilia Fernandez] There was widespread poverty and unemployment in Puerto Rico, and many people were coming to the mainland to look for work.

- [Johanna Fernandez] We're talking about a third of the people of the island.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Before 1946, there were fewer than 500 Puerto Ricans living in Chicago.

Over the next decade, that number would jump to more than 30,000.

David Rivera arrived at age 5.

- My family flew into Chicago, 'cause I remember as a little tiny kid, looking at this big car and looking at all the big buildings as we drove to where we were going.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] The Riveras landed in an apartment building on Dayton Street in Lincoln Park, and young David quickly found a friend who lived upstairs, named Jose "Cha Cha" Jiménez.

- We just became friends automatically.

You know, two kids.

Cha Cha and I hit it off right away.

We were a group of kids, you know, we used to get together in the back alleys and play all kinds of games.

- [Narrator] Rivera couldn't have known that within a few years, his friend Cha Cha Jiménez would rise up to become a revolutionary leader.

In this 2012 interview, Cha Cha remembers the Lincoln Park of his childhood.

- The Lincoln Park neighborhood was an ethnic community, was a very segregated community, Polish people, or Italian people, or German people, gypsies, hillbillies, and Puerto Ricans.

And so we were the new kids on the block at that time.

- Lincoln Park is the place where they're introduced to what it means to be an American, and they themselves are engaging in that process.

- [David Rivera] We used to play war a lot.

Our heroes were the TV shows, "Davy Crockett."

- [Narrator] Though influenced by mainstream American culture, the boys were surrounded by a growing number of Puerto Ricans who were establishing a sense of their homeland in Lincoln Park.

But it hadn't been easy.

When Puerto Ricans first arrived, many settled in a near north slum, nicknamed La Clark.

Cha Cha Jiménez's family landed there when he was 4 years old.

- La Clark was a skid row neighborhood, with dilapidated buildings and dive bars.

The neighborhood was poor and working class, but it was vibrant, and it was home.

- [Narrator] But they wouldn't live in La Clarke for long.

- The city had essentially decided that this was an eyesore because it was too close to the Gold Coast.

(building crashing) - [Narrator] Mayor Richard J. Daley was promoting urban renewal, replacing slums with luxury housing, and his crown jewel was in the works.

Named for the famous poet, Carl Sandburg Village was heralded by developers as a village within the city.

- The Carl Sandburg Village, eventually, there'll be 1,875 dwelling units in this village.

- Cha Cha Jiménez and his family are literally in the path of the wrecking ball.

- [Narrator] The tight knit barrio the Jiménez's was called home was destroyed almost overnight.

- [Reporter] The clearance of slum and blight is impressive, and the results are outstanding.

(crane rumbling) - [Narrator] Daley's promotional film failed to mention the human cost.

More than 900 Puerto Rican families were forced out.

- Instead of the city welcoming the new immigrants in, what they were doing was to displace them and just push 'em to another neighborhood.

So urban renewal became urban removal of poor people.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Chicago's Puerto Ricans spent the next several years relocating from one neighborhood to the next as bulldozers dug at their heels.

Cha Cha's family moved nine times in their first six years.

- They would travel in families.

They would find out what landlords were willing to rent to Puerto Rican families.

- [Narrator] By the mid-50s, hundreds of Puerto Rican families had made their way north to Lincoln Park, and a vibrant enclave finally took root.

- There were so many resources for Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park.

Everybody had a sense that, yes, this was where the Puerto Rican community could very well thrive.

(cheerful music) - Puerto Ricans would have been playing mambo.

They would have flown the Puerto Rican flag.

- If you walked into my mother's house, you would eat Puerto Rican food.

There was a man in the corner of Sheffield and Armitage, and he would make piraguas, snow cones, ice cones, just like they were like from Puerto Rico.

- There's a broader process of coming to Lincoln Park, being transformed by the kinds of diversity in the neighborhood, and then also contributing to that in terms of the cooking, the food, the music.

(cheerful music) Puerto Ricans are recreating a sense of home here in the frigid Midwest.

- They were committed to culture.

They were creating the social fabric that allowed them to live their lives as Puerto Ricans within the diaspora.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Like many of his peers, Cha Cha Jiménez was raised by a devout Catholic mother.

His daughter says this upbringing influenced his future dreams.

- He was in Catholic school, sixth, seventh, and eighth grade, and wanted to be a priest.

He helped his mother set up the rosary every night.

