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JOSÉ ‘CHA CHA’ JIMÉNEZ, HUMAN RIGHTS ACTIVIST AND FORMER CHAIR
OF YOUNG LORDS, DEAD AT 76  
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Violet Miller
January 12, 2025
Chicago Sun-Times
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_ “The Young Lords Organization turned political because we found
out that just giving gifts wasn’t going to help our people; we had
to deal with the system that was messing them over." _

José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, chair of the Young Lords, stands June
11, 1969, in front of the Armitage Methodist Church, which the group
occupied for four days to protest city orders stopping them from
opening a free day care there, (Howard D. Simmons/archives).

 

José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, a human rights activist who co-founded
the Rainbow Coalition and served as chairperson of the Young Lords
organization, died Friday. He was 76.

Mr. Jiménez spent much of the late 1960s and early 1970s fighting
gentrification in Lincoln Park, allying with other organizations in
Chicago to uplift minority and low-income communities, and rallying
for an independent Puerto Rico.

Bobby Rush, former member of Congress, co-founder of the Illinois
Black Panther Party and longtime friend of Jiménez, called him a
“premier fighter” with a quiet demeanor who could move mountains
— always for the oppressed — by simply speaking, even from a young
age.

“Cha Cha never stopped working for ordinary people,” Rush told the
Sun-Times on Saturday afternoon. “He made an absolutely unalterable
commitment to protect the Puerto Rican community. He refused to let
them be gentrified ... He made our society and our world better. Cha
Cha was a beacon for us all.”

Mr. Jiménez’s family came to Chicago during a wave of Puerto Rican
migration to the mainland around the time of Operation Bootstrap — a
series of federal economic reforms launched in the mid-1940s to
address economic crises on the island — and eventually settled in
Lincoln Park.

José Cha Cha Jiménez speaks during a protest by the Young Lords and
others after the fatal shooting of Manuel Ramos by a police officer in
May 1969. Chicago Sun-Times archives

Along with several others, Mr. Jiménez — at the age of 11 years old
— helped found the Young Lords street gang in 1959, said Felipe
Hinojosa, a professor of history at Baylor University. He went on to
become chairman in 1964.

But it was in 1968 that Mr. Jiménez transformed the gang into a
movement for civil rights and fair housing. While serving a 60-day
stint in jail for a drug charge that year, he read about the Rev.
Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X and Puerto Rican Independence Party
member Pedro Albízu Campos while in solitary confinement. He later
met Black Panther Party Chairman Fred Hampton
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and they discussed the divisions between Black and Puerto Rican
Chicagoans and the similar work their two groups had been doing.

“I figured this is what we need in the Puerto Rican community,
militant like the Black Panther Party to address the police brutality
and housing issues we were facing,” Mr. Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018
[[link removed]].
“We brought the movement to include other people in the community.
We built a movement from a gang.”

The Young Lords and others march from Armitage and Halsted to protest
the fatal shooting of Manuel Ramos by an off-duty police officer in
May 1969. Chicago Sun-Times collection, Chicago History Museum

Donning purple berets, the group organized several marches against
police brutality in response to the killing of the Young Lords’
20-year-old minister of defense Manuel Ramos
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who was unarmed when he was fatally shot by an off-duty police officer
May 4, 1969. The officer claimed self-defense against a gun that was
never found. The group’s minister of education, Ralph Rivera, was
shot in the head but survived.

Many of the Young Lords’ programs reflected similar successful Black
Panther Party events: Free meals, free medical and dental clinics, and
a free child care center, all in the basement of Armitage Avenue
Methodist Church at 834 W. Armitage Ave. They occupied the building
for four days to protest Chicago Department of Buildings orders to
stop due to code violations.

The child care center allowed the group to welcome more women,
individuals from all racial backgrounds and members of the LGBTQ+
community.

The group fought the Lincoln Park Conservation Association, which had
been pushing to gentrify the area, and confronted landlords and real
estate brokers. They also proposed plans for low-income housing in the
neighborhood to the Department of Urban Renewal — ultimately losing
out
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the Lincoln Park Conservation Association’s plans for middle-income
housing.

Omar López, the Young Lords’ minister of information, said Mr.
Jiménez’s love for his community helped him stay true to his
beliefs, and his strength in organizing came from how he could
identify what was causing harm to his community — and uniting people
against it.

“He chiseled a new image in the psyche of a whole generation of
young people through his political analysis of the community,”
Lopez, 80, said. “He really helped young men and women to find
themselves as equals in political struggle … It was an added tool in
our resistance.”

