Denise Oliver-Vélez, a lifelong activist, organizer and educator, has died at the age of 78. She was a central figure in the civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee, a radical Puerto Rican civil and human rights organization. She was also a member of the Black Panther Party and later became the first Black female program director in public radio and taught at SUNY New Paltz. This is Denise Oliver-Vélez describing the legacy of the Young Lords during a 2019 appearance on Democracy Now!

Denise Oliver-Vélez: “I think that what is so revolutionary about the Young Lords was we created a bridge. We broke down a lot of barriers between groups that were dealing with their individual communities. And that also has a lot to do with, when you talk about Spanish Harlem, El Barrio, you had about a third of the population in El Barrio was African American. And you also had marriages between Black Americans and Puerto Ricans, so we had people in the Lords who identified as both.”