[2][3] The group, most active in the late 1960s and 1970s, aimed to fight for neighborhood empowerment and self-determination for Puerto Rico, Latino, and colonized ("Third World") people.

The new community-wide movement then spread to nearly 30 cities, including three branches in New York, which at the time served as the entry point for 90% of Puerto Ricans.

During Mayor Daley's tenure in Chicago, a program of urban renewal resulted in Puerto Ricans in Lincoln Park and several Mexican communities being evicted from what became prime real estate areas near the Loop, Lakefront, Old Town, and Lakeview neighborhoods.

[15] The Great Migrations of the late 1940s resulted in many Puerto Ricans coming to the mainland for opportunity and settling in the Midwest, Florida, and on the East Coast of the United States.

The New York City regional chapter formed July 26, 1969, ten months after the Young Lords Movement began in Chicago.

In Chicago, the Young Lords occupied local institutions in the Lincoln Park neighborhood to support low-income housing for working families.

Bruce Johnson, of the North Side Cooperative Ministry, worked to obtain funds to support the Young Lords programs.

[citation needed] On September 29, 1969, the church's pastor and his wife, Reverend Bruce and Eugenia Ransier Johnson, were stabbed to death, killed in their home.

The Puerto Rican nation's diaspora has been divided and has created multiple neighborhoods or barrios in Florida, along the East Coast of the United States, New York City and Chicago.

In 1968, branches of the Young Lords sprouted up in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, Connecticut, New Jersey, Boston, Milwaukee, Hayward (California), San Diego, Los Angeles, and Puerto Rico.

[18] Over 120 publicly accessible oral histories, "Young Lords in Lincoln Park" are curated at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.

The Young Lords grew into a national movement under the leadership of Jose Cha Cha Jimenez which also included Angela Lind Adorno, Alberto Chavarria, Marta Chavarria, Andres Nunez, Edwin Diaz, Jose (Cosmoe) Torres, Eddie Ramirez, Raul Lugo, Juan Gonzalez, Felipe Luciano, Iris Morales, Judy Cordero, Denise Oliver, Pablo Yoruba Guzman, Hilda Ignatin, Maria Romero, Omar Lopez, David Rivera, Tony Baez, Richie Perez, and Juan Fi Ortiz.

[20] The New York-Chicago schism mirrored the divisions within other New Left groups including the Black Panther Party, Students for a Democratic Society and Brown Berets, often as a result of COINTELPRO activities of police infiltration by informants and provocateurs.

COINTELPRO tactics used against the movements such as the Young Lords included rumor campaigns and pitting groups against each other to create factionalism, distrust, and personality conflicts.

Bruce Johnson and his wife Eugenia, and the murder of Assistant Pastor Sergio Herrera shortly after his transfer to Los Angeles.

[21] The Young Lords worked in their communities to provide resources, similar to actions of the Brown Berets and the Black Panther Party.

His book argues that Puerto Ricans must fight for their nation against American colonialism by organizing and educating in the barrios and raise awareness of the repression since the creation of the Young Lords as a movement in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

In 1983, the Young Lords organized the first major Latino event for the successful campaign of Chicago's first African-American mayor, Harold Washington.

The Young Lords envisioned themselves as the vanguard of a people's struggle as they initially fought against the displacement of Puerto Ricans from Lincoln Park.

In Chicago, the Young Lords set up a free dental clinic and community day care center and worked on solidarity for incarcerated Puerto Ricans and the rights of Vietnam War veterans.

In Chicago, women advocacy was led by Hilda Ignatin, Judy Cordero and Angela Adorno, in a subgroup known as Mothers And Others, that also helped to educate the male members and the community at large.

The Young Lords carried out many direct-action occupations of vacant land, hospitals, churches and other institutions to demand programs for the poor.

The direct actions included a campaign to force New York City to increase garbage pick-up in Spanish Harlem, and in Chicago the seven-day McCormick Theological Seminary take-over that won Lincoln Park residents $650,000 for low-income housing, and the four-month People's Park camp-out/take-over at Halsted and Armitage Avenue by 350 community residents that prevented the construction of a for-profit tennis court on land used for low incoming housing.

In Chicago, the Young Lords' health program was coordinated by Jack Johns, Quentin Young, Ana Lucas, and Alberto and Marta Chavarria who also worked with a Black Panther-led coalition to recruit medical-student organizations like the Medical Committee for Human Rights (MCHR) to advocate for health care for the poor.

In their position paper, the Young Lords asserted that colonized women (Puerto Ricans, blacks, "Third World") were oppressed within society and their homes due to their sex, race/ethnicity, nationality and class.

The poet Pedro Pietri wrote and recited his poems "Puerto Rican Obituary" and "Suicide Note of a Cockroach in a Low Income Project" at New York Young Lord events.

[29] Alfredo Matias wrote poems about Afro-Boricua pride and David Hernández recited La Armitage about the Chicago street that became the downtown for Puerto Ricans and the Young Lords.

The song "Qué Bonita Bandera" ("What a Beautiful Flag") was written by Pepe y Flora in Puerto Rico and adopted by the Young Lords as their anthem.

Darrel Wanzer-Serrano's account of The New York Young Lords and the Struggle for Liberation authored in 2015 characterizes the roots of the local chapter.

The Puerto Rican activist group El Grito de Sunset Park, co-founded by Dennis Flores, had ties to and was influenced by the Young Lords.