2023 - 2024 CLR FACULTY FELLOWS SPOTLIGHT - DR. JACQUI LAZÚ

2023 - 2024 CLR FACULTY FELLOWS SPOTLIGHT - DR. JACQUI LAZÚ

Interview conducted by Laura Pachón

Jacqueline Lazú is an Associate Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and an affiliated faculty member in Latin American and Latino Studies, African and Black Diaspora Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies, and Criminology, a department that she co-founded in 2019 From 2018-2023, she served as Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dr Lazú’s scholarship reflects her preparation as a literary and cultural critic and a commitment to activist and community-based research These include studies of literature and culture as tools for social transformation, the history of Latinx and Latin American social movements, aesthetics, and political philosophy She is recognized as a leading historian of the Young Lords, a Chicago Puerto Rican gang turned social movement and has helped establish DePaul's Young Lords special collections archive as a destination for the study of Puerto Rican Chicago, the Rainbow Coalition, Illinois Black Panther Party, and 1960s and 1970s social justice movements.

To start off, congratulations on receiving both this year’s STRC Faculty Fellowship and the CLR Faculty Fellowship! What are you hoping to achieve during these fellowships?

Thank you! As an STRC fellow, I will be working on developing my skills in archival management. I have had many opportunities to collaborate with experts in our library, artists and curators in the community and have learned a lot from them. I wanted to delve deeper into those skills so I could offer more to these partnerships and imagine new ways to present history to the public. These projects also form the basis of two books that I have been working on about the Young Lords. One of them is an edited collection of primary materials about the movement that I am coediting with Cha Cha and original members of the Young Lords central committee. The working title for it is The Young Lords Speak:

(Re)Constructing the Narrative of Revolution. As a CLR Fellow this year, I will be working on completing the curation of materials for the anthology. The second manuscript is my own comprehensive history of the origins of the Young Lords in Chicago titled Stone Revolutionaries: The Origins of the Young Lords Movement.

You have worked collaboratively with the Chicago Young Lords Organization (YLO) for over 20 years. What was the reason you decided to focus your research on this organization?

In some ways, it was an unexpected opportunity. I worked in theater, specifically, looking at the representation of history and political identity in Latin American and Latinx Theater. One day, I was invited by the director of the Center for Latino Research, Dr. Félix Masud Piloto, back to a meeting with members of the Young Lords, including Chairman José “Cha Cha” Jiménez. They were forming a committee to work on developing an archive on the history of the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican community in Lincoln Park that included collecting oral histories and artifacts of the movement. I was thrilled. Like many of us as young Puerto Ricans, I had learned about the Young Lords and was really inspired by their actions in the late 1960s and early 70s. But also, I thought they were from New York. I didn’t know that they had started in Lincoln Park, Chicago. It was Dr. Masud who urged me to start working with the research that had already been gathered to write a play about the Young Lords. The play, called The Block/El

Bloque: A Young Lords Story, was the first of many projects that I have done since then with the Young Lords and their archives at DePaul.

What have you found in your research that incites the reaction “huh, I’ve got to share this with everyone”?

I feel like I’m sitting on the edge of my seat waiting for the chance to talk about the depth to which we as a university were engaging with the urban renewal plans for Lincoln Park in the 1960s. Our community stood on both sides of the plans from the very beginning. Students, especially, were invested in the well-being of the greater community and were often in the front lines of the resistance movements and allied with groups like the Young Lords. Our student newspapers covered the stories of what was happening on campus and in the community. There was also an element of complicity and concealment among our leaders. DePaul Magazine proudly shared plans about expansion and there was not even a mention of what was happening to the people outside of the iron gates. But the silence spoke volumes and the materials in our archives reveal a much more vocal position on the part of our administration about the plans for Lincoln Park and the people trying to stand their ground. The university had a lot to gain from the displacement of the Puerto Rican and poor communities of Lincoln Park and effectively aligned itself with one of the most successful plans for urban renewal in the US at that time. Moreover, DePaul was one of the most victorious institutions in that plan.

As a former gang-turned-human rights organization, what are some of the things the Young Lords Organization (YLO) did to support their community? What are the impacts of their work on the present-day Puerto Rican community in Chicago?

Specifically, the continuous struggle with gentrification and social justice issues in various neighborhoods of the city?

The YLO did begin as a gang and those years when they knew each other as kids in the neighborhood in Lincoln Park helped to build their organizing skills and the sense of loyalty between them that helped make the Young Lords Movement so enduring. During their peak years of activism in Lincoln Park—what I call The Peoples Church era—they led a series of Survival Programs or Service to the People modeled after the Black Panther Party platform. They allied with the Black Panthers and the Young Patriots to form the original Rainbow Coalition. The Young Lord’s programs included a breakfast program for children, a community health clinic, political education for adults in the community, and security services for the community. They became leaders in education, labor rights, social services, media, arts, politics, and community service. Also, women were on the frontlines at protests

Dr. Jacqui Lazú

and direct actions. Even during the “club” or gang years, the Young Lordettes and the social events they led in the community were at times all that was left of the group’s activities. Women like Yolanda Lucas and Angie Lind (Navedo) led the YLO during some critical moments when Cha Cha was in jail or underground. Angie was also instrumental in developing the Young Lords Collection at DePaul. This study of the role of women reveals even more layers in the political philosophy of the movement and why it has had such an enduring impact on generations of social justice activists.

What can the community members of DePaul do to keep the history of the YLO alive, on top of the commemorative plaque?

There is still so much more for us to learn about the Young Lords. Our responsibility is to create more opportunities to honor and learn about what happened in Lincoln Park in the late 1960s, and to understand the protracted struggle, the ongoing conditions of colonialism, poverty, and displacement in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora here in Chicago. The struggle of the Young Lords back then was motivated by circumstances that still exist for people of color and poor people in Chicago. We must honor that history, and we must honor our core values and the mission of the university by actively seeking more ways to confront and repair the historical injustices. I hope that we can all show up and take pride in the programs we will have available throughout the year here at DePaul and in the larger community to educate people about the Young Lords and the long history of resistance in Latinx Chicago. As the Latinx student population continues to grow at DePaul and we continue to

build on our commitment to diversity, this really must be understood as a cultural shift for our university.

Our responsibility is to create more opportunities to honor and learn about what happened in Lincoln Park in the late 1960s, and to understand the protracted struggle, the ongoing conditions of colonialism, poverty, and displacement in Puerto Rico and in the diaspora here in Chicago.

On that note, is there anything you would like to plug?

Yes! I’m just finishing my colleague, Professor Francesca Royster’s book Choosing Family: A Memoir of Queer Motherhood and Black Resistance. It is powerful and really cool to meet her again through the familial and social space she recreates for us in the book. Also, please go see the new exhibit at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago. “entre horizontes: Art and Activism Between Chicago and Puerto Rico” curated by Carla Acevedo Yates will run through May of next year and was meticulously developed in collaboration with many Puerto Rican artists, scholars, and activists in our community, including the art of DePaul professor Bibiana Suárez, and Young Lord photographer Carlos Flores. They are also publishing a companion reader featuring my research on the Young Lords and Professor Marisa Alicea’s research on Chicago Puerto Rican murals, among others.