- He really thought that his destiny was to be a priest.

And on the other hand, you had these pressures of the neighborhood.

- [Narrator] Some white residents who inhabited the area looked down on their new neighbors, and Puerto Ricans found themselves targets of racial hostility by established white gangs.

Although they were US citizens, many viewed them as unwelcome outsiders.

- There was an enormous amount of resentment against their presence.

- We were made fun of from the kids 'cause my mother would fix our hair different.

We did not know how to speak English.

- We were, quote unquote, Spics, because that's what they called us back then.

- [Resident] Well, we've got a lot of undesirables, trouble-making people here, that I think in time will move on.

- [Narrator] In this audio interview, legendary Chicago writer and broadcaster, Studs Terkel, captured a white Lincoln Park resident's feelings about Puerto Ricans in the neighborhood.

- [Resident] They're like some of the roaches that crawl out of the woodwork, you know?

After you exterminate, they're gone.

And I think that'll happen.

- [Narrator] Even Jiménez's nickname was born from a racial slight.

- That's what the white ethnic gangs deridingly called him.

"Oh, who's this guy?

Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha.

The cha-cha-cha."

And his peers picked up on it, and the name stuck, "Cha Cha."

- [Narrator] From an early age, Cha Cha had no qualms about fighting back when he got picked on.

- I think being from the street, always fighting for your spot and watching it constantly being taken from you, it develops that fight.

- You're meeting with folks who see you as the problem, who see Puerto Ricans as responsible for the decay of the neighborhood.

And so they're being targeted in many ways, and these kids have to grow up, in a way, defending themselves.

- We're getting beat up on the way to school, by the white gangs.

Sometimes we would even hide sticks and rocks along the way home, in case we got chased.

It was rough.

- And so we saw a need to begin our own gang for protection.

- [Narrator] Around 11 years old, Cha Cha Jiménez and several friends banded together to form a gang.

But in those days, it was more of a social club.

They called themselves the Young Lords.

- We not only rumbled, we actually played sports, we played baseball, and softball, and things like that with other clubs.

The Young Lords were only 12, 13, 14 years old.

- They emerged in 1959, really as a force to solidify the space for Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park.

Where you could go, where you couldn't go.

This is our territory, this is where we belong.

- [Narrator] Soon, the Young Lords would see their own lives mirrored on the silver screen.

In October of 1961, the Hollywood smash hit "West Side Story" debuted in theaters across the country.

- Baited.

- "West Side Story" captures the battles between a Puerto Rican and white ethnic gangs.

And even though the film trafficked in Puerto Rican stereotypes, it gave them a profound sense of pride, that their story was worthy of being told.

- [Narrator] The Young Lords modeled themselves after their onscreen counterparts, The Sharks.

- Okay, fair fight.

- Wait a minute.

The commanders say yes or no.

- And that's where we got our black and purple colors.

It made us proud.

They did a good job in making all those white people look Puerto Rican.

We didn't know it back then.

Later on, we found out.

- [Narrator] But for the Young Lords, there was no Hollywood ending.

The animosity and racial bias toward Puerto Ricans extended into law enforcement, who regularly targeted them for harassment, and worse.

- Puerto Ricans experienced humiliation and indignity at the hands of the police.

- The police was always harassing young people, stopping them on the streets, frisking them, beating them up.

- You know, everybody that's dark, or Puerto Rican, or Latino, is not a criminal.

And that's how we were treated.

- I remember being handcuffed for sitting on the fire hydrant.

They were pulling laws that were in effect, a hundred years and never used, like spitting on the sidewalk.

- [Narrator] By their mid-teens, the Young Lords were sinking deeper into gang life.

- They stole cars, they got into fights, they tagged walls.

They did things that we associate with gang activities.

- [Narrator] Beginning in the summer of 1963, Cha Cha Jiménez was in and out of jail, for charges ranging from petty theft to aggravated assault.

- Cha Cha was a little more aggressive.

He didn't care, if he had a knife in his hand, he would use it, you know?

- [Narrator] While Cha Cha and his teen gang acted out in the streets, many older Puerto Ricans pushed within the system for inclusion and acceptance.

(cheerful music) In 1966, their efforts finally paid off.

The city's first Puerto Rican Day parade, known as El Dia de San Juan, was held downtown on June 12th.

- This was the very first time that the city was recognizing or acknowledging the Puerto Rican population in Chicago.

- The Puerto Rican community had made it, you know, so everybody was out celebrating.

