The Revolutionaries Who Rescued a Hospital

In 1970, Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx was one of the worst in the city. The building was falling apart. Children were getting lead poisoning while hospitalized there. There were rats in the emergency room.

"I mean, there was a joke in the neighborhood," said CBS reporter Pablo Guzman, "that if you got stabbed on this side of the street, crawl over to the other side so the ambulance wouldn't take you to Lincoln."

But then came the revolutionaries. 

The Young Lords, a radical Puerto Rican activist group similar to the Black Panthers, decided to take it over one day. Guzman was among them.

And that day changed everything.

Special thanks to WNYC archivist, Andy Lanset, Professor Johanna Fernandez, Dr Oliver Fein, Dr Charlotte Phillips, Dr Fitzhugh Mullan, Merlin Chowkwanyun and the Pacifica Radio Archives.