Hundreds came out to celebrate the lives of five women known for their work with the Puerto Rican civil rights group, the Young Lords Organization on Saturday, Oct. 24.
The memorial tribute at East Harlem’s FSUMC The People’s Church celebrated the legacies of Minerva Solla, Dr. Johanna Fernández, Cleo Silvers, Concepción “Connie” Cruz, and Denise Oliver-Vélez. Each woman played a decisive role in formulating the ideology, spearheading community health and defense programs, or recording the radical history of the Young Lords.
Their passing within a single year, between 2025 and 2026, has left a major impact on the Black and Latino liberation movements — and pushed many to remind community members why their history needs to be preserved.
Host and Young Lords veteran Gloria Santiago Rodriguez addressed the families directly as the tribute began, “I want to take this moment to really thank the families,” Santiago Rodriguez said, “and the family members and extended family members that are present here today and those who are not. You shared your life partners, mothers, sisters, aunts and grandmothers with a movement. And then you shared their memory with us.”
“These five women stood at the front of the Young Lords,” Rodriguez continued. “They organized, fed, taught, and defended their community — and they did it while carrying the weight of being a woman in a movement that too often failed to record their names. Your presence at this memorial corrects that record; you trusted us with their stories, and we hold that trust with care.”
Co-host and local activist Indiana Soto emphasized, “this is both a celebration and a responsibility. We honor what came before us and together we commit ourselves to carrying the work forward. With love, with solidarity, with courage and always, always within community.”
Livestreamed on the FSUMC The People’s Church’s YouTube channel and on the AmNews homepage, the tribute blended libations, song, laughter, and remembrances. Speakers detailed how each woman dismantled systemic oppression while still challenging sexism within radical politics.
Jamal Joseph, a former Black Panther Party leader, recalled Connie Cruz’s vital role in confronting internal machismo.
“Sister Connie was a dynamic force… in terms of what she did within the Young Lords and the influence that she had on those of us who were her brothers and sisters and comrades in the Black Panther Party,” Joseph said. “Because the conversation about machismo, the conversation about women’s rights, the conversation about and the actions that we had to take to recognize… that the sisters are our comrades and our other halves, our better halves in terms of revolutionary struggle. It was true in the Young Lords and true in the Black Panther Party that if not for Connie and if not for the women in this movement, these… organizations would not have survived as long as they did.”
Intellectual and activist solidarity across racial lines was embodied by Cleo Silvers, an African American organizer who joined the Young Lords and helped lead the historic 1970 takeover of Lincoln Hospital in the Bronx.
Activist and adjunct CUNY professor, Rosemari Mealy explained to attendees how government interference via COINTELPRO spurred Silvers’ trajectory: “For Cleo, several members of the Black Panther Party brought her to the Young Lord’s Party and they told her that she was an excellent organizer and that they didn’t want her to become a part of or be involved in this split.”
“So, she became a member of the Young Lord’s Party, and she was able to continue her work of organizing as she had been doing in the Black Panther Party,” Mealy continued. “In the Young Lord’s Party, she merged her interests in community mental health with organizing… at Lincoln Hospital, while showing extraordinary courage and creativity in the leadership during the takeover of Lincoln Hospital.”
Personal growth and principled transformation were central themes in the tribute to Minerva Solla, one of the first women in the Young Lords’ Ministry of Defense. Her husband, veteran Black Panther Bruce Richard, spoke of her disciplined self-actualization.
“An important thing to know about Minerva Solla is that she was deeply involved in transforming herself: she was truly on a mission to move herself in a way that she could make an important contribution to bringing us together as much as she possibly could. She also believed strongly that this change that she was after, that it had to come from within and she was very deliberate about it,” Richard said.
The lifelong solidarity of Denise Oliver-Vélez — the first woman elected to the Young Lords Central Committee and a major force behind its bilingual newspaper “¡Pa’lante!” — was remembered by her friend, Wendarlene Rodriguez: “She will forever be my sister. She taught me that friendship is when silence is comfortable. She will forever be my friend, … a woman of force, integrity and strength. She didn’t leave us behind; she left us together. She left me such a family. Rest in power!”
Reflecting on the intellectual legacy of historian and activist Dr. Johanna Fernández, author of “The Young Lords: A Radical History,” her brother Geovany Fernández asked, “How do you sum up a life? Is that even the goal in this celebration of five strong women? As I reviewed the program for this celebration, I see five lives well lived,” Fernández said. “Five lives that while on this earth tried to do good. Many of us are afraid to leave this earth. Certainly, JF wanted to stay; she had a lot still to do…”
