US Black Radicals, The Cuban Revolution, and The Formation of A Tricontinental Ideology

Radical History Review
De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad

Cubana: U.S. Black Radicals, the Cuban
Revolution, and the Formation of a
Tricontinental Ideology
Besenia Rodriguez
On September 18, 1960, less than two years after the success of Cubas July 26
Movement, Fidel Castro arrived in the United States for the fteenth session of the
General Assembly of the United Nations. The U.S. government imposed a travel
restriction on the entire delegation, forbidding them to move beyond the island of
Manhattan.1 On his arrival, the Shelburne Hotel, where Cuban emissaries normally
stayed, demanded a $10,000 cash advance. Castro refused. Richard Gibson and
other members of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), organized by promi-
nent activist intellectuals in the United States in 1960, suggested that the entire
Cuban delegation move to Harlems Hotel Theresa at 125th street.2
A downpour did not deter some two thousand U.S. blacks, Dominicans,
Cubans, Puerto Ricans, and other Caribbean peoples from greeting Castro in Har-
lem.3 At one of the many rallies held for him during his stay, one Harlemite held up
a sign that read US Jim Crows Fidel just like US Jim Crows Us Negroes.4 Castro
subsequently held meetings from his Harlem base with Egyptian president Gamal
Abdel Nasser and Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, as well as the United
States own Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams. Castros image as a symbolic hero
for postcolonial and racialized peoples had been solidied.

Issue 92 (Spring 2005): 6287
Copyright 2005 by MARHO: The Radical Historians Organization, Inc.
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Published by Duke University Press
Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 63
Castro and revolutionary Cuba secured a strong following among progres-

sives and people of color in the United States, but it was the black activists of the
multiracial FPCC, namely Richard Gibson, William Worthy, Julian Mayeld, LeRoi
Jones, Robert F. Williams, and Mae Mallory, who were the rst to see the link-
ages between their own realities and those of the Cuban people and to envision
the Cuban Revolution as a model through which to achieve an antiracist project
that would also challenge U.S. imperialism.5 Reframing the struggle against rac-
ism in the United States within the context of Latin American, Asian, and African
decolonization movements, they asserted the humanity and self-determination of
the worlds oppressed peoples and created an antiracist language of solidarity that
transcended race. Instead of advocating an alliance based along biological, cultural,
or national lines, these activist intellectuals understood race as a social category
used to exploit a segment of the worlds population.
Informed by Marxist-Leninism but critical of its economic determinism, this
cadre of activist intellectuals formed tricontinental political cultures rooted in a
critique of global capitalism and its exploitation of the worlds racialized peoples. I
use the term tricontinental as a description both of the region known as the global
South or the third world and of the political formation that aligned itself with this
region and its emergent anticolonial and antiracist politics. Borrowing from Robert
Young, I also use the term to invoke an identication with the 1966 Havana Tricon-
tinental Conference, which initiated the rst anti-imperialist alliance of the peoples
of the three continents, as well as the founding moment of postcolonial theory in its
journal, the Tricontinental.6 While these activist intellectuals did not actually use
the term itself, tricontinentalism offers a useful framework for understanding their
global, antiracist, and anti-imperialist politics.
In its use of the paradigm described here, this article interrogates the assump-
tion that black internationalism took the sole form of a racially identied Pan-Afri-
canism. Readings of internationalist politics as Pan-Africanist and the application
of the term black nationalist to a multitude of radical tendencies render Castros
reception in Harlem quite tantalizingly illegible.7 Recent scholarship has exam-
ined the transnational solidarities of U.S. activists from the late 1960s to the mid-
1970s, posing a challenge to a historiography that had intellectually ghettoized
those who identied with third world people.8 I build on this work by proposing that
this anti-imperialist tricontinentalism forms part of a larger genealogy.9 In this way,
then, my article contributes to a historiography that sketch[es] a new cartography
of possibilities that can break out of the enclosures of neocolonial color lines and
the insularity of ethnonationalist identity politics.10

64 Radical History Review
The Cuban Revolution and the Formation of a Tricontinental Movement

In spite of the Cold War, the 1940s and 1950s were marked by a wave of transna-
tional and transcolonial dialogues and liberation struggles.11 Even in the face of the
repressive anticommunist campaign waged by the bearers of capitalist imperialism,
antiracist internationalism intensied during this period when, as Robin Kelley con-
tends, no one could afford to ignore international politics . . . in spite ofindeed,
because ofthe onslaught of the Cold War.12 No movement posed a larger threat to
the United States as the anti-imperialist struggle brewing in its own backyard
the July 26 Movement.
On July 26, 1953, after months of preparation, a group of 125 young Cubans
seized the Moncada Barracks in Santiago de Cuba, distributing arms to the popula-
tion and sparking a national insurrection against the military coup that had brought
Fulgencio Batista to power in 1952. Although most of the rebels were captured, tor-
tured, imprisoned, and/or killed, a young attorney named Fidel Castro captured the
popular imagination.13 Despite his imprisonment, he presented a historic speech to
the court, closing with the infamous words, Condenadme, no importa, la historia
me absolver (Condemn me, it does not matter, history will absolve me).14 In May
1955, Castro was released by a general pardon freeing all political prisoners. He
immediately resumed his oppositional activities via the July 26 Movement, which,
along with communist labor leaders, mobilized the poor and working classes, form-
ing a united front that would be instrumental to Batistas overthrow and the subse-
quent rise of Castro in January 1959.15
In spite of its multiracial and popular base of support, the revolution was
not avowedly Marxist at its inception, nor was it explicitly concerned with racism
or the particularities of local or global black struggles. It began as anti-imperialist
and radical[ly] nationalist.16 Revolutionary Cuba became particularly signicant
in its early years because of its refusal to be identied with a political or economic
party or afliation. Inuential especially among those who had resisted politiciza-
tion, Cuba served as a tabula rasa on which to impress notions of liberation.17
The Formation of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

