Conversation with Iris Morales and Jacqui Lazú

All are welcome to a conversation between activist, educator, and author Iris Morales and guest curator of Tengo Lincoln Park en mi Corazón: Young Lords in Chicago, Dr. Jacqueline Lazú. Together, they will reflect on Morales’s groundbreaking contributions to social justice movements and cultural work, in conversation with Lazú’s scholarship on the Young Lords in Chicago. Their dialogue will trace the legacy of the organization across cities and generations and consider its continued relevance to struggles for equity and self-determination today. The conversation will be followed by an audience Q&A.

Iris Morales is the founding director of Red Sugarcane Press and a member of the Political Training Institute of Mijente, an organization dedicated to building Latinx political power through racial, economic, gender, and climate justice. A former member of the New York Young Lords, she is the author of Through the Eyes of Rebel Women, editor of Revisiting Herstories: The Young Lords Party, and director of the landmark documentary ¡Palante, Siempre Palante!. She also co-authored the bilingual children’s book Vicki and A Summer of Change!, based on the Young Lords’ 1969 East Harlem garbage offensive. Her lifelong activism centers anti-colonial struggle, feminist leadership, and youth empowerment.

Jacqueline Lazú is a Society of Vincent DePaul Professor in the Department of Modern Languages at DePaul University. Her research on the Puerto Rican diaspora and the Young Lords in Chicago has led to long-standing collaborations with original members of the organization and informs her public history work, including the exhibition Encendidas: Women of the Young Lords. She also served as a historical advisor and on-screen contributor for the WTTW documentary The Young Lords of Lincoln Park. She is the author of two forthcoming books: The Young Lords Speak: (Re)Constructing the Narrative of Revolution (Haymarket Books, 2025) and Stone Revolutionaries: The Origins of the Young Lords Movement (Duke University Press, 2026).

This program is supported by DePaul University’s Vincentian Endowment Fund through the Division of Mission and Ministry and the Center for Latino Research.