The Young Lords - by Darrel Enck-Wanzer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The Young Lords, who originated as a Chicago street gang fighting gentrification and unfair evictions in Puerto Rican neighborhoods, burgeoned into a national political movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with headquarters in New York City and other centers in Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, and elsewhere in the northeast and southern California. Part of the original Rainbow Coalition with the Black Panthers and Young Patriots, the politically radical Puerto Ricans who constituted the Young Lords instituted programs for political, social, and cultural change within the communities in which they operated.
The Young Lords offers readers the opportunity to learn about this vibrant organization through their own words and images, collecting an array of their essays, journalism, photographs, speeches, and pamphlets. Organized topically and thematically, this volume highlights the Young Lords' diverse and inventive activism around issues such as education, health care, gentrification, police injustice and gender equality, as well as self-determination for Puerto Rico.
In recovering these rare written and visual materials, Darrel Enck-Wanzer has given voice to the lost chorus of the Young Lords, while providing an indispensable resource for students, scholars, activists, and others interested in learning about this influential grassroots "street political" organization.

Review Quotes

"Offers a long-awaited introduction to the ideals and actions of this vibrant revolutionary organization. In so doing it opens a window on to the life of an entire community, and on a unique era of radical movement history. This carefully assembled collection promises to be the documentary sourcebook on the Young Lords Party for years to come."--Juan Flores, New York University

"The collection of essays, speeches, pamphlets and photographs created by Young Lords members, primarily in New York and on the East Coast, includes the organization's 13-point platform and rules of discipline. The book covers the group's activism in education, health care, police injustice and gender equality."-- "The North Texan Alumni Magazine"

"This definitive sourcebook compiled by Enck-Wanzer, who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the subject, is a tour de force. He provides a helpful and brief chronicle of the evolution of the Young Lords in his introduction and the foreword by Morales and Oliver is an inspiring personal retrospective... This reader brings together an impressive collection of primary source materials that let the Young Lords speak for themselves and transport the reader to another time and place."-- "National Institute for Latino Policy, Book Notes"

About the Author

Darrel Enck-Wanzer is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the University of North Texas.