Here in New York, Dominican American scholar, historian and prison abolitionist Dr. Johanna Fernández has passed away after a years-long battle with cancer. She was 55. As a professor of history at Baruch College and CUNY Graduate Center, Fernández was a leading scholar of the Young Lords, publishing the award-winning book “The Young Lords: A Radical History” in 2019. In 2015, she co-curated the exhibition ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York.
Fernández also created the Latinx Freedom Movement Archive and Exhibition Project, alongside historian Felipe Hinojosa. She was a longtime supporter of the imprisoned activist and journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. Over the years, Fernández appeared on Democracy Now! many times. She joined us in 2015 to look back at the legacy of the Young Lords.

Johanna Fernández: “What we see is that the movements of the 1960s, what is known as the New Left and the Black Power movement, transformed the relationship between people of color and white people, challenged U.S. foreign policy, but also transformed our understanding of gender and sexuality. And those were the issues that the Young Lords were concerned with.”