Inspired by tricontinental luminaries such as Kwame Nkrumah, Mao Tse-tung, and
Fidel Castro, a generation of U.S. activist intellectuals emerged as a U.S. triconti-
nental Left.18 These radicals created ideological and material links to Africa, Asia,
Latin America, and the Middle East in their attempts to challenge U.S. economic,
racial, and cultural domination.19 This political formation came to signify a repudia-
tion of Western imperialism and opposition to a racial and economic world order.20
The writings of Worthy, Mayeld, Jones, Williams, and Mallory demonstrate that
this tricontinental Leftdened by its commitment to transnational politics, its
linking of struggles in U.S. cities and tricontinental nations, and its desire to create

an international anti-imperialist, antiracist, pro-worker politicsbegan at least as

early as the Cuban Revolution and inuenced a future generation of the later 1960s
and 1970s.
That these individuals admired revolutionary Cuba, a multiracial society with
a white leader who had overthrown a mulatto dictator, is of particular importance.
While repudiating a color-blind universalism, these tricontinentalists conceived of
race as primarily a tool of oppression instead of a biological fact. They viewed a
shared racist, imperialist oppression, rather than solidarity along racial lines, as a
necessary organizing tool for liberation. A discussion of this cadre, however small,
contributes to our understanding of the cultures of opposition that emerged during
the Cold War and allows us to trace a larger tradition of international antiracism.
Although it was short lived, the FPCC quickly became an inuential force,21
largely because of the rapid escalation of tensions in Cuban-U.S. relations.22 While
Castro had been deemed an undesirable gure much earlier, the Eisenhower admin-
istration shifted decisively to open hostility in June 1960. Reneries in Cuba owned
by U.S. companies, under orders from the State Department, ceased processing
Soviet oil, with the expectation that it would debilitate the Cuban economy and force
Castro to back down. Castro surprised them by swiftly nationalizing the reneries.
In response, at the administrations behest, the U.S. Congress discontinued Cubas
guaranteed quota of sugar sales, the principal market for the islands monoculture
economy.23 By the fall of 1960, the handling of the Castro problem had become
a major issue during the presidential election, with Democratic candidate John F.
Kennedy attacking Republican leniency toward Castro. In September, the State
Department warned U.S. citizens not to visit Cuba except for compelling reasons,24
and by October, Castro had nationalized the remaining U.S.-owned businesses.25
At its inception, the FPCC was anything but radical. Its founders, Robert
Taber, Alan Sagner, and Richard Gibson, among others, had not previously been
involved in any formal political, labor, or civil rights organizations.26 Taber, a white
CBS news correspondent in Cuba in 195759, was well known for his prime-time
documentary Rebels of the Sierra Maestra. The network pulled Taber out of Cuba
after it received protests from the U.S. State Department against his allegedly pro-
Castro broadcasts. Sagner, a wealthy white real estate developer from suburban
New Jersey, knew relatively little about and had not traveled to revolutionary Cuba,
but became convinced that the American public was not receiving all the facts
on Cuba after reading Tabers essay Castros Cuba, which had appeared in the
Nation.27 Taber, Sagner, and Gibson, CBSs rst black newswriter, were motivated
by what Van Gosse refers to as a deep-seated Old liberalism and a fundamental,
if naive, belief that a fair representation of the July 26 Movement would allow the
U.S. public to see the truth of the Cuban Revolution, leading them to rally around
renewed diplomatic relations.28

The FPCCs primary objective was the dissemination of the truth about
revolutionary Cuba. As its rst action, it published an advertisement in the New
York Times on April 6, 1960, titled What Is Really Happening in Cuba? Signed
by a host of luminaries in the world of arts and lettersincluding James Baldwin,
Simone de Beauvoir, Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Julian Mayeld, Jean-Paul
Sartre, and John O. Killensthe ad contradicted a number of accusations and false-
hoods published in the U.S. press with facts about the revolutions material gains.
The FPCCs newsletter Fair Play was comprised primarily of a news watch,
condemning the so-called free press for its propaganda and misinformation and
accusing the press of being a mere agent of the Government.29 Fair Play published
letters refused by the editorial staff of newspapers such as the New York Times and
promoted trips to Cuba so that North Americans could penetrate the propaganda
smoke screen and see Cuba for themselves.30 In addition, Fair Play began repro-
ducing pieces, primarily by European intellectuals such as de Beauvoir, and reports
by social scientists on the changes in Cuban society under the revolutionary govern-
ment.31
From its founding, the FPCCs politics were infused with a consciously black
element. In addition to Gibson, seven of the thirty founding members were U.S.
blacks. Gibson aggressively linked the struggle for racial equality in the United
States with national liberation struggles throughout the world, a stance facilitated
by his involvement with the Algerian Liberation Front between 1955 and 1958.
While serving as the executive secretary of the Liberation Committee for Africa,
Gibson served as the president of the New York chapter of the FPCC in 1960, and
in January 1961, he succeeded Taber as acting executive secretary. The combination
of Pan-Africanism and what Gibson referred to as a Fanonist expression of solidar-
ity with Cuba demonstrates the extent to which a black consciousness worked in
tandem with the shaping of a tricontinental identity that sought the end of racist
capitalist- and communist-bloc imperialism. Gibsons leadership was critical to mak-
ing blacks some of the most prominent spokespersons of the FPCC and defenders
of the Cuban Revolution.32
In essays published in Fair Play and in rallies and speaking engagements in
black communities throughout the United States, the FPCCs black activists made
explicit the link between the U.S. black and Cuban struggles. On the cover of the news-
letters fourth issue, an article titled Revolution and Freedom: How Much and for
Whom? compared the revolutionary governments efforts to the struggles for racial
equality in the U.S. South.33 The Cuban government, the article argued, was trying
to accomplish overnight what has occurred so gradually in the United States. . . .
it is trying to create, at a stroke, the economic democracy on which a free society
must be based.34
Future articles would be more explicit in discussing the relevance of the

Cuban Revolution to U.S. blacks, both as a place where middle-class blacks could
be treated with some measure of equality and as a model for liberation. In an article
titled Where Else Can an American Negro Go for a Vacation? Why They Dont
Want U.S. Negroes to Visit Cuba, the anonymous author makes clear that the U.S.
government was all too aware of the threat that Cuba posed, not just to its economic
interests but also as an inspiration to radical U.S. blacks in search of immediate,
overnight racial justice.35 The author, at times quite sarcastic in his/her condem-
nation of the United States, writes, If the Negro does not yet feel at home in his
native land, after three hundred-odd years on the North American continent, this
is part of the dirty linen of U.S. domestic life, and not to be aired in plain view of
our critical neighbors. The central question for this author was thus, Why so much
anxiety when the appeal is to American Negroes? Obviously because Washington
fears what the reaction to its policy of isolation may be when the millions of second-
class U.S. citizens become familiar with the facts of life in a country close at hand
in which basic freedoms and social justice are not apportioned on the basis of race
or color.36
In the summer of 1960, Richard Gibson led two FPCC delegations to Cuba,
both composed almost entirely of FPCCs black members. Gibson, John Singleton,
and Robert F. Williams, who had written extensively on the Cuban Revolution in
his, according to Taber, hard-hitting weekly the Crusader, left for Cuba on June
12, 1960. 37 Williams, along with a predominantly black group of eleven activist
intellectuals, returned to Cuba just a few weeks later on July 21 for the July 26 anni-
versary celebration. Among those in attendance were journalist William Worthy;
novelists Sarah Wright and Julian Mayeld; physician, Puerto Rican independista,
and Mayelds wife, Ana Livia Cordero; beat poet LeRoi Jones; Ed Clark, a painter and
Wrights husband; Harlem historians Harold Cruse and John Henrik Clarke; and
FPCC secretaries Pat Linden and Lee Kolk. On their return, this second delegation
produced a series of critical essays and articles on their reections of Cuba in black
and left-wing newspapers throughout the country, most of which were reprinted in
Fair Play.
An American Journalist Views the New Freedom South of Key West

