Johanna Fernandez - Professor of History, Baruch College

November 18, 2009 4:00pm - 6:00pm
McKenna Hall 210 - 214, University of Notre Dame

4:00-4:30p Reception, 4:30-5:30p Lecture "The Young Lords and the Social and Structural Roots of Sixties Radicalism" The Young Lords Organization (YLO), was a Puerto Rican revolutionary nationalist group analogous to the Black Panther Party (BPP) that first emerged in Chicago as a politicized gang in 1968. By 1970, Young Lord branches sprouted in cities from Detroit and Philadelphia to New York. In the process, the group went from being a little-known organization to the stuff of legend. Like the BPP, these young radicals fixed their attention on the social consequences of the new poverty in American cities: chronic unemployment, the intractable crisis of health care in public hospitals, poor sanitation, drug addiction, hunger, racism, and police brutality. This talk explores the character and evolution of radical, urban sixties protest and suggests that the rise of the Young Lords and organizations like it was integrally tied to global, postwar economic restructuring and its unintended consequences.

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