- It felt like you were wanted, to have people that look like you and talk like you, and the food and just the decorations, it was beautiful.

- [Narrator] But the good feelings were short lived.

(crowd chattering) A few hours after the parade, in response to a call about a fight, Chicago police shot a 20-year-old unarmed Puerto Rican man named Arcelis Cruz.

And the day of celebration took a violent turn.

- I remember someone coming over to where we were at, saying that a Puerto Rican boy had gotten shot in the back by a cop.

- When Arcelis Cruz was shot, it was just like a trigger that began the whole rebellion of the youth.

- People started throwing rocks and bricks at the cops, starting fires.

The fire trucks will come, they'll set fire trucks on fire.

- [Omar Lopez] And that was unstoppable because, I mean, it was all... That was all bottled up for years.

- [Narrator] The Division Street Riots marked the largest rebellion ever attributed to the Puerto Rican population.

- We saw three days and three nights of people protesting, rioting, burning buildings and businesses in that neighborhood.

- [Narrator] Many Young Lords took part in the uprising.

The event would mark the beginnings of a dramatic transformation for the group, from thugs to agents of change.

(melodious music) By 1968, Cha Cha's illegal activities had grown to include drug use.

At 19 years old, he was tried as an adult, and sentenced to 60 days in solitary confinement in Cook County Jail, on charges of drug possession.

- I'm in a cell by myself.

I'm on the third level.

It's an old Civil War cell that the catwalk is made outta wood.

There's rats running around.

- [Narrator] To pass the time, Cha Cha began to read books about civil rights activists, including Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.

- And those books awakened a political consciousness in him.

But that was only the beginning.

- I must say that while... - [Narrator] And then came the news on April 4th, 1968.

(gunshots echoing) (police sirens wailing) (tense music) - I was deeply saddened last evening, as all men of goodwill must have been, by the senseless slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King.

- [Narrator] The assassination of Martin Luther King threw the city of Chicago into chaos.

- [News Reporter] 15 police units held back 1,000 rioters while firemen fought the blazes.

(tense music) - [Johanna] People are arrested and funneled into the prison.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha watched as the protestors, mostly poor Blacks, were hauled in en masse, and groups of undocumented Mexican workers who had been rounded up in raids, followed.

(tense music) - He sees that these migrants are being harassed and abused.

They didn't speak English and he translated for them.

- [Narrator] Witnessing the struggle of oppressed people firsthand lit a fire in Cha Cha.

- And all those things kind of contributed to my enlightenment.

And then I started hearing on the news, we had a loud speaker with a radio on, and so I was hearing about the Black Panther Party.

And it was fascinating because to me, they were like an army, and, you know, there were no Latino role models.

And I felt, you know, this is what we need to do in the Puerto Rican community.

- When my father left jail, he was ready for a revolution.

(climactic music) - [Narrator] When Cha Cha Jiménez returned to his Lincoln Park neighborhood, he learned his parents' rent had been doubled, and they faced the bleak prospect of losing their home yet again.

- And all of a sudden, the city of Chicago decides that they need that area.

It's prime real estate.

It's 15 minutes from the Loop downtown.

- [Narrator] The city had big plans for Lincoln Park, and it did not include Puerto Ricans.

Mayor Richard J. Daley was, once again, promoting urban renewal, intent on evicting the poor and people of color from their neighborhood.

- I had just come outta jail, and I had seen the changes in two months.

I mean, you know, you see people get their possessions thrown out on the street.

- That really is the story of the Puerto Rican community, the diaspora here in Chicago.

Just when we start setting in roots, we just get upended, over and over and over again.

- [Narrator] But this time, Puerto Ricans were not going without a fight.

- We didn't have any role models.

We just had to fend for ourselves.

Our parents were being discriminated, but they were quiet and silent.

And we had grown up here, and so we knew we had rights, and we were trying to defend our rights.

- [Narrator] A chance meeting with neighborhood activist Pat Devine introduced Cha Cha to community organizing.

- Cha Cha introduced himself and said, "Well, what are you guys doing?"

And I said, "We're making signs.

Tomorrow night, there's an important meeting, a large section of the Puerto Rican population is scheduled to be removed."

I said, "I'm here to inform people about what's going on."

- So here's this young white woman from Aurora, Illinois, and Cha Cha's like, "Who are you telling me about what's happening in our neighborhood?"

But it was a turning point.

- Something clicked, and so he suddenly puts his whole life into a new context, right?