Cuba, as I See It, Worthys article in the Baltimore Afro-American, makes lucid
the link between U.S. blacks and Cubans and articulates a common enemy and
destiny of the two peoples. Worthy, a reporter who had been offered the job of cor-
respondent then given to Gibson, served as a correspondent in the Soviet Union
for CBS in 1955 and had gone to China with two reporters in 1957 in violation of
the State Departments ban on travel by U.S. citizens. Gibson received the job of
correspondent only after Worthy refused the State Departments offer to renew his
passport in exchange for agreeing not to make any more unauthorized trips. The loss

of his passport did not stop him from traveling to Cuba in July 1960 as a correspon-
dent for the Afro-American.
A thirty-nine-year-old Washington, DC, native, a graduate of Bates College,
and a Neiman Fellow at Harvard University, Worthy had a history of civil rights
activism. In 1947, he participated in the Freedom Rides, and in 1956, he met with
Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr. in Birmingham to discuss the Montgom-
ery Improvement Associations tactics and strategies.38 In the mid-1960s, together
with members of Williamss Revolutionary Action Movement and James and Grace
Lee Boggs, Worthy would travel to a Harlem restaurant to invite Malcolm X to
give a speech at Detroits Grassroots Leadership Conference.39 Worthy would visit
Cuba four times before helping to produce an ABC-TV documentary titled Yanki,
No! after which he would be tried and sentenced to prison. Four years later, while
he was traveling throughout North Vietnam, Cambodia, and Indonesia, a unani-
mous federal appeals court decision overturned his conviction on the grounds of its
unconstitutionality.
In his Cuba as I See It, Worthy described the sentiment among a group of
U.S. blacks who have begun to identify themselves openly and explicitly with this
revolution . . . against colonial and semi-colonial domination.40 He emphatically
stated, To those with eyes to see causes, effects, and relationships, it becomes obvi-
ous that different branches of the same EuropeanNorth American power clique
exploit Negroes in Little Rock, Cubans in Oriente and blacks in the Union of South
Africa. It seems particularly signicant that Worthy names Oriente Province, a
region known as the home of the historic Little Black War of 1912, an uprising
begun by the Afro-Cuban political party Partido Independiente de Color (Indepen-
dent Party of Color), during which six thousand Cubans were murdered, as well as
the site where the 1953 and 1956 rebellions originated.41
For Worthy, the liberationist struggle was not comprised of different races,
black and white, European and African, pitted against one another, nor was it driven
by the classic Marxist goal of a proletarian revolution. Instead, Worthy was con-
cerned with the intersection of racism and imperialism. Cuba appealed to him pre-
cisely because he perceived it as being on the side of freedom and the worldwide
revolution against colonial and semi-colonial domination.42 Worthys approach
was to turn the U.S. governments anti-Cuban rhetoric on itself by pointing to the
absence of freedom at home.
If those Yankees, now crying for free elections are intellectually honest, why
were they so long silent during Cubas series of cruel dictatorships when
the people had the forms but none of the substance of liberty? Why do they
not look homeward and demand free elections in Georgia, South Carolina,
Alabama and Mississippi where they are really needed? If those states with
huge black populations ever allowed Negroes to vote freely, a large number of

white supremacy politicians who rule through fear, terror and demagoguery
would be swept out of ofce. That vicious enemy of Cuba and of Negroes,
Senator James Eastland, represents the state of Mississippi where there has
not been a free election for sixty-ve years.43
Worthy ended his article with a promise, one that he kept, to return to the United
States and rally blacks to the defense of Cuban sovereignty. On my return home I
shall have discussions with Negro leaders who are independent of the bone-crushing
pressures of the government and of the business community. I shall tell them that
Negroes above all cannot tolerate military intervention into any country in this day
and age, and that we must mobilize a Hands Off Cuba sentiment. Further demon-
strating the indelible link between U.S. black, Cuban, and Latin American libera-
tion, Worthy stated, The struggle of 18 million Negroes for equality and justice in
the United States will have little meaning if, ninety miles south of our border, six
million Cubans are denied the freedom to run their country according to twentieth
century concepts of true independence and to set a beacon example for the rest of
the exploited countries of Latin America.44
Proof That It Doesnt Take Decades of Gentle Persuasion

to Deal a Death Blow to White Supremacy
Blacks in the United States who looked to revolutionary Cuba felt a solidarity that
transcended racial allegiance, as becomes evident in their support for Castro. None-
theless, the fact that 30 percent of Cubans were black and over 60 percent were
people of color was not lost on them. A hopeful article by novelist and journalist
Mayeld reprinted in Fair Play from the Baltimore Afro-American, titled Cuba
Has Solution to Race Problem, exemplies the extent to which U.S. blacks, while
seeking to build a cross-racial alliance of tricontinental peoples, relied on a racial
politics as the true test of a successful liberationist and humanitarian movement.45
A South Carolina native and former soldier stationed in the Pacic imperial-
ist strongholdsthe Philippines and HawaiiMayeld began his career as an art-
ist-activist in New York City in 1948. Upon his arrival in the city, Mayeld started
a theater apprenticeship and made his rst stage appearance in the role of Blessed
Martin de Porres, an eighteenth-century black Peruvian later consecrated as a saint
in the Catholic Church. During this time, he also acted in a revival of John Wexleys
They Shall Not Die, a play about the Scottsboro trial. Together, these roles may
have been inuential in his emergent anticapitalist and internationalist politics, as
they coincided with his joining of the Communist Party and the Committee for the
Negro in the Arts (CNA), his writings for Paul Robesons newspaper Freedom, and
his activism in behalf of Willie McGee, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, and others.46
In the early 1950s, after several years at the Jefferson School of Social Science and

