JUAN GONZÁLEZ (LEFT) OF THE YOUNG LORDS IN NEW YORK CITY, 1969 (BEV GRANT / GETTY IMAGES)
T
he legacy of the Young Lords is
something that has followed me
throughout my adult life as a
New York–born-and-bred child
of Puerto Rican immigrants.
The Young Lords’ unrelenting calls for
Puerto Rican independence, their vari-
ous interventions in local politics, their
unyielding solidarity with colonized and
working-class people everywhere, their
stunning presence (often augmented by
Che-like berets and street-style military
formations) all shaped the way my gener-
ation and future ones interpreted the tu-
multuous late 1960s and early ’70s. Theywere, along with figures like Fred Hamp-
ton, Frantz Fanon, and Loli ta Lebrón,
a guide for my political and cultural life.
Over the last few years, the Young
Lords have again become political and
cultural lodestars. Three major exhibi-
tions in New York City—at the Bronx
Museum, El Museo del Barrio, and the
Loi sai da Center—have celebrated their
radical vision and activism and examined
their inextricable relationship with the
arts, culture, and the media. The Young
Lords’ status as a model for Afro-Latinx
resistance in the age of Trumpian author-
itarianism has given them a moment just
in time for the recent 50th anniversary of
their founding.
In her new book, The Young Lords:
A Radical History, historian JohannaFernández offers us an exhaustive and
enlightening study of their history and
makes the case for their influence as pro-
found thinkers as well as highly capable
street activists. There have been other
books on and by the Lords (including
Darrel Wanzer-Serrano’s The New York
Young Lords and the Struggle for Libera-
tion, Iris Morales’s Through the Eyes of
Rebel Women: The Young Lords 1969–
1976 , and Miguel Meléndez’s We Took
the Streets) but Fernández’s distinguishes
itself by providing solid, incredibly de-
tailed historical research, including ex-
tensive interviews with the Lords and
their contemporaries. It also places them
in the context of the political and social
debates that shaped the era and reveals
how so much of their activism centeredBooks & the Arts
THE ROOTS OF ORGANIZING
The Young Lords revolution
by ED MORALES
Ed Morales is the author of Fantasy Island:
Colonialism, Exploitation, and the Betray-
al of Puerto Rico.