Gary Delgado

Part 1 — 12/3/23

This is Part 1 of Gary Delgado’s oral history interview. Delgado’s organizing started in the early 1970s at the National Welfare Rights Organization, after which he helped found ACORN in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1970. Then, after taking some time away from ACORN, he returned in 1979 to implement the organization’s first People’s Platform, which sought to use the 1980 Presidential campaign to build power. Delgado was a vocal critic of community organizing’s unwillingness to explicitly address race, and eventually founded the Center for Third World Organizing, an organizer training institute with a racial justice focus. He subsequently founded the Applied Research Center (now RaceForward). Delgado has been living with aphasia since he had a stroke in the wake of heart surgery in 2019. For this reason, his interviews have been edited.

Part 2 — 01/13/24

This is Part 2 of Gary Delgado’s oral history interview. Delgado’s organizing started in the early 1970s at the National Welfare Rights Organization, after which he helped found ACORN in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1970. Then, after taking some time away from ACORN, he returned in 1979 to implement the organization’s first People’s Platform, which sought to use the 1980 Presidential campaign to build power. Delgado was a vocal critic of community organizing’s unwillingness to explicitly address race, and eventually founded the Center for Third World Organizing, an organizer training institute with a racial justice focus. He subsequently founded the Applied Research Center (now RaceForward). Delgado has been living with aphasia since he had a stroke in the wake of heart surgery in 2019. For this reason, his interviews have been edited.

Part 3 — 01/21/24

This is Part 3 of Gary Delgado’s oral history interview. Delgado’s organizing started in the early 1970s at the National Welfare Rights Organization, after which he helped found ACORN in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1970. Then, after taking some time away from ACORN, he returned in 1979 to implement the organization’s first People’s Platform, which sought to use the 1980 Presidential campaign to build power. Delgado was a vocal critic of community organizing’s unwillingness to explicitly address race, and eventually founded the Center for Third World Organizing, an organizer training institute with a racial justice focus. He subsequently founded the Applied Research Center (now RaceForward). Delgado has been living with aphasia since he had a stroke in the wake of heart surgery in 2019. For this reason, his interviews have been edited.