the Paul Mann Actors Workshop, Mayeld resigned his chairmanship of the CNA
Writers Workshop, abandoned his career as director and producer of off-Broadway
productions, and left the CPUSA because of the USSRs invasion of Hungary. In
1954, he left for Puerto Rico, married Ana Liva Cordero, and became a founding
staff member of the rst English-language radio station and founding director of the
daily World Journal in 1956.
Dividing his time between Puerto Rico and New York, Mayeld published
The Hit and The Long Night in 1957 and 1958, respectively, becoming one of the
celebrated members of the Harlem Writers Guild, famous for having more pub-
lished works written in its workshop than any group of writers in the United States.
Mayeld then became a journalist, working for the Pittsburgh Courier and the Bal-
timore Afro-American, covering two infamous topics: the 1960 delegation of Fair
Players to Cuba and the uprising in Monroe, North Carolina, in 1961, which would
lead to his expatriation. In Ghana, where he would live for the next six years, he
would serve as an ofcial writer in President Nkrumahs government.
Unlike Worthy, who situated Cuba as a colored, subaltern nation repressed
by U.S. imperialism, Mayeld understood Cuba as a multiracial nation in which
blacks had suffered as much racism as their counterparts had in the United States.
For Mayeld, the major accomplishment of the revolution was not that Cuba had
been able to pull itself out from underneath U.S. tutelage, but rather that Afro-
Cubans had received racial justice and equality. The colored American should take
a close look at the Cuban revolution, he wrote. On a recent visit to the island I saw
proof that it doesnt take decades of gentle persuasion to deal a death blow to white
supremacy. . . . Before the revolution the position of colored people in Cuban society
was roughly similar to that of the colored people in our border states. For Mayeld,
The important lesson in the Cuban experience is that great social change need
not wait on the patient education of white supremacists.47
While Mayeld admitted that it would be naive to believe that there were no
racists left in Cuba, he argued that Cuba had shown [that] it means business by
snatching away [the racists] power to deny a man a job, a house to live in, or a chance
to realize his best potential because of his color. That is why the Cubans of color
are solidly behind the revolution and are willing to die to keep it.48 Mayeld also
commended the revolutions attempts to project antiracist democracy beyond Cuban
shores, writing in regard to the plans for a solidarity week with the colored peo-
ples of the United States. He was particularly impressed by Castro, whom he could
only describe . . . as a beautiful man . . . a hero . . . one of the few of our times . . .
but his manner is that of a young fellow who has done what needs to be done and
cannot understand what all the excitement [is] about.49
Mayeld ended by revisiting the rhetorical strategy used by Worthy and oth-
ers; he critiqued U.S. hypocrisy in maintaining a system of racial dominance in spite

of its espousal of democratic ideals. If the democratic process, of which we boast,

needs several generations to achieve what the Cubans have done in 18 months, then
something is wrong with it. Mayelds nal words, like those uttered by Worthy,
urged colored leaders . . . to go to Cuba to see from themselves.50
Cuba Libre: From Beat Poet to Black Arts Leader

Perhaps the most infamous account by a North American on the Cuban Revolution
was penned by a young poet based in New Yorks Greenwich Village named LeRoi
Jones. Joness Cuba Libre was rst published in a 1960 issue of Evergreen Review,
a journal committed to the Bohemian, anti-academic poetry of the eras beatnik
writers. Avowedly antipolitical prior to his trip, Jones began his meditation with an
expression of his skepticism toward the Cuban Revolution and his determination not
to be taken by any undue romantic persuasion.51 A dubious Jones wrote, Casa
de las Americas, the government, was paying all our bills and I was certain that they
would want to make very sure that we saw everything they wanted us to see (128).
In spite of his suspicion of what he imagined to be the revolutionary propa-
ganda machine, Jones was perhaps more transformed by this trip than any other del-
egate on the FPCC-sponsored trip. Throughout the narrative, Jones self-consciously
juxtaposed his own cynical, arrogant brand of North Americanism with the kindness
and hope he met in Cuba. He noted one incident where a shabbily dressed Negro,
who was obviously a drifter, approached him. After looking at Jones and Ed Clark
for a moment, he asked Jones, Hey man, you American? Jones responded, Thats
right, but only if you dont want to argue. Argue? the man pulled up a stool to
join Jones and Clark. No, man, I dont argue. You my brother, he said, pointing at
his dark arm and then at Joness. I just want you to tell me about Harlem. Tell me
about Harlem, man (143). The two carried on a conversation about Harlem. Fol-
lowing this narrative, Jones critiqued the ignorance of what he terms the so-called
American intellectual, who, in spite of his or her healthy skepticism of the U.S.
media, remains unaware of the extent to which the horrible residue of these paid
liars is left in our heads (143).
The remarkable shift in Joness worldview, which would come to comprise a
central element in the Black Arts and Black Power movements of the late 1960s and
1970s, was solidied by the fourteen-hour train ride across the island to Oriente
province for the July 26 celebrations, replete with the crowds spontaneous bursts
of Cuba, s, Yanqui, no! and Abajo con el imperialismo yanqui! (Down with
Yanqui imperialism!). Joness narrative described a number of moments when his
attitudes and ideologies were questioned and critiqued by various Cubans and other
Latin American radicals. Perhaps the most transformative conversation occurred
with a Mexican graduate student in economics, who challenged him on the U.S.
anticommunist hysteria and Joness own U.S.-centric language. In defense, Jones

stated, Look, why jump on me? . . . Im a poet . . . what can I do? I write, thats all,
Im not even interested in politics. According to Jones, the young woman jumped
on me with both feet as did a group of Mexican poets later in Habana. She called
me a cowardly bourgeois individualist (147).
Cuba Libre presents us with a young intellectual struggling to acknowledge
his relation to the tricontinental and to come to terms with the revolutionary poten-
tial of art.52 It is in Cuba that Jones rst comes to know his own yanquism and the
condescension and self-importance of his brand of rebellion. His dawning revelation
is worth quoting at length.
The idea of a revolution had been foreign to me. It was one of those
inconceivably romantic and/or hopeless ideas that we Norteamericanos
have been taught since public school to hold up to the cold light of reason.
That reason being whatever repugnant lie our usurious ruling class had
paid their journalists to disseminate. . . . The reason that permits a young
intellectual to believe he has said something profound when he says, I dont
trust men in uniforms. . . . The rebels among us have become merely people
like myself who grow beards and will not participate in politics. . . . But name
an alternative here. Something not inextricably bound up in a lie. . . . There is
none. Its much too late. We are an old people already. . . . But the Cubans, and
the other new peoples (in Asia, Africa, South America) dont need us, and we
had better stay out of their way. 53
Even before the predominantly black delegations trip to Cuba, the revolu-
tionary government made an appeal to U.S. blacks in the form of the Cuban liter-
ary magazine Lunes de revolucin, which released a special issue on July 4, 1960,
titled Los Negros en USA, produced with the editorial cooperation of Gibson,
Williams, Taber, and Mayeld. The issue included essays and poetry by Langston
Hughes, Harold Cruse, James Baldwin, LeRoi Jones, John Henrik Clarke, and Alice
Childress and ensured that those who visited just a few weeks later would be known
among Cubas literate population.54
In addition to sponsoring the predominantly black delegation in July 1960,
under Taber and later Gibsons leadership, the FPCC continued to emphasize
Cuban-U.S. solidarity through myriad rallies and speaking engagements. One of
the largest FPCC events of late 1960 was a rally on November 17 in Harlem with
Gibson, Williams, Worthy, and Daniel Watts, the president of the Liberation Com-
mittee for Africa. 55 An advertisement in Williamss the Crusader stated, More
than 1,500 persons attended a recent Fair Play for Cuba rally in Manhattan Center,
Gibson said, adding that he believes there may be an even bigger turnout in Har-
lem to hear the truth about Free Cuba. Williams quoted Gibson, Every obstacle
has been placed in the way of Afro-Americans who want to see for themselves the

achievements of Cubas Revolutionary Government . . . but we believe that the Afro-

