Political and social conditions in the late 1940’s brought a wave of Puerto Rican migration to the United States. In the late 1940’s, the change of Puerto Rican governance from a colony of the United States to a commonwealth of the United States was a main factor in this rise in migration. Economic factors also played a role; many immigrants came to the United States seeking employment. Though some found work throughout the south and southwest as migrant farm workers, many settled in urban settings, specifically New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia.
The employment opportunities for Puerto Ricans in the urban settings were not as good as for those in the rural settings. Puerto Ricans faced widespread racist sentiment. Despite the fact that the people migrating from Puerto Rico were American citizens, they were often stigmatized as being foreign (and therefore inferior or undeserving of equal opportunity) because of their appearance, customs, and familiarity (or lack thereof) with the English language.
The Puerto Ricans coming to Chicago did not settle in one geographic space. Families from neighborhoods in Puerto Rico tended to settle in the same neighborhoods in Chicago, but the overall distribution was scattered. Che Che Jimanez, who was a founder of the Young Lords Organization, grew up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. At the time, the main avenue for community involvement was through street gangs. Jimenez became involved with street gangs, and eventually drugs. In jail for his involvement with drugs, he met Black Panther Fred Hampton. Conversations with Hampton helped shape and solidify Jimenez’s views about what community action really means, and how it should be pursued.
This image is of an unkown Young Lords member speaking to a crowd. It is from the following website.
In 1967, Jimenez went to the Young Lords, already a community-oriented street gang, and reorganized it, incorporating into it what he had learned from Hampton and other Panthers. Jimanez took a small gang concerned with protecting the Puerto Rican neighborhoods, and transformed it into a much more organized politically active body concerned with upholding and affirming Puerto Rican culture and identity. Puerto Rican-Americans, especially those living in Chicago and New York, felt pressure from both neighboring communities and the United States government to abandon Puerto Rican culture. In order to preserve their Puerto Rican identity, community organizations actively concerned with empowering the community were needed. Jimenez and the Young Lords viewed the community organizations existing at the time – churches, public services, police forces, etc. – as ineffectual. The initial actions of the Young Lords, then, were directed towards these institutions. The ideological basis for their actions, founded firmly in the belief that the attempts by the older generation of Puerto Rican immigrants at empowerment through traditional political channels had failed, gave their initial actions a characteristic militancy.
The Young Lords Organization (later the Young Lords Party) was an affiliate organization established in New York City not long after Jimenez restructured the Young Lords. The Young Lords Organization was also concerned primarily with securing effectual community organizations and services through forceful means. The group, being initially composed almost entirely of students, was also interested in securing educational rights.