Jose Cha Cha Jimenez

Under the leadership of Jiménez, the Young Lords was transformed into the Young Lords Organization. They began by staging a series of grassroots actions on behalf of the poor people of Lincoln Park. They disrupted Lincoln Park Conservation Association meetings there, confronted real-estate brokers and landlords, created the Peoples Church and the Peoples Park, and occupied and forced the McCormick Theological Seminary to provide resources for the community. On May 15, 1969, a group of 20 Young Lords members entered the administration building of McCormick Theological Seminary, demanding $601,001 from the institution to support their work.

The Young Lords initiated what they called "survival programs" at the Chicago People's Church and in other cities, modelled after projects by the Black Panthers. These included a free breakfast for children program, the Emeterio Betances Free Health Clinic, a free dental clinic, and the first free community daycare center in Chicago. The day care center was established in 1969 to support women's involvement in the Young Lords' organizing activities. It operated as a co-op, with male and female parents taking turns baby-sitting the children of the members. The Young Lords conducted demonstrations for welfare dignity and women's rights, against police brutality and racism, and for self-determination for Puerto Rico and other Latin American nations.

Born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, Jiménez was taken as an infant by his mother to the United States the following year. They lived for a time with his father near Boston, Massachusetts, but within two years the family moved to Chicago to join relatives. As a youth, he ran with a street gang, but made a turn-around in 1968 and devoted himself to reviving the Young Lords to work on issues of human rights, beginning in Chicago. Issues included redlining, displacement of the poor, welfare rights and dignity, police relations, and community needs. In addition to establishing breakfast, education and health programs, they organized politically to negotiate with city officials. They also set up chapters in other cities with Puerto Rican and Latino populations, to work on social justice.

In the summer of 1968, Jiménez was picked up for possession of heroin and was given a 60-day sentence at Cook County Jail, then called the Bridewell or House of Correction. During this period, Jiménez decided to change and to devote his life to the cause of human rights. He read a book by American Catholic monk Thomas Merton while in jail, and it had a strong influence on him. He was moved by the other man's account of his spiritual journey, as Jiménez had once contemplated becoming a priest. After reflection, Jiménez asked for a priest and knelt down, and confessed his sins. He was determined to change.

By 1967, most of the formerly white areas of Lincoln Park had been occupied by Latino residents, many of them ethnic Puerto Ricans. The original Young Lords had reached their late teens and lacked gang wars and organized meetings at the YMCA, so they ceased to exist as an organized gang. They still hung around together in certain locations, but without structure. Many then chose a chaotic, drug-filled, purposeless life. Many got married and moved away without any contact. Many were serving on active duty in Vietnam. Others, including Jiménez, were still on street corners, or jailed for different gang and drug-related crimes. The youth of Lincoln Park became involved in property crimes such as car thefts, purse-snatchings, and burglaries, but also violent armed robberies, stabbings, shootings, and disorderly conduct, much associated with the damages of drugs. Jiménez and a few Young Lords turned to hard drugs like heroin and cocaine.

When the Young Lords were a street gang, they respected and looked for guidance from major African-American gangs such as the Egyptian Cobras and the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, as well as the Black P. Stones. The latter was a large, new group from the urban-renewal-designated area of 63rd Street.

During the 1960s, the city continued its urban renewal program. Puerto Ricans had been displaced into Lincoln Park from other developing areas, but the city began to eye that neighborhood for redevelopment. City planners argued that Lincoln Park should be renovated as an inner-city suburb, in order to attract professionals and increase tax revenues, and to profit from housing turnover as lower standard properties were redeveloped.

José Cha Cha Jiménez (born August 8, 1948) is a political activist and the founder of the Young Lords Organization, a Chicago-based street gang that became a civil and human rights organization. Started in September 23, 1968, it was most active in the late 1960s and 1970s.

Called "Cha Cha", José Jiménez was born in Caguas, Puerto Rico to parents Eugenia Rodríguez Flores (1929-2013), of San Lorenzo, and Antonio Jiménez Rodríguez (1924-1973) from San Salvador barrio in Caguas. In 1949, when José was an infant, his mother Eugenia (Doña Genia) Rodríguez moved with him from Puerto Rico to New York City. They traveled to a migrant worker camp near Boston, where they were reunited with his father Antonio. They rented a work cabin from the Italian family-owners of the migrant camp.