American community is still not brainwashed concerning Cuba, as was shown by
the reception given Premier Castro by the people of Harlem. Many Afro-Americans
realize . . . that the people in Washington who want to crush free Cuba are the
same people who are trying to crush the ght for freedom in the US Southland.56
Throughout late 1960 and 1961, the FPCC organized several speaking tours and
fund-raisers headlining prominent U.S. blacks such as Gibson, Williams, and Wor-
thy, along with Carl Braden, eld secretary of the Southern Conference Educational
Fund, and James Higgins, assistant editor of the York, Pennsylvania, Gazette and
Daily, and under the sponsorship of civil rights organizations such as the Commit-
tee on Racial Equality (CORE).57
A Crusader Gets to Know the Face of Cuba

One of the most prominent activists and thinkers to have inuenced the radical
politics of the Black Power generation, Robert F. Williams used Cuba as a base for
promoting black world revolution and elaborating an internationalist ideology.58 His
Negroes with Guns emerged as the single most important text to have inuenced
Black Panther Party cofounder Huey P. Newton, and it remained pivotal for a host
of young militants.59 Williams had his eye on the revolution even prior to his visits
to Cuba in the summer of 1960, and his writings on the topic are the most prolic
among the group. Further, Williams was an experienced professional activist who,
as chair of the Monroe, North Carolina, chapter of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and editor of the weekly newsletter the
Crusader, had been immersed in a local organizing tradition. Unlike Gibson, who
worked for CBS, and Mayeld and Worthy, who were journalists for the black press,
Williams did not rely on a source of income that required discretion in order to cater
to wealthy advertisers.60
Born in Monroe in 1925, Williams was among the many black men drafted
in 1944 to restore freedom and democracy to the world from within a segregated
army.61 Like others of his generation, Williams used the military skills and demo-
cratic rhetoric instilled in him during the war effort to protect himself and his com-
munity from racial terrorists at home. Williams was forced to leave college due to
insufcient funds and enlisted in the Marine Corps, receiving a dishonorable dis-
charge in 1955 for his protests against racial discrimination.62 When he returned to
Monroe, he joined the local branch of the NAACP. Increasing violence in response
to the Brown v. Board of Education decision created a particularly hostile atmo-
sphere for antiracist organizing, leading to the dismantling of the chapter. Williams
was left as its president and sole member.63 Yet using his weekly newsletter as a
vehicle for his radical politics, he soon drew new membership to the organization.
From its inception in June 1959, the Crusader, printed with the help of

Mabel Williams and business manager Ethel Johnson, was a self-consciously inter-
nationalist publication. Each of its issues was dedicated to connecting local racial
and economic struggles with the decolonization and nationalist efforts of the tricon-
tinental. Essays such as Mabel Williamss examination of the role of women in Afri-
can struggles, which appeared in her weekly column Looking Back, Robert Wil-
liamss Open Letter to President Tour of Guinea, and news updates on events in
Puerto Rico, India, the Dominican Republic, South Africa, Algeria, and the Congo
were common features of the liberationist newsletter.64 Sympathetic to yet critical
of Marxists for their inattention to race, Williams later dened his political ideology
during this moment as being pro-Socialist, internationalist.65
Not surprisingly, Williamss consistent and ardent writings on the revolution
indicate his early awareness of the Cuban situation, the ways in which the islands
racial and historical character had positioned it within the tricontinental movement,
and the resonance of its insurgency for U.S. blacks. Williams was keenly aware of
the U.S. role as a neocolonial and imperialist force in the Americas and the adverse
affects that its racialist economic expansion had on the sovereignty of various Amer-
ican nations. In a 1959 Crusader issue, he wrote:
The United States Americans are crying the blues because Cuba, Panama and
Brazil are nally beginning to realize that racist America bears watching. The
white supremists [sic] of the USA have no right to expect these former satellites
to eternally remain in the Monroe Doctrines orbit of subserverance [sic]. . . .
These satellites have only poverty and a big American slap in the back in
exchange for ruthless exploitation. America has not prepared itself to serve the
best interest of the darker races, neither by virtue of experience or an innate
love for social justice. The American way of life offers no basis for mutual
respect and fair play between the white and colored races. Castro and all other
colored rulers will do well to shun bigoted Uncle Sams smiling false face and
his racial chains of bondage.66
Examining Williamss language is central if one wishes to gain a sense of his

understanding of what the phrase racialist global economic expansion means and
thus his understanding of the necessity for an articulation of an antiracist tricon-
tinental liberationist politics. Williamss use of the phrase United States Ameri-
cans indicates a critique of the imperialist tendency to refer to the United States as
America. Williams conceives of Cuba, Panama, Brazil, and other nations affected
by the Monroe Doctrine as darker races whose economic exploitation is carried
out and justied specically because of their racialization.
Williams here posits a binary of global social relations of dominance, whereby
the so-called rst world is unilaterally white, while the tricontinentalin spite of
its own complicated national histories of colonization, racial hierarchies, and racial

mixingis identied as colored by virtue of its exploitative and racialized relations

with bigoted Uncle Sam. In this sense, regardless of phenotype and race, leaders
such as Castro, an attorney and the son of a Spanish landowner, become recoded as
colored in an attempt to link racial and economic domination on a global scale and
to forge a solidarity based on a common exploitation. Thus Williamss identication
with Castro was not based on an imagined shared Pan-Africanist sensibility or on
the idea that they belonged to a common nation.
In an article published a few months later, titled U.S. Gunning for Castro,
Williams wrote, Up until the advent of the Castro regime Americas prime inter-
est in Cuba was in a slave status commerce. Williams informed his readers of the
U.S. funding of Batistas gunmen, who murdered with the sanctimonious blessing
of the American god of Wall Street, and described the extent to which Castro had
reappropriated the enterprises and plantations and redistributed them among the
nations peasants. He continued, That is more than Wall Streets satellite, known
as Capitol Hill, can stand. In-as-much as Castro refuses to become moneyed lackey
and a subject of Washington, he can expect the worse from the arsenal of pseudo-
democracy, further solidifying the link between the U.S. capitalist economy and
foreign policies and the leader of the free worlds hypocrisy with regard to its
condoning of racist terror at home.67
While aware of the racial segregation that existed in Cuba, Williams attrib-
uted it to the U.S. inuence over the island rather than the latters own history
of colonialism and slavery. Nonetheless, Williams commended Castro for destroy-
ing the racial barriers that separated the populace of Cuba, a fact that alone is
enough to whit the hate edge of a racist America whose government is under the
inuence of Dixiecratic bourbons. In a moment of particular ardor, demonstrative
of the internationalist tricontinentalism that worked in tandem with his black cul-
tural and liberationist sensibility, Williams wrote:
There can be no true revolution and social changes without turmoil.
Oppressed peoples everywhere are demanding human dignity and the right
of self-determination. The darker colonials are moving toward freedom. The
American Negro must identify himself with the new world order. The white
mans racist grip on the world can only be broken by universal, concerted
effort. Any struggle anywhere in the world for freedom is related to the
American Negros struggle for human dignity. The ght in Africa, Cuba, South
America and Asia is one and the same ght. The world cannot be considered
a decent place in which to live until all its oppressive walls have crumbled.
America will do well to democratize the people within the connes of her own
borders before trying to cure the ills of a world that are no more acute than her
own.68