A new political context.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha Jiménez felt compelled to action, but he knew he couldn't do it alone.

And so the 19-year-old turned to his gang, the Young Lords, imploring them to cease the street fights and crime and take up the mantle of a greater cause.

- [Johanna] He hits the local dive bar where he knows that members of the Young Lords will be hanging out.

- He started talking about what we're gonna do, we're not gonna fight gangs anymore.

They are people like us, they're here because they're oppressed too, they're poor too.

- And they laughed at him.

- When they saw me, they go, "Oh, here he comes again.

There comes that crazy nut trying to talk to us."

I mean, I became obsessed with trying to fight against urban renewal, but I wasn't having too much progress.

In fact, half of the Young Lords quit.

They didn't want anything to do with me anymore.

- [Narrator] But Cha Cha Jiménez wouldn't back down.

Before long, he won over David Rivera and others, like Tony Baez.

- Yeah, he was the kind of leader that inspired the people around him.

Everybody looked up to Cha Cha.

- [Narrator] And 20-year-old Omar Lopez.

- He was soft-spoken, but very persuasive.

He's like a pit bull.

When there's an idea, he will pursue it.

- [Narrator] Unlike most of the other Young Lords, Lopez is Mexican.

- The issues were almost like universal.

If you had to talk about health, if you talked about housing, you know, it's something that affected all Mexicans, Puerto Ricans.

- [Narrator] In September, 1968, Cha Cha officially dissolved the Young Lords street gang, and reestablished them as the Young Lords Organization.

- What's so unique is that they were a gang that turned into a political organization.

The first to do that.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Cha Cha declared the Young Lords to be a socialist organization, whose purpose was to stand up for human rights, fair housing, and an end to police brutality for all Puerto Ricans and oppressed groups, as well as self-determination for the people of Puerto Rico.

An idea reflected in their new slogan.

- "Tengo Puerto Rico en mi Corazon."

I have Puerto Rico in my heart.

No matter where we were at, we were Puerto Ricans, and we were gonna fight for that right.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha was inspired by Fred Hampton, the charismatic leader of the Black Panther Party.

- We've said all power to the people.

All the powers are manifested in the people.

We don't have any peoples whose lives we believe that should be thrown away.

- Cha Cha begins to talk about the Young Lords as the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party.

In this process of transformation, the Young Lords do not have to reinvent the wheel.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha adopted the Panthers' tight organizational structure and militant style.

- They needed affordable housing.

They needed healthcare for everyone.

They needed food in the bellies of the babies.

They needed daycare so the women could go to work.

They needed to know that when they went to work and came home, they still had their home.

- [Narrator] For a group of gang members who were mostly teenage dropouts and criminals, these seemed like lofty goals.

- Cha Cha was having problems convincing all of the membership that the way we need to go is becoming a politically active organization.

(tense music) - [Narrator] A tragic event would change their minds.

(tense music) On the night of May 4th, 1969, several Young Lords, including 22-year-old Manuel Ramos, was celebrating a birthday in Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood on the city's south side.

- Manuel Ramos was a father, he was a brother, he was a friend.

As people described him, soft spoken, just a really good guy.

- There are differing narratives of what exactly happened.

- [Narrator] There was a confrontation outside the party, between Ramos and a white man.

(tense music) Witnesses said the man did not identify himself as off-duty Chicago Police Officer, James Lamb.

- Police officer Lamb opens fire.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Lamb shot Ramos in the face.

He was pronounced dead later that night.

(tense music) - It really is a painful story for a lot of people, because he was beloved and they had been friends for many years.

- [Narrator] The Young Lords were outraged and wanted justice, but Officer Lamb claimed he was acting in self-defense and was never charged.

- I think my first reaction was, "Let's do something about Manuel's death."

You know?

"They can't get away with this."

(tense music) - [Narrator] Instead of resorting to street justice, the Young Lords organized a rally to honor their fallen friend.

- All the membership came out, dressed in black with purple berets.

And I think that the image that was projected right there to the community, was unity.

- [Narrator] But it wasn't just the Young Lords that showed up.

Ramos' death at the hands of a white officer had caught the attention of the Black Panthers and other like-minded activist groups.

More than 2,000 Latinos, Blacks, and whites marched together to Ramos's wake.

- They brought people together from different gangs, elders in the community.

Black mothers, and Puerto Rican mothers, and Mexican mothers descended on that neighborhood and understood their common cause.

