The Young Lords Quotes

“displacement is perhaps the most traumatic experience that humans can undergo, with invisible consequences that can last for generations, from physical and mental problems to difficulty maintaining the social fabric of a community. Fullilove identifies the symptoms of displacement as “root shock,” which, she explains, “undermines trust, increases anxiety about letting loved ones out of one’s sight, destabilizes relationships, destroys social, emotional, and financial resources, and increases the risk of every kind of stress-related disease, from depression to heart attack. Root shock leaves people chronically cranky, barking a distinctive croaky complaint that their world was abruptly taken away.”49”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History

“Among his peers, Pablo Guzmán had a unique upbringing. He graduated from one of New York’s premier academic high schools, Bronx Science, where students were engaged with the political debates of the day, from the Vietnam War to the meaning of black power, thanks to the influence of a history teacher. Guzmán had also been politicized by his Puerto Rican father and maternal grandfather, who was Cuban. Both saw themselves as members of the black diaspora in the Americas. The job discrimination and racist indignities they endured in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and in New York turned them into race men committed to the politics of black pride and racial uplift. When Guzmán was a teenager, his father took him to Harlem to hear Malcolm X speak.188 He also remembers that his Afro-Cuban grandfather, Mario Paulino, regularly convened meetings at his home to discuss world politics with a circle of friends, many of whom were likely connected through their experience at the Tuskegee Institute, the historic black American school of industrial training, to which Paulino had applied from Cuba and at which he enrolled in the early 1920s.189 Perhaps because of the strong black politics of his household, Guzmán identified strongly with the black American community, considered joining the BPP, and called himself “Paul.” His “field studies” in Cuernavaca, Mexico, during his freshman year at SUNY Old Westbury, however, awakened him to the significance of his Latin American roots.”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History

“Young Lord David Perez spoke to the psychological consequences of this struggle over language on the mainland: “Language becomes a reward and a punishment system. … In the school system here, if you don’t quickly begin to speak English and shed your Puerto Rican values, you’re put back a grade. … You’re treated as if you’re retarded … and your own cultural values therefore are shown to be of less value than the cultural values of this country and the language of this country. … It creates a colonized mentality … a strong feeling of inferiority, … of not being as worthy as the [other] Americans.”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History

“In 1943, the board had considered negligible the very small minority of Puerto Rican students in San Juan Hill, a Manhattan neighborhood, and “Spanish Harlem.”59 But only four years later, in 1947, it reported the matriculation of 13,914 Puerto Rican pupils.60 In 1956, that figure jumped to over 113,000, exceeding the rate of matriculation in New York of black American migrant children from the South. Puerto”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History

“Fred Hampton was instrumental in setting the terms of the relationship. Guerra continues, “Hampton was a very humble person and didn’t walk around like he was God’s gift to the movement, although he was an eloquent public speaker; he was also a great organizer. He was a person who came in an old car, got out, shook people’s hands, wanted to really talk to people. I remember him saying, ‘I’m glad to have met you. I’m glad to have met you.’ ”146 Hampton’s talents as organizer and public speaker and his radical coalition politics made him one of the most effective members of the Black Panther Party.”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History

“Oliver recalls, “I never learned how to type; I didn’t want to learn how to type because I didn’t want to be typecast.”
― Johanna Fernandez, The Young Lords: A Radical History