Speaking directly to American Negroes, Williams argued that the only way to
achieve true democratic, antiracist, human liberation was through global struggle.
Therein lay the radicalism of Williamss ideology, one that did not rely on essential-
ist or biological interpretations of what he referred to as the great lie of race or an
economically determinist approach that belied the extra-economic ways in which
racism is reproduced.69 Instead, Williams promoted an internationalist solidarity
based on a common enemy, a system that relied on a matrix of racism and class
exploitation for its deployment of power.
Williamss impassioned commitment to a tricontinental politics inclusive of
the realities of the U.S. black apartheid struggles made a trip to the island inevi-
table. In an article that appeared on the Crusaders cover, titled Why I Am Going
to Cuba, Williams reiterated Mayelds understanding of the meanings of Cuban
integration for U.S. blacks. He wrote, I want to see if the segregationist argument
that governments cannot stamp out racial inequality; that social justice must wait
for a change of heart on the part of bigots, is valid. I want to see a Cuba that has
engendered the heated hatred of the same faction in the free world that hates and
oppresses the Negro.70
While touring the country, Williams practically gained celebrity status,
granting numerous interviews, most notably with the Afro-Cuban poet and social
critic Nicols Guilln, in which he denounced the U.S. government for condemning
Castro and ignoring black civil rights.71 In addition to sending favorable remarks
that appeared in issues of the Crusader published in his absence, such as I wish
every American Negro could visit Cuba and see what it really means to be treated
as a rst-class citizen,72 and an oppressed American Negro now enjoying the
greatest freedom of my life in democratic revolutionary Cuba,73 Williams wrote
a series of articles on the Cuban Revolutions commitment to racial and social
equality.74 In an article titled Negro Leader Calls Cubas Schools an Example to
the USA, Williams describes, as did Jones, the impact that revolutionary Cubas
reforms had on his ideology and on the potential for change in the U.S. South.
Because of my indoctrination by the American Jim Crow educational system, I
had no concept of how much a government can do for the education of the poor
until I saw the work of Cubas Revolutionary government in the public schools and
at Ciudad Libertad.75
Yet it was his second trip during the month of July for the anniversary com-
memoration that had a truly transformative impact on his life and politics. In a
moving piece reprinted from Lunes de revolucin, titled Sierra Maestra: The Face
of Cuba, Williams describes his life-afrming experience. Using the Christian lan-
guage of redemption, Williams describes the fourteen-hour trip to Sierra Maestra:

At the staging area in the valley of the Sierra Maestra, I experienced a

sensation that mere words cannot convey to others. For what can one say of
a glory that mankind has never before approximated? . . . I consider it the
greatest honor of my life to have heard the greatest humanitarian leader of this
age deliver the new Sermon on the Mount. To me the trip to the Sierra Maestra
was a pilgrimage to the shrine of hope. I feel that what I saw there was the
promised land. . . . I am convinced that a little nation is capable of leading the
world to the height of brotherhood and social justice.76
While emotive and eloquent language makes for a familiar element in Williamss
writings, this article provides insight into the extreme respect and devotion he
held for the Cuban Revolution and for the hope that it offered U.S. blacks and the
world. In continuation of the Christian imagery, the article was even accompanied
by a drawing of Castro under the headline Fidel Castro: The Spirit of Christ. In
another of the many essays describing his experiences in Cuba, Williams described
traveling alone throughout the island and his encounters with Cubans who made
him, in spite of not speaking the language, feel more at home and safer on the
streets of Cuba than I do in this social jungle of my native land.77
Williamss transformation did not remain at the level of the abstract and was
quickly put into the continued work of stirring rebellion among his followers in the
United States. The Negro, he wrote later, is going to be liberated by the interna-
tional revolutionary process. . . . The token citizen is not a dedicated and committed
citizen. He belongs to the wildwind of revolution.78 In an essay more critical of his
compatriots, he wrote, The masses of Negroes in America are sleeping through one
of the greatest ages of history. . . . The white imperialists throughout the world are
in league and desperately striving to preserve the status-quo of Anglo-Saxon racial
superiority and exploitation. The struggles of all who resist oppression are related.
Reiterating that global forms of domination necessitated global forms of dissent,
Williams continued:
The Negroes ght for equality and freedom in the United States is related to
the Africans, the Cubans, all of Latin Americans and the Asians struggle
for self determination. All of the race hatred and most of the oppression in
the world today stems from the so-called Anglo-Saxon leaders of the free
world. . . . They [the United States and South Africa] are sisters in hate and
their economies are geared, like other colonial powers, to prot from the
misery bred of barbaric racism. The United States today is the king-pin of
imperialism.79
On his return from the only true freedom I have ever known in the land he
described as a symbol for oppressed peoples everywhere, Williams only strength-

ened his commitment to bridging Cuban and U.S. black American oppression and
liberation.80 In addition to reprinting Castros speeches and his land reform law
throughout several issues of the Crusader, Williams participated in the Cuban
propaganda project begun in black newspapers to invite U.S. blacks to vacation in
Cuba.81
The Spirit of Christ Visits the Land of Jim Crow