- [Narrator] This mass gathering of ordinary people of color in solidarity against police violence became a pivotal moment in civil rights history.

So important, it was memorialized in the 2021 Academy Award-winning movie, "Judas and the Black Messiah."

- [Actor] Well, guess what?

America's on fire right now.

- [Narrator] Depicting the Young Lords and the Black Panthers standing together.

In the wake of the tragedy, Cha Cha formed an unshakeable bond with Fred Hampton.

- Black Panther Party, a lot of people say we are violent.

We are a self-defense organization that believes that the people should be educated on what's going on.

- My dad and Fred Hampton were like brothers, and I think they really inspired each other because of their shared causes and their shared struggles.

- [Narrator] Hampton invited the Young Lords to form a multiracial alliance with the Black Panthers and the Young Patriots, a group of impoverished white Appalachians led by 20-year-old William Fesperman.

Together, they called themselves The Rainbow Coalition.

- Well, I think it speaks to the brilliance of Fred Hampton and Cha Cha Jiménez, that they saw the importance of coalition building.

And coming together around the murder of Manuel Ramos was also a way for the Black Panther Party to see the Young Lords as comrades, as people in the struggle with them.

If they were going to build this movement, they needed to work with each other.

That's the power of The Rainbow Coalition.

- [Narrator] This multiracial organization was a first of its kind, a remarkable feat considering the youth of its leadership.

- Most of them were teenagers and young men.

I think for all of them to be kicked out of their homes and see people close to you being murdered in front of you, my father, in his words, he said, "How could you not fight?"

- [Narrator] The Young Lords used every tactic in the organizer's playbook to grab attention and recruit activists.

Flyers, a newspaper, cultural festivals, protests, meeting disruption, and one particularly risky but effective activity, takeovers.

(melodious music) Presbyterian McCormick Theological Seminary was one of the oldest institutions in Lincoln Park.

It would become the epicenter of a battle that pitted the seminary's plans for development against the needs of the poor community, and would ultimately put the Young Lords on the map as a force of change to be reckoned with.

- According to a study that the seminarians themselves did, they found out that McCormick was really a slum landlord in Lincoln Park.

- [Narrator] On May 6th, 1969, just two days after Manny Ramos' death, the Young Lords staged a protest during the dedication ceremony for the seminary's new $2 million administration building.

- The United Presbyterian Church, USA, had mandated that its institutions direct and contribute 30% of their unrestricted funds to help poor communities.

So this group is demanding that McCormick Seminary pay it $601,000 for mixed income housing, for a Puerto Rican legal aid office, for a medical clinic, for resources for the Lincoln Park community.

- So it was quite a calling on the church, to act on who they say they are.

(tense music) - [Narrator] But the institution rejected every request.

(tense music) It was time for the Young Lords to take dramatic action.

- And we said, you know what?

We can take this building over.

(tense music) - They said, "We just go in and occupy until they decide whether or not they're gonna help us with housing."

And they did.

- It was the seminary students that provided Cha Cha Jiménez and the Young Lords with a layout of the building.

They gave them advice for when to execute the occupation, who would be in the building.

(tense music) - [Narrator] At midnight on May 15th, 1969, the Young Lords stormed the building and chained the doors.

(tense music) - They set up people across the building, at all of the doors, all of the openings, making sure they knew who was coming in and out.

They were there to send a message to McCormick Seminary.

(tense music) - [Narrator] The next morning, the Young Lords' unfurled a banner declaring the occupied site the Manuel Ramos Memorial Building.

Over the next few day and nights, more than 200 community members and activists showed up in support of the Young Lords.

But seminary leaders were not interested in negotiating.

- We will seek a court order compelling those occupying the stone building to remove themselves forthwith.

(tense music) - We heard that they were gonna attack and take us out of there by force, so we all moved into the library.

(tense music) - The seminarians said, you know, the library really holds a very valuable collection of antique biblical documents and books.

- [Narrator] The Young Lords barricaded themselves in the library, among priceless antiquities, and forced their hand.

- So we told 'em, "If you bring in the police, we don't know what's gonna happen in the library."

(tense music) - [Narrator] The tactic worked.

On day five, the seminary relented and agreed to give the Young Lords the $601,000 for low income housing in Lincoln Park, plus $75,000 for cultural programs, healthcare, and a legal aid office.

- This is not just the Young Lords saying, "Here's everything that's wrong with urban renewal."

It was the Young Lords and their coalition stepping up and saying, "Here are the things that are wrong, and these are our solutions."