By June 1969, Mr. Jiménez and Hampton, along with members of the
Young Patriots — a group of low-income white residents in Uptown who
waved Confederate flags and wore buttons supporting the Black Panthers
— formed the Rainbow Coalition to broaden the scope of their work.

Bobby Rush, deputy defense minister of the Illinois Black Panther
Party, reads a statement on June 4, 1969, during a news conference
following an early morning raid on the Chicago Panther headquarters by
FBI agents, who arrested eight people. Rush called the raid "... a
trick ... to attack the party.” At left, José Cha Cha Jiménez,
chairman of the Young Lords Organization, a Chicago-area Puerto Rican
civil rights group. WBEZ

“It was a group of people fighting side by side in an alliance for
change,” Mr. Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018. “But we were in conflict
with [Mayor Richard J. Daley and city officials] because we lived in
prime real estate areas.

“It’s not as racial, it’s more economic … [And] it’s not
just a housing issue, they were taking away our voice. There was a lot
of repression going on.”

Rush said coming together under the single banner saved the groups,
and that it was their unity that made them so effective, inspiring
other progressive movements.

“We were the genesis,” Rush said. “The Rainbow Coalition saved
us. We were able to create peace and unity and love and respect out of
that chaos for each other because we were willing to work together …
It takes all of us to really make a difference

A New York chapter of the Young Lords Organization was established in
late 1969 and made national headlines with its demonstrations.

Republican Darrell Quinley, (left), José Cha Cha Jiménez (center),
and incumbent Ald. Chris Cohen ran for alderperson in the 46th Ward on
Feb. 13, 1975. Sun-Times file

Rev. Jesse Jackson, founder of Operation PUSH and later the National
Rainbow Coalition — a group that grew out of Jackson’s 1984
presidential bid and a nod to the group Jiménez and Hampton
co-founded — merged the two groups
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make Rainbow PUSH, which remains headquartered in Chicago.

Mr. Jiménez evaded police for 27 months in the theft of lumber from a
construction site that the group used to make repairs to their
building. He served a year in jail. Spurred by the December 1969
killing of Hampton, Mr. Jiménez ran for 46th Ward alderperson,
garnering almost 40% of the vote in his 1975 bid.

In 1983, he helped Harold Washington win the mayoral election before
leaving Chicago.

“The Young Lords Organization turned political because we found out
that just giving gifts wasn’t going to help our people; we had to
deal with the system that was messing them over,” Mr. Jiménez said.

[José "Cha Cha" Jiménez, a fugitive for 27 months, surrenders to
police Dec. 6, 1972, in the Town Hall station at Addison and Halsted.]

José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, a fugitive for 27 months, surrenders to
police Dec. 6, 1972, at the Town Hall station at Addison and Halsted.
He was being sought in the theft of lumber that was used to make
repairs on the Young Lords’ building. He served a year in prison.
Sun-Times file.

Mr. Jiménez, who struggled with heroin addiction as a young man, also
worked as a youth gang and addiction counselor in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, where he continued to be vocal about the fight against
gentrification.

“We didn’t start this movement, and we didn’t finish it, but we
definitely contributed to it, and that’s our victory,” Mr.
Jiménez told WBEZ in 2018. “COINTELPRO and organizations like that
want to keep us disunited, so our first mission is to unite our people
and go from there ... Individuals can’t make any change, you have to
do it united.” COINTELPRO was an FBI program that infiltrated and
surveilled political groups thought to be subversive.

“What we need now is a victory,” José Cha Cha Jiménez says in a
May 3, 1973, interview. Howard D. Simmons/Sun-Times archives

After his health declined, Mr. Jiménez returned to Chicago, where he
helped foster a new generation of Young Lords, Lopez said.

“He was just a human being with a lot of strength,” Lopez said.
“He was able to share some of that with the new era of Young Lords.
They followed his lead up until the end.”

He is survived by his three sisters, five children, grandchildren and
great-grandchildren.

_Violet Miller is a general assignment reporter at the Chicago
Sun-Times after starting as an intern and later a freelancer. She was
previously a breaking news correspondent for The Daily Herald._

_Winner of eight Pulitzer Prizes, the Chicago Sun-Times was founded in
1948 through a merger of the Chicago Sun and the Daily Times. It’s
known for hard-hitting investigative reporting, in-depth political
coverage, timely behind-the-scenes sports analysis and insightful
entertainment and cultural coverage.  In 2022, it became part of the
Chicago Public Media family of companies and now operates as a
501(c)(3) nonprofit organization._

* Young Lords
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* Puerto Ricans
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* Rainbow Coalition
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