With a radical political group’s profile looming larger, police officials in New York kept watch on its movements, monitoring its takeover of a church, a demonstration outside of the Criminal Courts Building in Lower Manhattan and a school protest with parents and teachers.

The group was the Young Lords, which began in the 1950s as a street gang in Chicago before evolving in the late 1960s into a militant movement in places like New York, Newark and Philadelphia, calling for Puerto Rican independence and a greater civic voice for the poor.

The group’s dramatic campaigns and accompanying scrutiny by law enforcement agencies have become a subject of scholarly interest to Johanna Fernandez, a professor at Baruch College who is preparing a book about the Young Lords.

Image Prof. Johanna Fernandez of Baruch College, who is writing a book on the Young Lords, wants records on police surveillance. Credit... Christopher Gregory for The New York Times

Professor Fernandez has dug up decades-old court documents and Federal Bureau of Investigation reports from the Hoover era, including one recommending that agents create friction among members of Puerto Rican nationalist groups “through the use of informants and anonymous letters.”