- Now it went to the next level of seeing where community needs were not being met.

Children going to school hungry, parents not having a place for their kids to be safe while they were at work, a lack of health resources, and the group started trying to meet those needs as best they could.

- [Narrator] Flush with seed money, the Young Lords needed a base of operations for their programs, so they looked to another Lincoln Park religious institution, the Armitage Avenue Methodist Church.

Its pastor, Bruce Johnson, was a progressive church leader.

- Bruce believed that the modern church needed to carry out the principles of the gospel.

Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, provide housing.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha asked Johnson if the Young Lords could use the church to set up free social services for the neighborhood.

Johnson supported the idea, as did many of his congregants, but the church's conservative Cuban members were not interested in communist ideology, and talks broke down.

- One of our heroes was Che Guevara, and these were Cubans that fled Fidel Castro, so there was no harmony between us, you know, from the beginning.

- [Narrator] Emboldened by the success of the seminary takeover and the revolutionary spirit of the times, on June 11th, 1969, the Young Lords marched into the church and announced a takeover.

This time, they were armed, prepared for battle with police.

- And I said, "There's gonna be a bloodbath."

You know, there was weapons there, there's gonna be a blood bath.

And so Reverend Bruce Johnson decided to tell the police that he had given us permission to be there.

- We do not consider it a youth gang, we consider it a viable community organization, and as such, all community organizations with concern for the community at heart, seeks to organize the rest of the community around itself.

- Did you ask the pastor of the church if you could use his church for this purpose?

- The pastors of the church is really in favor of us, he's a sympathizer.

It's just the board members that are not really happy, the board members are not really for us.

- He helped us tremendously by not throwing us out of the church and actually standing behind us.

- Are you planning on taking over other organizations in this area?

- Only when they need to be.

- [Narrator] With a new ally in Pastor Johnson, the Young Lords set up community services at the newly renamed People's Church.

(tense music) - They had a huge banner at the front of the church that says La Iglesia de la Gente, the Church of the People.

And they organized and they used every space of that church to create a health clinic, a daycare center, a food pantry.

- The free healthcare clinic was a very radical project that had a lot of momentum more broadly through the movement, the push for community health clinics, not only here in Chicago, but throughout the country.

- The idea of the breakfast program is really something that the Young Lords borrowed from the Black Panthers, okay?

Because they were like, the model.

- You've already been feeding some children here.

How many have been showing up?

- We've been feeding an average of 45 to 50 children each morning.

- [Narrator] Carmen Flores-Rance was 15 when she started volunteering with the Young Lords' Breakfast program.

- I would try to go there every day.

Whatever I could do, I would help.

The tables were full.

They weren't serving breakfast in the public schools.

These kids would go to school hungry.

So when the word got out, the kids would go over there, eat, and go to school.

It was made with love and everybody chipped in, everybody helped out.

- And they began the childcare center, which was urgently needed.

- Well, we're opening up a daycare center for welfare mothers, mothers that are on welfare that want to work, or just mothers, whether they're on welfare or not, and want to work, you know?

Something like that.

So we take care of the children, we go out... - Everybody was a volunteer, you know?

And a lot of the women played a key role.

- Rather than waiting on city government, or the city of Chicago, or the federal government, or some other outside entity to bring about public health resources, the Young Lords did it themselves.

This is, I think, the magic of the summer of '69.

- [Narrator] Throughout that summer, the Young Lords expanded their outreach and found favor in the community, but still couldn't escape their criminal pasts.

By the fall, Cha Cha was in jail again, this time for bond jumping.

While there, news came that would shock the Young Lords' organization to its core.

(tense music) On a Monday morning in September, a mailman arrived at the Lincoln Park apartment where Pastor Bruce Johnson lived with his wife Eugenia and their three small children.

(tense music) - [Pat Devine] The children were found in the morning by the mailman, wandering right around the door, crying and covered in blood.

(tense music) - Reverend Bruce Johnson was stabbed 17 times, and their two little children opened the door for the mailman and told him... (tense music) And told him that their... That their parents were asleep, that they... That they couldn't get up.

(tense music) - [Narrator] 30-year-old Bruce and 31-year-old Eugenia Johnson had each been stabbed more than a dozen times.

(tense music) - He was such a gentle person, and so was his wife.

There was a lot of rage involved in it.

It was really brutal.

Whoever did it was very angry at them.

- That was the saddest... A very sad time for us.

