José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, who turned Chicago's Young Lords gang into human rights activist group, dies at 76
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Longtime Chicago activist and organizer José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, who transformed the Young Lords from a Lincoln Park neighborhood street gang into a civil and human rights activist organization—died last week.
Multiple reports on social media said Jiménez died Friday, Jan. 10. He was 76.
According to the 1973 published biography "Que Viva El Pueblo," Jiménez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, on Aug. 8, 1948. His mother brought him to the continental U.S. when he was a young child, and they lived near Boston for a short time before coming to Chicago—where the family had relatives.
Upon arriving in Chicago, Jiménez and his family moved into an apartment hotel at LaSalle and Superior streets. By 1956, his family had moved nine different times as urban renewal wiped out the Near North Side Puerto Rican community known as "La Clark," according to the biography.
Jiménez and his family were among numerous Puerto Rican families from "La Clark" who ended up in the Lincoln Park neighborhood. Some of the residents were hostile to their new neighbors, including existing young gangs.
"We were the new kids on the block at the time, and we were being harassed by the other street gangs that existed," Jiménez said in a 2012 interview with Grand Valley State University. "At the time, the gangs were not like the gangs of today. It was more territorial gangs, and based on culture and ethnicity, so we started getting robbed, you know, we had a bunch of money taken away from us."
Jiménez became involved with the Young Lords—a street gang founded by a young man named Orlando Davila, who had met Jiménez at a catechism class that Jiménez's mother taught, according to the biography.
After attending Catholic elementary school, Jiménez applied to the Redemptorist seminary in Wisconsin—only to be rejected by after getting in trouble in school for throwing eggs at a bus on which the pastor was riding, according to the biography. Jiménez went on to get arrested repeatedly for gang- and drug-related activity.
It was in 1968, while Jiménez was serving a 60-day sentence at the Cook County Jail for a heroin offense, that he decided to change his ways, according to a historical account. While in maximum security on a rumor that he and several others were plotting to escape the jail, Jiménez read "Seven Story Mountain" by Thomas Merton, and went on to read about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and social justice and resistance movements, according to his biography.
After being released from jail, Jiménez continued to focus on social justice and resistance—reading about Malcolm X, the 1937 Ponce massacre in Puerto Rico, and activist and Puerto Rican nationalist Pedro Albizu Camps, according to the biography.
Jiménez focused on turning the Young Lords into a civil and human rights group—modeled after the example of the Black Panthers. Jiménez also became personal friends with Illinois Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton, with whom he led the Rainbow Coalition movement.
The new Young Lords found a purpose in particular as the Puerto Rican community was being pushed out of Lincoln Park in the late 60s.
In 1969, with the support of pastor Rev. Bruce Johnson, Jiménez and the Young Lords occupied the Armitage Avenue Methodist Church on Armitage Avenue at Dayton Street—renaming it the People's Church.
"From early morning until late at night, they would distribute leaflets announcing their meetings until all of Lincoln Park had been covered. In the cold winter months, poor people would come to the People's Church with their children to tell the Young Lords the sheriff had evicted them from their homes and dumped their belongings on the sidewalk," Jiménez's biography read. "Taking the family's belongings to the church, the Young Lords would ransack Lincoln Park looking for a vacated apartment. Because many landlords were remodeling to raise rents, many apartments were empty then. When the Lords found one, they would move the family in, visit the landlord, and pay him the first month's rent if the family had no money. They would tell the family to call them if the sheriff returned. The sheriff, who had built no bonds with the people of Lincoln Park, usually took off when community people had gathered."
The Young Lords helped organize the multiracial Poor People's Coalition of Lincoln Park, which fought the city's urban renewal initiatives and protested the construction of expensive new buildings as the neighborhood gentrified, the biography said.
The Young Lords also set up mutual aid programs such as a free day care center and drug abuse treatment program, and brought advocacy for Puerto Rican independence to Chicago, the biography said.
The group also organized protests against the 1969 shooting of Manuel Ramos, a member of the Young Lords who was shot and killed by an off-duty Chicago Police officer. The Young Lords held a march of 3,000 people demanding the arrest of the officer and also calling for Puerto Rican independence, according to the biography.
The Young Lords established a presence beyond Chicago. Organizing protests and calling for action as far away as the East Harlem section of Manhattan in New York City.
Jiménez's 1973 biography said police trailed him throughout his activist work. He was arrested and indicted repeatedly on various charges and went underground for 27 months until surrendering to police and admitting to taking $23 worth of lumber in December 1972, according to his biography.
In 1975, Jiménez ran unsuccessfully for alderman of the 46th Ward in the Uptown neighborhood, according to published reports. In 1983, he took part in getting out the vote for Harold Washington, who became Chicago's first Black mayor that year.
On June 5, 1983, Jiménez introduced Mayor Washington at a Puerto Rican cultural festival in Humboldt Park that drew an estimated 100,000 people.
Jiménez went on to move from Chicago to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he worked as a substance abuse counselor, according to published reports.
Jiménez is survived by three sisters, five children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Visitation for Jiménez begins at 3 p.m. on Thursday, and a public funeral will follow from 5 p.m. to 6 p.m., at Pietryka Funeral Home, at 5734 W. Diversey Ave.
