José “Cha Cha” Jiménez, a prominent civil rights and liberation movement figure and founder of the Young Lords in Chicago and co-founder of the Rainbow Coalition has died. He was 76.
His sister, Daisy Rodríguez, said in a Facebook post that he died Friday morning. A cause of death was not given.
Jiménez in the 1960s founded the Young Lords as a street gang to counter the growing hostility toward the Puerto Rican community in Lincoln Park, at the time one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago. By 1968, the group became a human rights organization inspired by the Black Panther Party, according to the Library of Congress archives.
“Cha Cha became one of the most pivotal figures in civil rights and liberation movements,” his family said in a statement on social media. “He leaves behind a profound legacy of revolutionary spirit, a vision for Puerto Rican self-determination and a commitment to justice for the people.”
The Young Lords challenged institutional racism, and police brutality and advocated for health care, education and affordable housing. The Young Lords also established free programs for breakfast, education, health care and community spaces to organize to demand change.
According to Jiménez’s obituary from Pietryka Funeral Home., many youth who joined the Young Lords were inspired by his passion, leadership and understanding of what it meant to fight for the people. The Young Lords in Chicago became the national headquarters, with chapters forming in New York, Philadelphia and Milwaukee.
In 1969, Jiménez joined forces with Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party and William “Preacherman” Fesperman of the Young Patriots Organization to form the Rainbow Coalition, a working-class, multiracial movement that brought together Blacks, Latinos and poor whites from Appalachia that later resulted in the upending of politics in the American Midwest.
The PBS documentary “The First Rainbow Coalition” shows how members of the Black Panther Party organized Puerto Rican radicals and Confederate flag-waving white Southerners to help tackle poverty and discrimination. The union shocked some allies and scared police and the FBI, who feared the coalition would upend the social order.
Filmmaker Ray Santisteban said that without the trust, assistance and commitment of Jiménez, the documentary would have never happened.
“From the first time I met him in 1992 until the last time I saw him, he was solely focused on working to uplift and empower the Puerto Rican community and all poor people in the world,” Santisteban said on Facebook.
Born on Aug. 8, 1940, in Barrio San Salvador, Caguas, Puerto Rico, Jimenez later grew up on Chicago’s North Side in La Clark, one of the city’s first Puerto Rican neighborhoods.
Jiménez channeled his dream for change into political power. In 1974, he became the first Latino to announce a run for alderman in Chicago opposing gentrification plans, according to his obituary. His run helped to change the city’s political landscape and asserted Puerto Rican and Latino power. In 1983, Jiménez helped to form the first Latino coalition helping Harold Washington become Chicago’s first Black mayor.
After the organization retired from its activities in the late 1970s, Jiménez focused his energy on preserving the history of the Young Lords. In 1995, Jiménez collaborated with DePaul’s University Center for Latino Research to create the Lincoln Park Project, a massive oral history archive of the Young Lords.
In 2023, Jiménez was honored by DePaul’s Center for Latino Research with the prestigious Public Intellectual Award. In 2024 a historical marker was placed on DePaul’s Lincoln Park campus to honor the Young Lords' presence and legacy in the city.
A public funeral service will be held for Jiménez Thursday in Chicago, according to Pietryka Funeral Home.
Jiménez is survived by five children and three sisters.
