Young Lords
The Young Lords in New York
1969-1976
Ongoing
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“¡Basta ya!”—”Enough!” was the feeling of Young Lords member Mickey Melendez and other East Harlem activists.
It was the summer of 1969, and the group had blocked traffic on 110th Street with piles of garbage to protest inadequate sanitation services. They had already asked the city for brooms to clean their neighborhood’s streets and, when refused, they went ahead and took them.
The “garbage offensive” was the first campaign of the city’s Young Lords Organization, a radical “sixties” group led by Puerto Rican youth, African Americans, and Latinx New Yorkers. New York’s Young Lords, although originally part of a national organization, reflected the lived experiences of Puerto Ricans in New York City. The group mounted eye-catching direct action campaigns against inequality and poverty in East Harlem, the South Bronx, and elsewhere.
Many of their campaigns emphasized the need for increased health resources for Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and other communities of color in New York. These campaigns called for improved sanitation services, lead paint detection, free breakfasts for children, testing for tuberculosis, and safe reproductive rights for women. One of the largest campaigns targeted Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx, long known for its decrepit building and inadequate care.
They also called for revolutionary changes to U.S. society and national independence for Puerto Rico—through any means necessary. The Young Lords changed their name and emphasis in 1972, after grappling with internal differences and government surveillance. But in three short years, they had equipped their members with lifelong organizing and media skills and achieved lasting victories in health and education in New York and beyond.
Meet the Activists
JUAN GONZALEZ
JUAN GONZALEZ
Juan Gonzalez, a founding member of New York’s Young Lords and a leader of the Columbia student uprising of 1968, stands in the doorway of their headquarters on 111th Street in East Harlem. The Young Lords Party subsequently opened storefronts in the Bronx, the Lower East Side, and Brooklyn, and also operated two chapters in Puerto Rico for a year beginning in 1971. Gonzalez went on to become a prominent New York journalist.
Image Info: ca. 1971, Hiram Maristany, courtesy of the photographer.
DENISE OLIVER
DENISE OLIVER
Denise Oliver, shown here on the right with Iris Benítez, was the first woman elected to the Young Lords leadership body. Oliver grew up in a political household in Queens and first joined the NAACP and SNCC. Oliver and other women in the Young Lords pushed the group’s stance on gender equality within and beyond the organization. They organized meetings with female members to discuss sexism, presented a set of demands to their male peers, and amended the group’s 13 point platform. They also agitated for a broad politics of reproductive justice—particularly given the history of forced sterilization of women of color—seeking to secure their right to have children when and how they chose.
Image Info: Young Lords Party Women at International Women’s Day Demonstration, Catherine Ursillo, 1970, Courtesy of the photographer.
PABLO “YORUBA” GUZMAN
PABLO “YORUBA” GUZMAN
The New York Young Lords began publishing Palante (“Onward”) in May 1970. The bilingual newspaper provided information about the group’s activities and political message. Using the Black Panther Party newspaper as a model, the Young Lords sold Palante to generate revenue and train new members. It also shared the Black Panther’s aesthetic, including bold graphic displays and the visual emphasis on individual members.
Pablo “Yoruba” Guzman, Minister of Information, stands at the top left with other members of the Central Committee, from left to right: Denise Oliver, Juan “Fi” Ortiz, David Perez, Gloria Gonzalez, and Juan Gonzalez, seated.
Image Info: Palante, Vol. 3, No. 3, February 1971, Lent by El Museo del Barrio.
Objects & Images
“13 Point Platform”
“13 Point Platform”
The “13 Point Program and Platform,” originally drafted in 1969, laid out the broad goals of the Young Lords.
It represents the group’s dual existence. It was both a community organization that provided direct services—such as free breakfasts to children and health services to their communities—and a paramilitary organization that believed in the potential of armed struggle to create change.
Women in the Young Lords soon advocated rewriting Point 10 to emphasize gender inequality in stronger terms and succeeded in changing “Machismo must be Revolutionary” to “Down with machismo and male chauvinism.”
Image Info: ca. 1969, Courtesy Sean Stewart/Babylon Falling Collection at Interference Archive.
Garbage Offensive—summer/fall 1969
Garbage Offensive—summer/fall 1969
The “garbage offensive” of the summer of 1969 established the Young Lords’ reputation for eye-catching direct action campaigns. After asking community members of “El Barrio” what they would like to see change in their neighborhood, the new group organized to improve inconsistent garbage collection in East Harlem. After their efforts to persuade city officials to take action failed, about 30 Young Lords and volunteers piled garbage in the streets of East Harlem, blocking traffic and calling attention to the need for equal sanitation services throughout the city.
Image Info: 1969, Hiram Maristany, courtesy of the photographer.
