On this day, 14 July 1970, Puerto Rican street gang-turned activist group the Young Lords occupied Lincoln Hospital’s major administrative building in response to the city’s indifference to the health needs of Puerto Ricans and Black people in the South Bronx and the deplorable conditions of health care delivery at Lincoln Hospital.
The Young Lords’ actions at New York hospital were an extension of the group’s activism around issues of public health in East Harlem. Their health activism included the Garbage Offensive, which protested against irregular sanitation services; the launch of breakfast programs for poor children; the Lead Offensive, during which they conducted door-to-door medical home visits in collaboration with progressive nurses, medical technicians and doctors to test local children for lead poisoning and adults for tuberculosis, and the takeover of a city operated tuberculosis truck.
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Pictured: Young Lords with a requisition tuberculosis truck https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1760976224087520/?type=3