About 200 people attended a Grand Valley State University event Monday night, highlighting oral histories about a 1960s, Chicago gang turned national, Latino movement.
Jose Jimenez, known nationally as Cha-cha Jimenez, is the founder of the gang called Young Lords.
“We were being attacked by the white-ethnic gangs that already existed there. We were being beaten up, we saw our parents were being beaten up and we wanted to defend ourselves and retaliate. We had no other choice. The white-ethnic gangs were called social clubs we were called gangs.”
After Jimenez spent two months behind bars, in 1968, he took the organization from street fights to social actions against gentrification of Latino neighborhoods.
“Right after the Democratic Convention they changed from a gang to a political movement. Nationally they became a large, Latino organization in about 27 different cities.”
This week GVSU and the Kent District library held an event called “A Neighborhood Affair To Preserve Community” featuring an oral-history project around the Young Lords.
“We already have 110 oral histories archived at the Seidman House. And we added 46 new oral histories and those are archived at the Kent District library.”
To access this collection, visit www.gvsu.edu/younglords
