Johanna Fernández and Denise Oliver-Velez
Fernández is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of The Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century U.S. history and the history of social movements in The Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). Dr. Fernández’s recent research and litigation have unearthed an arsenal of primary documents now available to scholars and members of the public. Her Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the NYPD, led to the recovery of the “lost” Handschu files, the largest repository of police surveillance records in the country, namely over one million surveillance files of New Yorkers compiled by the NYPD between 1954-1972, including those of Malcolm X. She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015). With Mumia Abu-Jamal, she co-edited a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor (Routledge, 2014). Among others, her awards include The Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa, which took her to Jordan, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship of the Scholars-in-Residence program at The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library. Professor Fernández is the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (BigNoise Films, 2010). She directed and co-curated, ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York an exhibition in three NYC museums cited by The New York Times as one of the year’s Top 10, Best In Art. Her mainstream writings have been published internationally, from Al Jazeera to The Huffington Post. She has appeared in a diverse range of print, radio, online, and televised media including NPR, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Democracy Now!. Fernández is the recipient of a Bachelor of Arts in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University.
Oliver-Velez is currently a Contributing Editor at Daily Kos, where she writes on politics, history, and culture. She has been a political activist and community organizer for over 50 years – in the civil rights movement, women’s movement (featured in the documentary on second-wave feminism “She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry), AIDS and LBGTQ activism movement and was a member of both The Young Lords Party and The Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She worked in community media and public broadcasting for many years and was a co-founder and program director of Pacifica’s first minority-controlled radio station, WPFW-FM, in Washington DC. She was the coordinator of The Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s (CPB) Minority and Women’s Training Grant Program and was the executive director of The Black Filmmaker Foundation. As a medical anthropologist, she has published ethnographic research as part of several HIV/AIDS intervention projects. She is a retired SUNY New Paltz adjunct Professor of Anthropology and Women’s Studies, honored as a Teacher of the Year by The College of Liberal Arts & Sciences in 2016. She lectures frequently on campuses across the U.S. and continues to organize.
Event Recap
On Thursday, February 13, historian and Baruch College professor Johanna Fernández presented her new book, The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, 2020) to a packed auditorium at the King Juan Carlos I Center. Afterward, she was joined by former Young Lord Denise Oliver-Velez for a discussion of the book, followed by Q&A. Below are some highlights of the event, including a live-streamed video. Many thanks to Alex Ruiz for the photos!
