Student Activism Now Documented

Project STAND

Remembering

Dr. Johanna Fernández

December 2, 1970 – July 30, 2026

We were fortunate for one night to have Dr. Johanna Fernandez grace us with her presence to talk about the Young Lords. We were extremely sad to hear about her passing and know that the legacy she built will continue on forever. We hope you enjoy the piece that Manuel (Manny) Mendez, whom she mentored wrote below. Not only will we never forget that night, but through her work and all the people whose lives she touched, Dr. Fernandez will be remembered and celebrated forever.

2nd residency project stand group panel discussion at spelman

Knowledge in the Service of Freedom: Dr. Johanna Fernandez and Intellectual Marronage

By Manuel (Manny) Mendez

Dr. Johanna Fernandez was an esteemed historian and abolitionist whose scholarship recovers the intellectual, political, and community history of the Young Lords. She authored The Young Lords: A Radical History, edited Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and co-edited The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor with Mumia Abu-Jamal. She taught on social movements, researched, litigated, and uncovered primary documents that led to the recovery of police surveillance records, including those involving Malcolm X.

Dr. Fernandez did not simply study “cimarronaje intelectual” (intellectual marronage); she fully embodied it. I had three opportunities to work with Dr. Fernandez: the Caras Lindas Podcast interview for the release of The Young Lords: A Radical History; curating the Latinx Freedom exhibition in Washington, D.C.; and, finally, during our own Project STAND freedom nights. On all these occasions, Dr. Fernandez gave her time and knowledge freely and generously. This post is a tribute to our friend and colleague, Dr. Joanna Fernandez, and an example of how radical intellectual endeavors are carried out through activism, scholarly work, community archives, and acts of kindness.

Cimarronaje (marronage), the Spanish term historically associated with the dispossessed Seminole tribe in Florida, refers both to escaped enslaved Africans and to domestic animals gone wild. In the Americas, enslaved Africans who escaped the brutality of fields of slavery created autonomous communities from Brazil and the Caribbean to the United States. Urban marronage emerged as conductors and routes of the Underground Railroad, creating spaces of safety. Some may describe this process as intellectual warfare: cimarronaje intelectual/intellectual marronage is the creation, recovery, and circulation of knowledge beyond structures that marginalize Black and Indigenous bodies. Lae’l Hughes-Watkins, Project STAND founder, calls it “reparative freedom”: a radical imagination that lets us build, create, and envision the impossible even within an oppressive system. Dr. Fernandez embodied intellectual marronage through her research, writing, knowledge sharing and transfer, relationship building, and community memory work. Some scholars observe freedom movements. Others, like Dr. Fernandez, let the ethics of those movements shape how they move through the world.

The Young Lords also exemplify cimarronaje intelectual. In 1968, the vibrant streets of Chicago became the birthplace of the Young Lords, a revolutionary group ignited by the passion of their leader, Cha Cha Jimenez. Just a year later, their influence surged as they established the New York chapter, expanding their vision for justice and equality into a new urban landscape. The Young Lords understood the mission of their time and worked to birth a national Patients’ Bill of Rights, free breakfast programs for children, and community health clinics, and to fight lead paint poisoning and tuberculosis. Like the Black Panther Party, the Young Lords were part of the Black radical traditions that challenged the institutions that failed Black and Brown communities. Dr. Fernandez’s scholarship on their movement moved beyond the ivory towers of armchair intellectuals. Through her co-edited work with Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Young Lords, Dr. Fernandez returned this history to the communities from which it emerged.

In 2017, I started the Caras Lindas Podcast as a rebellion against mainstream Latinidad media and in response to many images in Latino media today that represent our community in offensive and derogatory ways. Caras Lindas aimed to shed light on and reclaim our stories. We wanted a space for the Black Latinx community to share their achievements and unique experiences. Netfa Freeman, organizer of Pan-African Community Action (PACA), contacted me about the opportunity to interview Dr. Fernandez on her newly released book about the Young Lords. I couldn’t believe it, but to our great surprise, our podcast team interviewed Dr. Fernandez at the K Street Busboys and Poets.

