Iris Morales (born 1948) is an American activist for Latino/a civil rights, filmmaker, author, and lawyer based in New York. She is best known for her work with the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican community activist group in the United States and her feminist movements within the organization. Morales continues to create a space for people of color to express their voices and histories through a variety of mediums as an advocate for underrepresented people, especially those who identify as LatinX members.
Early life and education
Iris Morales was born in New York in 1948 to Puerto Rican migrant parents. Her father worked as a hotel elevator operator, and her mother worked as a sewing machine operator. She went to Julia Richman High School, where she attended meetings of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and the NAACP.
As the oldest of four in her family, Morales was expected to learn how to care for the house by her aunts and cousins. However, Morales' mother knew that she was capable of more than that and supported and encouraged her educational path.
In highschool, Morales was highly inspired by Malcolm X and Don Pedro Alviso Compas, because there was little understood about Puerto Rican history. This, along social movements such as the Black Panther Party inspired Morales to begin her Young activist narrative. As a teenager, she became a tenant rights organizer in her East Harlem neighborhood and protested the Vietnam War. She studied political science at City College and was a part of a small program designated for underprivileged and minority students that studied at the college At the University, Morales joined the Black student organization, and co-founded Puerto Ricans Involved in Student Action (PRISA), the school's first Puerto Rican student organization.
The Young Lords
The Chicago-based Young Lords, a leftist group of Puerto Rican youth activists inspired by the Black Panthers, established a branch in New York in 1969. Morales joined the group that year, after meeting Young Lords founder José Cha Cha Jiménez at a conference in Denver.
Her work as a leader in the Young Lords spanned five years in the 1960s and 1970s. She served as deputy minister of education and co-founder of its Women's Caucus. Morales served as minister of information for a period. Morales resigned from the Young Lords, which was struggling with infighting and targeted by the FBI's COINTELPRO program, in 1975. The party effectively disbanded the following year.
Her contributions to the Young Lords Party was representative of her socialist and internationalist views that precedent Puerto Rican History.
Feminist Movement Contributions
Morales worked to create a second revolution within The Young Lord's Party. Her engagement in the feminist movement was astute, as she worked to deconstruct the patriarchal sexism that followed women at the beginning of their journey in the Young Lords Party.
She along with other women of the Young Lords party disputed the machista values outlined in the 13 point program written and published by the Young Lords male members that ultimately supported machista views, pointing out the duality of their statements to that of the initiatives of The Young Lords Party.
Morales worked on political education and literacy efforts, as well as attempting to change the machista culture of the organization. She advocated for women's inclusion in leadership and helped co-found the Women's Union and its corresponding publication, La Luchadora. Her work on women's representation in the Young Lords paved the way for the organization's pioneering lesbian and gay caucus.
In addition to her fight for the feminist cause within the Young Lords, she also used her position in the organization to advocate for abortion access and against forced sterilizations, and an increase to birth control accessibility. The Women's caucus continued to advocate for safer abortions for women of underrepresented Among the causes that the organization undertook during this period included establishing a free breakfast program for New York's youth, creating a lead poisoning prevention program, founding a daycare so Latina women could seek employment, and advocating for the decolonization of Puerto Rico.