Denise Oliver-Velez Passed Away!

Rest easy queen.

After a long battle with cancer, progressive activist and professor Dr. Denise Oliver-Velez has passed away. Weeks away from her birthday.

A long time civil rights advocate and professor, Oliver-Velez became active in civil rights work through the Queens branch of the NAACP, and in 1963 took part in a civil disobedience action demanding employment for Black workers at a Queens construction site.

Oliver-Velez transferred to Howard University in 1965, where she joined the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Students for a Democratic Society. In 1970, she was appointed Minister of Economic Development within the Young Lords Party, becoming the highest-ranking woman in the organization and its first woman elected to its central leadership committee.

Within the Young Lords, Oliver-Velez helped push back against the group’s original platform language around “Revolutionary Machismo.” She later reflected on that moment: “I was in the Young Lords, and one of the points in the original program was ‘Revolutionary Machismo.’ Machismo is reactionary, so you can’t have revolutionary machismo. We women weren’t having it. So we made a very different kind of statement. ‘We want equality for women. Down with machismo and male chauvinism.'”

She wrote for many progressive blogs like The Daily Kos, The Raw Story and The Grio.

Fighting for the equality that many people of color was a key focus of her life. She stood up for women who were in need and never apologized for being what they called radical.

She was 78.

Oliver-Velez was a program director and co-founder of WPFW-FM in Washington, D.C., Pacifica's first minority-controlled radio station and worked in public broadcasting and community media for many years.

She was also the executive director of the Black Filmmaker Foundation.

Oliver-Velez is featured in the 2014 feminist documentary film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.

In August 2020, Oliver-Velez gave a rare interview on Bryan Knight's Tell A Friend podcast, where she candidly spoke about her life and activism in the Young Lords.