The Young Lords Organization's Historical Commemoration Plaque at DePaul

Banner: Young Lords 50th Anniversary walking tour

Photo credit: Derek Potts via DePaul University Library

Interview Conducted by Laura Pachón

Lincoln Park is home to many Gen-Z’s, Millennials, upper-middle class families, and DePaul University. Like many other Chicago neighborhoods, Lincoln Park has undergone significant demographic changes In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lincoln Park was home to a vibrant Puerto Rican community that was displaced after a long fight against Mayor Richard J. Daley's urban renewal plan, which resulted in creating what can be thought of as a white affluent suburb within the city

Lincoln Park was also the home of the Young Lord’s Organization (YLO), a street-gang turned civil and human rights organization. The YLO focuses on the empowerment of Latine communities, specifically Puerto Ricans who have been displaced in big cities as a result of gentrification, as well as communities who have been colonized (i e , indigenous communities)

I was able to speak with Dr. Jacqueline Lazú, one of DePaul University’s 2022-2023 Presidential Diversity Fellows. Dr. Lazú is a Puerto Rican scholar who works for the advocacy and preservation of the history of the Young Lords Organization and the displacement that Latine individuals experienced in Chicago She is currently working on acquiring a historical commemoration plaque for DePaul’s School of Music Building, which once housed the Stone Academic Administration Building of McCormick Theological Seminary, where the YLO staged a sit-in to protest gentrification and police brutality.

Can you tell us a bit about the work you are currently doing as one of DePaul's Presidential Diversity Fellows?

Lincoln Park is home to many Gen-Z’s, Millennials, upper-middle class families, and DePaul University. Like many other Chicago neighborhoods, Lincoln Park has undergone significant demographic changes In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Lincoln Park was home to a vibrant Puerto Rican community that was displaced after a long fight against Mayor Richard J. Daley's urban renewal plan, which resulted in creating what can be thought of as a white affluent suburb within the city

Lincoln Park was also the home of the Young Lord’s Organization (YLO), a street-gang turned civil and human rights organization. The YLO focuses on the

As a Presidential Diversity Fellow for the 2022-2023 academic year, I set out to extend my career-long research on the Young Lords Organization (YLO) and the origins of the movement in Chicago by looking specifically at the role that DePaul University played in the evolution of the civil rights group and the Puerto Rican barrio that once existed in Lincoln Park. At the same time, both the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican community of Chicago have left an indelible mark on our own institutional development and history For decades since the transition of the Young Lords gang into a political organization, DePaul students, faculty, and staff have been directly engaged with the organization on the issues that most concerned them: gentrification and community displacement, colonialism and coloniality, selfdetermination for Puerto Ricans and all poor and oppressed people, and police brutality. There were many other encounters since the late 1960s, although the most notable was the takeover of the Stone Building in May of 1968, which at the time was the administration building of the McCormick Seminary. The building, which the Young Lords renamed “The Manuel Ramos Memorial Building”, was eventually sold to DePaul in the late 1970s. Nevertheless, the Stone Building, now the School of Music building at DePaul, is the last standing structure that marks in any way the history of the movement’s origins in Chicago. One of the most significant outcomes of this fellowship will be, with the support of President Manuel, to formally memorialize this legacy by placing a historical marker in the form of a bronze plaque on the building’s façade.

José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez in front of Armitage Methodist Church (“People’s Church”), Chicago and Lincoln Park ephemera collection via DePaul University Library

Can you describe the work you are doing to acknowledge and commemorate the historical presence of the Young Lords in Lincoln Park, and of the Puerto Rican community more generally?

For decades, people of all backgrounds have visited the building, taking informational tours led by instructors of all disciplines, DePaul library staff, faculty scholars, and members of the Young Lords and allied organizations Many more visit the Young Lords archives, that were the result of the effort of the movement leaders in the 1990s. It is the most widely visited collection at the library. Still, the old Stone building is the only structure standing to help us retell the story of the Young Lords at DePaul and in Lincoln Park The Peoples Church, once the headquarters of the movement (formerly the Armitage Avenue Church), the People’s Park, the Café, and most of the homes where the young members of the group grew up and later organized, were rebuilt, unrecognizable and erased from the living memory of the neighborhood In October of 2022, I convened a committee of students, faculty, staff, and Young Lords Central Committee members to envision the long overdue tribute. We proposed, among other things, the bronze plaque as a marker to be placed on the front of the building to reflect our formal institutional commitment to publicly honoring its history It will truly be a destination for the many students, scholars, and community members that come to our campus seeking to learn about the Young Lords and Puerto Rican Chicago. As a Puerto Rican, born and raised in the Diaspora, I am incredibly proud and deeply moved by the collective support of our community to see this project through. We can also expect university, and city-wide programs and events that will highlight our efforts to recover this rich history.

The takeover of the Stone Building at DePaul University via DePaul University Library Archives

Could you tell us about the resources available at DePaul for studying the Young Lords movement?

The absolute best place to begin is the internet. The Richardson Library’s Special Collections Department, a long-term partner in promoting and preserving this history with the Young Lords, has digitized many of the Young Lords' newspapers and made them publicly available through their digital “Community Collections” at: https://library.depaul.edu/special-collections/digitalcollections/Pages/community-collections.aspx To dig a little deeper, make a date with Special Collections to visit the boxes of Young Lords and Lincoln Park archives where you’ll find all kinds of materials-- from vintage artifacts of the movement to academic papers, white papers, photos, city records, university correspondence and newspaper articles that will help you uncover more about the history of our shared community in the 1960s and early 1970s.

A lot of research has focused on the political activities of the Young Lords on the East Coasthow does your work on the YL Plaque in Chicago add to the conversation?

I am also currently working on two book manuscripts: Young Lords Speak: (Re)Constructing the Narrative of Revolution, and Stone Revolutionaries: The Origins of the Young Lords Movement Young Lords Speak is an edited volume with the Young Lords Central Committee members. Stone Revolutionaries is my single-authored critical history of the movement's origins in Chicago. When these are completed, they will be the very first books exclusively by and about the Chicago Young Lords, that explore why and how they became the impactful movement that we still recognize as the entryway of Puerto Ricans into the civil rights movement. There are many reasons why the Young Lords Party and the New York City chapter became the more prominent group in the narrative about the Young Lords movement. They include things like the background of movement leaders and their access to media and educational institutions I do address this in my work. I argue that you must know the Chicago origins to really understand why we are still talking about the Young Lords, how they even became a movement that still impacts so many young activists. Without undermining the importance of the movement in New York, I assert that the Young Lords really could only have started in the city of Chicago. This is why it is so important for us, as an institution, to own our role in the history. For better or worse, we were involved in making it. We’re made better by acknowledging the enormous impact that the Young Lords, Chicago and the DePaul community have had on generations of people, their sense of cultural pride, political consciousness, and resilience.

DePaul University's Presidential Diversity Fellow 2022-2023, Dr. Jacqueline Lazú