Against the backdrop of America’s escalating urban rebellions in
the 1960s, an unexpected cohort of New York radicals unleashed a
series of urban guerrilla actions against the city’s racist
policies and contempt for the poor. Their dramatic flair,
uncompromising vision, and skillful ability to link local problems to
international crises riveted the media, alarmed New York’s
political class, and challenged nationwide perceptions of civil
rights and black power protest. The group called itself the Young
Lords.
Utilizing oral
histories, archival records, and an enormous cache of police records
released only after a decade-long Freedom of Information Law request
and subsequent court battle, Johanna Fernández has written the
definitive account of the Young Lords, from their roots as a street
gang to their rise and fall as a political organization. Led
predominantly by poor and working-class Puerto Rican youth, and
consciously fashioned after the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords
confronted race and class inequality and questioned American foreign
policy. Their imaginative, irreverent protests and media conscious
tactics won significant reforms and exposed U.S. mainland audiences
to the country’s quiet imperial project in Puerto Rico. In riveting
style, Fernández demonstrates how the Young Lords redefined the
character of protest, the color of politics, and the cadence of
popular urban culture in the age of great dreams.