In September 1960, the UNs General Assembly gathering provided the perfect
opportunity for situating Cuba within the radar of liberation-minded North Ameri-
cans. Williams extended an invitation to Castro to visit Monroe during his stay in
the United States, yet Castro was unable to accept because he was not allowed to
leave the island of Manhattan, an indication of the worsening diplomatic relations
between the United States and Cuba.82 The Crusader served as a vehicle through
which Williams and his staff critiqued Castros treatment at the hands of the State
Department, the UN, and the Shelburne Hotels staff.83 Mae Mallory, Harlem cor-
respondent for the Crusader, presented the newsletters international readership
with a vivid description of Castros stay in Harlem.84
In spite of the short notice of just a few hours, Mallory insists, close to ve
thousand New Yorkers mobilized to join the motorcade that welcomed Castro at
Idlewild Airport on the wet and dreary Sunday. On her way home from work the
night before, Mallory came across a leaet asking people to join the motorcade that
would welcome Fidel Castro the following day. By her own admission, even after a
long day at work, the leaet brightened [her] outlook of the day tremendously.85
She rushed home, awakened her family, and contacted the other Crusaders for
Freedom, the New York branch of the organization begun through the networks
created by Williamss work. Mallory describes buses lining up for ve blocks, cars
of every description and model, and from as far away as Texas, carrying the Cuban
ag and banners that read, Vive Castro, Canadiens for Castro, Vive Lumumba,
Cuba Si, Freedom Loving Puerto Ricans Support the Great Revolution of Cuba,
and messages from the people of the Dominican Republic in support of the revolu-
tion. Mallory describes the attempts made to disturb the crowd and to disrupt its
spirit and chants of Vencermos (We will win), including misinformation about
Castros arrival and being led into a chicken-wire stockade topped with barbed wire.
Yet, she wrote, even this didnt cool our spirit or discourage us in any way, although
a denite attempt had been made to do so.
Mallory described in great detail the barrage of disciplinary and police forces
that, for so-called security reasons, prevented Castro from waving out of his car
at the thunderous crowd (in spite of the fact that Castro, she writes, was not for
a moment, in any danger from the people). His supporters followed Castro to his
hotel, cheering him in the downpour of rain as he was insulted and racialized at the

Shelburne, accused of plucking chickens and cooking them in his room. The most
important thing, Mallory noted, is that Harlem has left no doubt of the welcome
that Fidel Castro, and his delegation received, when they decided to live with us. As
quiet as it may be kept, Mr. Love B. Woods, Manager of Hotel Theresa, has been
put under almost unbearable pressure.
Thousands of Harlemites and New Yorkers cheered Castro and the delegates
every day and night of his stay. Their signs read, Harlem loves Castro, The U.S.
Government treats Castro like a black man, so welcome to the club, Greetings to
the people of Cuba, from the people of Harlem, Quote Castro; we in Cuba have
done in 18 months what you are still trying to for 400 years, and vive Castro.
Needless to say, Mallory said, the people of Harlem agreed with our demonstra-
tion and the Cuban demonstrators soon joined us. Saturday September 24th was
one of our biggest nights.
In reporting on Castros address to the General Assembly on Monday, Sep-
tember 26, Mallorys glowing account of his stay only expanded, describing his
speech as monumental in content. According to Mallory, Castros comments
expressed the sentiments of oppressed peoples throughout the world, particularly
those in the United States. There isnt any Afro-American alive and in his right
mind who disagrees with Fidel Castros speech, she argued. Even those who try
to appease their white masters, dont really disagree with Fidel. They secretly hope
that the people who are gallant enough to speak the truth, will continue to do so.
Again highlighting U.S. hypocrisy and veiled intentions, Mallory ended, If Castro is
a danger in Harlem, then isnt it reasonable to assume that he is a danger elsewhere
in the city? Is Uncle Sam so concerned about the welfare of the residents of Harlem,
that he must protect us from Castro? If this is the case, how can the U.S. support
Belgiums actions in the Congo? . . . The newly emerging nations of Africa would do
well to heed the advice of Fidel Castro, and prot from his experiences.
While Castro was earning accolades in Harlem and enemies among the UN
delegates for his critiques of U.S. imperialism, Robert F. Williams was ghting bat-
tles of his own in his hometown. Throughout 1960 and 1961, as both the Cold War
and the freedom struggle intensied, Williamss standing as a target of repression
and violence only escalated. In May 1960, he was arrested for seeking service at a
segregated lunch counter.86 By the summer of 1961, death threats had become a
daily occurrence for Williams and his wife.87 On Friday, June 23, 1961, a 1955 De
Soto drove into the back of Williamss car at seventy miles per hour, attempting to
overturn the vehicle in view of three highway patrol ofcers who laughed off the
incident. Two days later, a similar incident took place in the vicinity of the pool that
the Williams family and the community had been working to desegregate. In addi-
tion, the couple received incessant menacing phone calls, including threats to blow
up their home.88

In July, Williamss attempts to visit Cuba were foiled by the State Depart-
ments refusal to issue him a visa on the grounds that the Government of the United
States cannot extend normal protective services to its citizens visiting Cuba.89 The
situation in Monroe became so dire that Williams initiated an arms drive, urging
Crusader readers to donate weapons to be used for self-protection because of the
breakdown of law and the absence of the 14th Amendment.90 In contrast to their
weekly consistency for the previous three years, issues of the Crusader were pub-
lished on an increasingly irregular basis.
In addition, seventeen Freedom Riders just released from prison in Jack-
son, Mississippi, arrived in Monroe along with Nashville activist and soon-to-be
president of the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Reverend
Paul Brooks, and they were welcomed into Union County and Williamss home.91 As
two weeks of picketing at the Union County courthouse ensued, crowds of hostile
white spectators increased until Sunday, August 28, when a mob of several thou-
sand whites attacked the thirty-odd demonstrators. White vigilantes attacked ran-
dom black citizens. In the midst of this violence, a white couple entered Monroes
black community and came upon a group of blacks near Williamss home. Williams
brought the couple into his home and away from the armed black residents, where
they remained for two hours. Because of this act, Williams would be charged with
kidnapping, although the couple did not accuse him of any crime. Robert and Mabel
Williams and their two children ed their home, walking several miles to where
Julian Mayeld waited with a car to escape to New York, Canada, and, nally,
Cuba.
In an October issue of the Crusader, guest editor V. T. (Vincent Ted) Lee
wrote, The Afro-American people of Monroe cheered the news of Companero [sic]
Williamss safe arrival in Cuba, the Free Territory of the Americas. They know and
appreciate the problems of the Revolutionary Government of Cuba as they them-
selves are going through the same hardships and struggle for freedom fought so
valiantly by the people of Cuba. Repeating an argument made throughout other
issues, Lee continued, The struggle of Cuba is their struggle and they know that
the forces in this country which have cordoned off Cuba, denied Americans travel
there and now insanely plan a second invasion of Cuba, are the SAME FORCES
which exploit them, beat them, and starve them.92
Illusion Meets Reality