There, I learned about Dr. Fernandez’s practice of radical accessibility: her willingness to share her time, explain the history of young people fighting back, take our questions seriously, and explain everything without worrying about the clock. We were fortunate and grateful to learn about her origins as a Black Dominican and how she became involved in the Young Lords through her thesis research. While some academics hoard and gatekeep knowledge, Dr. Fernandez’s practice of intellectual marronage refused to let academic structures determine who participates in and contributes to knowledge.

Dr. Fernandez also participated in Project STAND Freedom Nights, which highlighted the Young Lords’ student activism, and which I helped organize. The Freedom Nights event aimed to inspire new generations of activists while challenging attempts to erase radical histories, as Dr. Fernandez fought against throughout her career. In early July 2025, I texted her to request an October date, and she readily agreed to both participate and come to Washington, D.C.—she wanted our community and student activists to know this history, and she wanted to talk to them about it in person, which exemplified her generosity. She showed us that a scholar’s role is to enter a community space not as an authority, but as a participant in collective knowledge-making. Attendees were inspired by hearing about her life’s work in resistance, memory keeping, and the ongoing fight for justice.

I was also privileged to work with Dr. Fernandez on the Latinx Freedom Exhibition project. This project (now postponed) began with an exhibit on Latino civil rights history by Dr. Fernandez and Dr. Felipe Hinojosa. Latino civil rights history is not well known. Popular knowledge is often limited to the Young Lords, the 1968 walkouts of Latino students protesting discrimination in schools, Mendez v. Westminster, which played a key role in the desegregation of Brown vs. Board of Education, and current undocumented and environmental movements in our communities. Dr. Fernandez’s legacy lives on as her work strengthens the reparative archiving framework that seeks wholeness from fragmentation, mitigates harm, and centers the voices of those most marginalized and underrepresented. Archivists have historically determined whose lives enter institutional memory, and reparative exhibitions intervene by bringing suppressed histories back into public view.

The Latinx Freedom Exhibition project highlights five cities with prominent Latinx histories: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, and Washington, D.C. Kristy Li Puma and I are co-curating the D.C. Latino Freedom Exhibition, which centers understudied Latinx communities. D.C. Latinx communities have long-established histories of neighborhood organizing and international solidarity movements. However, these legacies are silenced and dismissed in favor of the federal government narrative of D.C. Dr. Fernandez envisioned the exhibition downtown and listened to us when we presented the realities of our site and its limitations. At the time of her passing, the exhibit was showing in NY, and the DC exhibit (as well as other exhibits nationally) was placed on a future timeline. We admire the urgency and immense vision that she brought to the project, a sheer force of nature; we were inspired in different ways each time we got to come together.

Across the Caras Lindas Podcast, Project STAND Freedom Nights, and the Latinx Freedom project, it was clear that Dr. Fernandez’s intellectual marronage stemmed from her willingness to recover histories marginalized by dominant narratives, make scholarship accessible beyond academia, treat knowledge as something created through collaboration and relationships, and circulate, not gatekeep, her resources. A scholar may write about revolution without practicing revolutionary intellectual relationships, but intellectual marronage concerns both what we know and how we choose to share it. Dr. Fernandez consistently demonstrated that practice: showing up, sharing what she knew, and understanding that knowledge becomes most powerful when it moves. We honor Dr. Joanna Fernandez’s legacy by documenting the voices, stories, and actions of vibrant communities that have faced systemic neglect and are fighting to ensure the knowledge never stops moving.

WE STAND ON

Here is the next highlight in our series – A shoutout to BUS at Kent State University

Project STAND Voting Rights Campaign Black United Students (Kent State University)

A Piece on Black United Students (BUS) at Kent State University

By Rahman “Rock” Culver, Director of Content, Project STAND

“Uhuru Student Publication, Spring 2020 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8450.