(tense music) - [Pat] The church was packed, and thousands of people outside, and a funeral march of about 7,000 people, which indicated the support that Bruce and Eugenia had for their boldness and fearlessness, and their actions supporting the Young Lords.

(tense music) - This remains a case that the perpetrators have never been brought to justice.

I think at least in part, it was a sense of folks in the neighborhood that saw the Reverend Bruce and Eugenia Johnson as traitors, as people that took the side of the Puerto Ricans, and the Mexicans, and African Americans in the neighborhood, over white Americans.

- [Narrator] As they grieved, many Young Lords feared they'd be next at the hands of unknown enemies, or even their own government.

- As soon as the Young Lords became politicized, they became the object of police repression and of the FBI.

- [Narrator] The FBI's counterintelligence program, a covert campaign to infiltrate and squash groups deemed subversive, targeted both the Black Panthers and the Young Lords.

- The fact that they were able to ally with the Black Panthers, with the Young Patriots, to create this massive force of resistance is really important.

It's what was the biggest threat to state power structures, to the forces that ultimately tried to really erase this history and to undermine the movement.

- The FBI, the CIA, the Cointelpro, Interpol, at one point they all were involved in trying to bring us down.

- It was a 24-hour a day surveillance.

- [Narrator] The FBI's counterintelligence tactics were abusive and growing increasingly aggressive towards activist groups.

And Fred Hampton, the Rainbow Coalition founder and Black Panther leader, was right in the agency's crosshairs.

(tense music) In the early morning hours of December 4th, 1969, heavily armed police stormed Hampton's Chicago apartment and sprayed at least 90 bullets from submachine guns.

(tense music) Officers falsely claimed they were ambushed by the Black Panthers when executing a search warrant.

(tense music) 21-year-old Hampton was shot at point blank range, along with 22-year-old Black Panther, Mark Clark.

(tense music) - Good afternoon, the 20-year-old chairman of the Illinois Black Panther Party, Fred Hampton, was shot and killed in a pre-dawn shootout with state's attorneys- - [Narrator] The brutal assassination had a chilling effect on the Young Lords.

- [Omar] The first thing that came to my mind is, you know, where's Cha Cha?

- When they killed Fred, it became like, more real.

They're killing us, and they want to kill us.

They literally want to kill us.

(tense music) - If they did it to Fred Hampton and a Black movement that was stronger than the Puerto Rican movement, they could easily get rid of Cha Cha.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Government forces weren't the only possible threat to Cha Cha's life.

He had struggled with addiction for years, and in the summer of 1970, was hooked on heroin.

He wasn't the only one.

- Cha Cha did struggle with addiction, as well as I and a few others, which was a very, very sad thing to see.

(tense music) - [Narrator] Cha Cha would continue to wrestle with drug addiction before finally getting clean.

But the ravages of drug use took their toll on more than his body.

- Cha Cha's battle with heroin addiction, it undermined the movement.

For those that had built up this figure as being the leader and the representative of a movement, it kind of alienated a lot of people.

- [Narrator] Just two years after the Young Lords' inception, things had begun to fall apart.

By late 1970, police harassment had reached a crescendo.

Cha Cha had 18 pending cases against him.

Charges included inciting mob action, disorderly conduct, and petty theft.

After he stole $23 in lumber from an urban renewal site, police issued a warrant for his arrest.

- We knew that the cases that he had pending, if he had shown up for court, he would've been doing a lot of time.

- [Narrator] Cha Cha resigned as chairman of the organization, and went underground.

He lived off the grid on a farm in Wisconsin, and without their leader, the Young Lords drifted apart.

- Our programs, they really suffered.

So internally, the organization was crumbling.

- One of the things that held the Young Lords back was their own gang roots.

So while it's important that we credit the Young Lords for the remarkable things that they did, they also had limitations that shaped what they were able to accomplish.

- [Narrator] After nearly two years in hiding, Cha Cha knew it was time to go home, to surrender.

- Cha Cha came and said, "Look, I don't want to deal with this anymore and I need to turn myself in, and can you take me to Chicago?"

And I said, "Oh, God, Cha Cha, I don't wanna do that, I don't wanna turn you in."

He says, "No, no, no, I want to do this right."

- [Narrator] Cha Cha returned to Chicago in December, 1972.

He beat the trumped up charges, but received the maximum sentence for petty theft for the lumber.

One year at Cook County Jail.

