Description: "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. [The author] utiliz[es] 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 ... [for this] account of the Young Lords, from their roots as a street gang to their rise and fall as a political organization"--
Brief description: Johanna Fernández is associate professor of history at Baruch College of the City University of New York and editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Review Quotes: "Like so many other organizations in the United States that were both leftist and radical, the Young Lords' history has been removed from most recollections of the period known as the Sixties until now. Fernandez's work is a bold, brilliant and engaging challenge to this omission."--CounterPunch