“Black United Students on Steps of Administration Building in silent-protest over concerns for increased black faculty, students, financial aid and a Black Cultural Center,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/2496.

Collection: Kent State University Black United Students Records Collection, Lafayette Tolliver Papers and Photographs Collection; Kent State University Libraries
Citations: “Black United Students on Steps of Administration Building,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/2496; “Black Watch, January 1972,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8200; “Black Watch Student Publication, March 30, 1970 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026. https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8196.

“Uhuru Student Publication, Fall 2008 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8273; “Uhuru Student Publication, Spring 2020 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8450. “We have students from Kent State and kids that are 18 and still in high school working. I am very excited that more people are helping to make the decision to elect the president.” – Sandy Halem, second vice-chair for the Portage County Democratic Party precinct, 2008

“Black Watch Student Publication, March 30, 1970 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8196.

“We have students from Kent State and kids that are 18 and still in high school working. I am very excited that more people are helping to make the decision to elect the president.” – Sandy Halem, second vice-chair for the Portage County Democratic Party precinct, 2008

Our current experiences are inevitably shaped by the intergenerational strides of our forbearers. Black United Students (B.U.S.) at Kent State University exemplify this tradition and offer a compelling model for how the efforts of current activists may be informed by those who came before us.

Since its founding in 1968, Black United Students has been a consistently active student organization of Kent State University. The mission of B.U.S. is “to serve and unify all Black students at Kent State University by addressing their needs.” From its inception, members of the organization have advocated for the equality of Kent State students of color including addressing fair facilities, budget allotments, student enrollment, faculty representation, academic programming, departmental organization, and social justice concerns, among many other issues in its decades-long history.

Steeped in a deep tradition of student activism that was elevated to national attention through the tragic shootings of 13 students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970, the Black student body at Kent State has long focused on self-determination and political empowerment for marginalized communities. This history of civic activism and voter mobilization runs from efforts to unseat former President Nixon through student-organized voting drives in 1972 to voter mobilization efforts in support of former President Obama’s candidacy in 2008. These efforts aligned with the organization’s goals to “develop and help build our own communities” and enable self-determination for not only the campus community, but for people of African descent globally.

As the editorial staff of the Black Watch B.U.S. student newspaper wrote in its January 1972 issue, “We the Blacks of Kent State and the Black communities of this area can play a part in Dumping ‘Dick Nixon’. …So Blacks of Kent State and Blacks in the surrounding communities ‘UNITE’. Register to Vote, and then in turn VOTE in the May primaries and the general elections in November.” Roughly three decades later, Sandy Halem, second vice-chair for the Portage County Democratic Party precinct shared in an interview with the current B.U.S. student publication Uhuru in its Fall 2008 issue, “We have students from Kent State and kids that are 18 and still in high school working. I am very excited that more people are helping to make the decision to elect the president.”

One of the highest-profile protests carried out by B.U.S. involved a mass walkout and silent protest over concerns for increased black faculty, students, financial aid and a Black Cultural Center on April 27, 1970 – only days prior to the infamous campus shooting. The priorities of greater representation among student body and faculty remain a focus across American college campuses and became a focus during the so-called racial reckoning of 2020 – activism that led to a surge in diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at institutions and companies nationally. B.U.S. provides an enduring model for the continuity and sustained political influence that is possible when our organizations remain strong and committed.

For more information, please visit the Kent State University Black United Students Records Collection, Kent State University Libraries.

“Uhuru Student Publication, Fall 2008 Issue,” Kent State University Libraries. Special Collections and Archives, accessed June 14, 2026, https://omeka.library.kent.edu/special-collections/items/show/8273.

Grants

Diving into the Numbers

The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) awarded Project STAND (STudent Activism Now Documented) $92,096 under the National Leadership Grant for Libraries Program.

The Atlanta University Center (AUC) Robert W. Woodruff Library in partnership with Project STAND received generous funding of $750,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Project STAND in partnership with Shift Collective and Black Girl Archivist, LLC, received a 1.5 million dollar grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.