Young Lords Buttons
Young Lords Buttons
New York’s Young Lords began as an offshoot of a street gang-turned-political-group in Chicago. They announced their purpose—“to serve and protect the best interests of the Puerto Rican community”—during a rally to support the Cuban Revolution in Tompkins Square Park on July 26, 1969. Members wore the green and purple button, from the national organization, pinned to purple berets. The New York Young Lords officially broke from Chicago and became the Young Lords Party in May 1970.
Image Info: ca. 1969-1972, collection of Roger Lowenstein.
Puck Magazine, Uncle Sam Toasting Us Soldiers In Puerto Rico And Elsewhere
Puck Magazine, Uncle Sam Toasting Us Soldiers In Puerto Rico And Elsewhere
Challenging Puerto Rico’s relationship to the U.S. was a priority for the Young Lords and part of a longer history of Puerto Rican nationalist struggles in New York City. In the 1950s, after Puerto Rico became a U.S. Commonwealth and “Operation Bootstrap encouraged migration from the island to the mainland, nearly half a million Puerto Ricans arrived in the city. The Young Lords, like other intellectual and social groups of the 1960s and 1970s, drew on the anti-colonial writings of people of color around the world.
Image info: January 2, 1901, Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs
X-ray Truck Ii
X-ray Truck Ii
In 1970 the Young Lords commandeered a city-operated x-ray truck in order to test people in East Harlem for tuberculosis. The group alerted the press before many of their actions to gain coverage and political leverage: longstanding New York journalist Gil Noble stands in the center of the crowd, while Miguel Melendez, a founding member of the Young Lords, speaks to another reporter on the left.
Image Info: 1970, Hiram Maristany, courtesy of the photographer.
Flyer, “Support The Peoples’ Church”
Flyer, “Support The Peoples’ Church”
In December 1969, the Young Lords took over the First Spanish Methodist Church on 111th Street in East Harlem. During a previous Sunday service they had demanded the pastor provide space and services to the community; the action resulted in multiple arrests. On December 28th, the Young Lords entered the church and barricaded the doors, renaming it the “Peoples’ Church.” Guards ushered in community members, and the group used the building to provide local services for 11 days before the police made more arrests.
In addition to demanding space for community programs, in this flyer they decry the police response to the December 28th action, and call for broad changes in police treatment of New Yorkers of color. After the death of Young Lords member Julio Roldan at the former Manhattan jail known at the Tombs, the Young Lords took over the church once again.
Image Info: Young Lords, 1970, Courtesy Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Free Breakfast Program
Free Breakfast Program
The Young Lords provided free breakfasts for children in the basement during their occupation of the Methodist Church. “If children are hungry,” said one Young Lords member, “they can’t move on to anything else.”
Photographer and East Harlem resident Hiram Maristany tirelessly documented the work of the Young Lords from inside the organization. He also helped run free breakfast programs with the Young Lords and the Black Panther Party, which served as a model for many Young Lords initiatives.
Image Info: 1970, Hiram Maristany, Courtesy of the photographer.
Flyer, “Lincoln Liberado”
Flyer, “Lincoln Liberado”
The Think Lincoln collective formed to improve conditions at the condemned Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx. After the death of patient Carmen Rodriguez, the Young Lords and members of Think Lincoln decided to occupy the hospital to demand change. On July 28, 1970, without interrupting medical services, they engaged in a day-long takeover of an administrative building.
During their one-day takeover of Lincoln Hospital, protestors demanded a new hospital building, more preventive health-care services, and daycare for children of patients and staff. Six years later, after the Young Lords had disbanded, a new Lincoln Hospital opened. Activists involved in this campaign also established services, such as language translation that are now widely available in New York hospitals, as well as one of the first acupuncture centers for the treatment of drug addiction, which continues to this day.
Image Info: 1970, Courtesy of Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.
Key Events
| Global | Year | Local |
|---|---|---|
| U.S. forces invade Puerto Rico as part of the Spanish American War; Puerto Rico becomes a United States territory in 1900 | 1898 | |
| 30 years after the Jones-Shafroth Act gives partial U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans born after 1898, Operation Bootstrap propels mass migration from Puerto Rico to the mainland, largely to New York | 1947 | |
| Young Lords Organization starts in Chicago; later allies with the Black Panther Party and others to form the Rainbow Coalition | 1968 | |
| 1969 | The New York branch of the Young Lords Organization is founded; garbage initiative and other campaigns are launched | |
| 1970 | Young Lords and others occupy Lincoln Hospital; separate from Chicago branch and become the Young Lords Party | |
| Young Lords Party opens a branch in Puerto Rico, which lasts about a year | 1971 | |
| 1972 | Young Lords Party in New York ceases operations, becomes Puerto Rican Revolutionary Worker’s Organization | |
| 1976 | Puerto Rican Revolutionary Worker’s Organization ceases to exist; a new Lincoln Hospital opens in the Bronx |
