News Release

Note: The news release about the panel and
exhibit is posted at http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jan07/pantherslords011907.html.

Former Black Panthers, Young Lords
to speak about their connected histories

CHAPEL HILL – Following are capsule biographies of speakers scheduled for a panel discussion from 5-7 p m. Jan. 27 at the Sonja Haynes Stone Center for Black Culture and History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The discussion will mark the opening of the exhibit “Radicals in Black and Brown: Palante, People’s Power and Common Cause in the Black Panthers and the Young Lords Organization,” to be displayed through March 2. Both events will be free and open to the public at the center, at 150 South Road. For more information, call (919) 962-9001.

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Kathleen Cleaver, a senior lecturer in law at Emory University, left college in 1966 to work with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. From 1967to 1971, she was communications secretary of the Black Panther Party. She lived in exile with her former husband, the late Eldridge Cleaver, information minister for the Panthers, then returned to the United States in 1975. She has been on the Georgia Supreme Court Commission on Racial and Ethnic Bias in the Courts and a board member of the Southern Center for Human Rights. She has been a visiting faculty member at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Sarah Lawrence College and Yale University, where she earned her bachelor’s and law degrees.

Darrel Enck-Wanzer, an instructor in communication studies at Eastern Illinois University, researches the Young Lords. His research and teaching examine the theories and practices of robust democratic citizenship in a diverse society.

Johanna Fernandez, a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie-Mellon University, worked with UNC’s Jordan and Charles Jones of Georgia State University to organize the exhibit and panel. Her writings include the essay “The Young Lords: Its Origins and Convergences with the Black Panther Party.” Fernandez specializes in 20th-century U.S. and African American history. She is completing a book on the history of the Young Lords. Previously, she taught history and American studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. She earned a doctorate in history from Columbia University.

Henry Gaddis was a member of the Illinois chapter of the Black Panthers and a liaison between the Panthers and the Young Lords.

Jose “Cha Cha” Jimenezledthe social group known as the Young Lords in Chicago beginning in the late 1950s. After experiencing a series of life-changing events in 1968, he politicized the gang and transformed the Young Lords into the Puerto Rican counterpart to the Black Panther Party.

Charles Jones, associate professor and founding chair of the African-American studies department at Georgia State University in Atlanta, worked with UNC’s Jordan and Johanna Fernandez of Carnegie-Mellon University to organize the exhibit and panel. Items from his collection are included in the display. His many journal articles and other writings include the book “The Black Panther Party Reconsidered.” Jones and a fellow scholar are working on a manuscript titled “Panther Power: An Analytic History of the Black Panther Party, 1966-1982.”

Hiram Maristany of East Harlem was a founding member and director of the Young Lords and the group’s official photographer. He shot and chronicled Puerto Rican life in El Barrio, the East Harlem neighborhood where the largest concentration of Puerto Ricans living in the United States from the 1950s through the 1980s. Deeply involved in the Puerto Rican arts movement, he has documented everyday life in El Barrio, its vibrant personality and personalities for 40 years. His photographs will be among those on display in the Stone Center exhibit.

Miguel “Mickey” Melendez was captain of defense of the Young Lords Party, the organization’s major governing body, and a member of its central staff. He wrote “Taking the Streets: Fighting for Latino Rights with the Young Lords.” Melendez has held senior positions in the New York City government and taught black and Hispanic studies at Baruch College.

Iris Morales, a native New Yorker, was deputy minister of education in the Young Lords Party. She produced and directed “Palante, Siempre Palante,” a video documentary on the party.

Denise Oliver-Velez, an adjunct anthropology professor at the State University of New York at New Paltz, was the first woman elected to the central committee of the Young Lords Party. She was one of approximately one quarter of the group’s members who were black.

Ahmad Rahman, a leader in the Black Panther Party in Detroit, was sent to prison in 1971 after an FBI investigation. Rahman spent 20 years behind bars, earning his bachelor’s degree and becoming the first prisoner ever admitted to a graduate program at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He continued on to earn his doctorate and now is an assistant professor of history at the University of Michigan- Dearborn.

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Collectors of items in the exhibit who will contribute to the discussion:

Carlos Flores of Chicago is an archivist and photographer who focuses on the Young Lords.

Alden Kimbrough, an archivist for the Black Panther Party, and his sister, Mary, both of Los Angeles, have been collecting posters, drawings, photographs, newspaper articles and other Panther artifacts for some 20 years.

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Stone Center contact: Olympia Friday, (919) 962-7265, ofriday@email.unc.edu
News Services contacts: Print, L.J. Toler, (919) 962-8589; broadcast, Karen Moon, (919) 962-9585