Upon release, Cha Cha returned to Lincoln Park and discovered the relentless pace of urban renewal had turned over the neighborhood.

Little trace remained that a vibrant Puerto Rican community had ever been there.

- They were right.

They were going to be displaced from Lincoln Park by wealthy residents, and the lakeside was going to be turned into a predominantly white, wealthy space.

- [Narrator] But Cha Cha Jiménez still had the fight in him.

Rather than using guerilla tactics, this time, he took a different approach.

In 1974, he announced a run for Alderman of the 46th Ward in Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, another area where Latinos were being displaced.

The campaign marked a new form of activism for Chicago's Young Lords.

- I think it's a testament to the resiliency of Cha Cha Jiménez, and of others around, that that Rainbow Coalition, as much as the police wanted to kill it, as much as the FBI and those that were surveilling it wanted to defeat it, that it was too late.

The legacy was there, the politics were there, the ideas were there.

And those politics continued in a very, very real and significant way.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] Ultimately, Cha Cha received 39% of the vote and lost to machine-backed Daley Democrat Chris Cohen in the 1975 election.

But his political impact was yet to be realized.

In 1983, Cha Cha helped deliver crucial Puerto Rican votes to elect Harold Washington as Chicago's first Black mayor.

- We played a major role in that election.

It was a hundred thousand people in June of 1983 at Humboldt Park, and I was the only one on stage representing the Young Lords and introducing the newly elected mayor.

(crowds cheering) - You want Harold?

- [Crowd] Yes!

- You got him.

- [Narrator] The election of a minority mayor, with the support of other minority leaders, showed that what was once unthinkable was now achievable.

- Cha Cha Jiménez became an unlikely leader of his community.

He led with heart.

He believed in the power and brilliance of his peers, and helped them fight in their community for real revolutionary transformation.

- The Young Lords Organization 100% encouraged, inspired, influenced people's mentality around running for office, seeing it as something that's attainable and necessary for the progress of our people.

(melodious music) - [Narrator] 60 years after the founding of the Young Lords Organization, in September, 2023, a diverse group of activists and academics came together at DePaul University in service of reconciliation.

Cha Cha Jiménez, now in his 70s, was there to witness the university's plans to acknowledge the displacement of the Puerto Rican community.

- DePaul's gesture, to gift the city of Chicago and the Puerto Rican community the first historical marker honoring the origin of the movement, is an epic example of institutional reconciliation, reparative history, and amongst the most ascension gestures I've been able to witness in my time here.

(people applauding) - [Narrator] The marker was placed at the same building the Young Lords occupied in protest in 1969, now part of DePaul's campus.

- The historical marker is a tribute to the history of the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican community of Lincoln Park.

- This is a story about young people taking the reins of power to support their communities and meet their needs.

It's very easy to feel like all the problems are bigger than you and you can't make a difference.

And the heart of this story for me is, no, you absolutely can make a difference.

Collaboration, solidarity across groups, and respect, brought people together in a way that these young people were able to make change, and they're an exceptional example for young people today.

- [Narrator] As it was in Lincoln Park 60 years ago, gentrification is an ongoing concern for Chicago's Puerto Ricans.

But the Puerto Rican community is holding their ground in a neighborhood they have finally been able to lay claim to, Humboldt Park.

- You have a strip of land called Paseo Boricua, which is hard to miss.

You'll see nearly 60 foot tall Puerto Rican flags made of steel and iron.

Having literally these gigantic flags planted and saying, "If you're gonna move us, there's gonna be a fight for it.

We're not gonna repeat what happened in Lincoln Park."

They've learned a lot of lessons from that.

(people cheering) - [Narrator] Every June, Paseo Boricua hosts Chicago's Puerto Rican Day parade, part of a three-day extravaganza showcasing this proud and vibrant community.

- It's not just a big party with great food and great music, but it's a way to really intentionally engage the Puerto Rican community.

You can't help but be proud of your Puerto Ricanness.

- The legacy of the Young Lords, I think, is something that is very powerful.

The Puerto Rican youth that we impacted, we gave them like a springboard for them to continue, not with a feeling of being victims, but as being participants of the system that, you know, they have a right to enjoy.

- My father would say, "We're not done yet.

We'll let you know when we're done.

We're still going."

- What the Young Lords did is actually create a way for people to engage in politics in a very significant way.

It's a legacy that speaks to the making of a Latino political identity in the United States, and I think it's kind of cool that it was these kids from Lincoln Park that made it all happen.

(melodious music)