In Cuba, Williams faced a barrage of reporters. One article titled Robert Williams:
De la esclavitud yanqui a la libertad cubana quoted Williams as saying:
The enemies of the Cuban Revolution are the enemies of U.S. blacks. The
Cuban Revolution is glorious and has come to be a source of hope for all
oppressed people throughout the world. As a black North American, I can say

that those of my race, who are prepared to ght for an end to the tragedy of
black North America, are inspired by your Revolution, which has lled us with
the rage to continue to ght.93
After the initial guest-edited issue of the Crusader, Williams would continue to
publish the newsletter from Cuba, albeit on a monthly basis. In addition, Williams
began a weekly radio program called Radio Free Dixie, which broadcast from Key
West to Seattle to Harlem on Friday evenings from 11:00 p.m. to 12:00 a.m. The
program consisted of jazz, soul, and rock and roll hits, news coverage of the black
freedom movement, and Robert Williamss ery invective against white suprem-
acy.94 In addition, Williams published his Negroes with Guns from exile in 1962.
Yet Williamss continued antiracist efforts posed a threat to the Cuban commu-
nists, increasingly inuenced by Soviet communism, the CPUSA, and U.S. com-
munist expatriates in Cuba, who argued that such ery language would alienate the
white working class. Further, the in ltration of the communist government with
CIA agents who wished to exploit discord between white and black leftists served
to frustrate Williamss efforts to remain involved in U.S. freedom struggles from
abroad.95
While Williams would never publicly disparage revolutionary Cuba and main-
tained that there was never any hostility, he was eager to leave the island because
of what he referred to as political differences with the Party.96 Although Cuban
communists always treated [him] quite well, the Partys privileging of class conict
over any other forms of social oppression was antithetical to Williamss own belief
that racism in the United States went beyond economic struggles to encompass part
of the American way of life . . . [and] psychology.97 Williams left Cuba in the hopes
that he could resume his antiracist revolutionary activities in Maoist China in the
midst of its Cultural Revolution, where he would remain until his departure for
Michigan in the spring of 1969.
Conclusion: Reconceptualizing International Radicalisms

The legacies left by this cadre cannot be overstated, particularly given the inspi-
ration they engendered in the movements and discourses of the later 1960s and
1970s.98 While recent scholars have discussed the necessity to shift our understand-
ing of Cold War, civil rights, and Black Power eras, this article points to a concurrent
need to historicize the tricontinentalism of organizations such as the Black Panther
and the Young Lords Parties, demonstrating that the internationalist radicalism that
Penny Von Eschen located in the 1930s and 1940s did not end with the onslaught
of the Cold War, only to reappear with Stokely Carmichaels 1966 demand for Black
Power. Instead, an anti-imperialist segment of postwar U.S. blacks increasingly
came to identify independence and revolutionary efforts throughout the world as
linked to their own struggles against apartheid and poverty at home. These gures

caught a glimpse of alternative political, economic, and racial frameworks, not only
from the newly emergent African countries with which they shared a connection
originating with the transatlantic slave trade but from revolutionary governments
throughout Asia and Latin America as well. This marks a pivotal moment in the
history of U.S. radicalism, during which visions of and strategies for liberation were
driven by a critique of capitalism, racism, and imperialism, instead of relying solely
on racial or national identities.
Notes
For their thoughtful comments and support during the research and writing of this article, I
would like to thank Federico Rivera, Matthew Jacobson, Glenda Gilmore, Alondra Nelson,
Richard Gibson, Mary Barr, Leah Mancina-Khaghani, Erin Chapman, Tiffany Gill, Alexandra
Cornelius, Manuella Meyer, Aisha Bastiaans, Robin Hayes, Joshua Guild, Duane Corpis, Van
Gosse, and Lillian Guerra. The research for this article was made possible by grants from the
Social Science Research Fund and the Jacob Javits Fellowship. The title of my essay, which
translates as From Yankee Slavery to Cuban Liberty, is also the title of an article written about
Robert F. Williamss arrival to Cuba. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own.
1. Robert F. Williams, Bulletin, Crusader, September 17, 1960, 8.
2. Sources disagree on the motivation behind his move, although most agree on the
explanation provided here. The Monroe Enquirer, as quoted in Timothy Tyson, Radio Free
Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1999), 233; Rosemari Mealy, Fidel and Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting
(Melbourne: Ocean Press, 1997), 3336; Max Frankel, Angry Castro Switches Hotels and
Moves to Harlem after Protesting to U.N.: Leaves East Side in Rage over Bill, New York
Times, September 20, 1960; Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America,
and the Making of the New Left (New York: Verso, 1993), 150.
3. Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 233.
4. Ibid. Cuba has historically occupied a critical place in the U.S. black imaginary, and the
two peoples had been in dialogue since at least the nineteenth century. See Johnetta
Cole, Afro-American Solidarity with Cuba, Black Scholar 8 (summer 1977): 7380; Lisa
Brock and Digna Castaeda Fuertes, Between Race and Empire: African-Americans
and Cubans before the Cuban Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998);
Frank A. Guridy, From Solidarity to Cross-Fertilization: Afro-Cuban/African American
Interaction during the 1930s and 1940s, Radical History Review, no. 87 (2003): 1948.
5. In a larger chapter of my dissertation from which this essay is culled, I provide a discussion
of the gendered, in particular, masculinist, nature of the revolutionary ideology that
pervades many of these gures writings on Cuba. See Beyond Nation: The Formation of
an Antiracist Tricontinental Discourse (PhD diss., Yale University, in progress). See also
Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 140; Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 5557. I use the term antiracist
as a way of dening this political culture along ideological rather than racial lines. I
differentiate between liberal or universalist and radical antiracist practices. The former
framework includes striving for equal opportunity on an individual basis in a color-blind
society, while the latter views racism in a historical and international context. Nikhil Pal
Singh, Toward an Effective Antiracism, in Beyond Pluralism: The Conception of Groups
and Group Identities in America, ed. Wendy Katkin, Ned Landsman, and Andrea Tyree

(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 22526. I read the subjects of this study as
comprising a political formation that decides to work together on a particular issue or
agenda, in this case, the struggle to transform global hierarchies of power based on the
racialization of people and nations. See Lisa Lowes discussion of an identity based on a
shared politics in her Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Politics (Durham, NC: Duke
University Press, 1996), 7475.
6. Robert J. C. Young, Postcolonialism: An Historical Introduction (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001),
45.
7. Nikhil Pal Singh and Andrew F. Jones, introduction to The Afro-Asian Century, ed.
Singh and Jones, special issue, positions: east asia cultures critique 11 (2003), 7. For
interpretations of these politics as nationalist or Pan-Africanist, see William L. Van
Deburg, Modern Black Nationalism: From Marcus Garvey to Louis Farrakhan (New
York: New York University Press, 1997); Peniel E. Joseph, Waiting Till the Midnight Hour:
Reconceptualizing the Heroic Period of the Civil Rights Movement, 19541965, Souls 2,
no. 2 (2000): 617; Rebeccah E. Welch, Gender and Power in the Black Diaspora: Radical
Women of Color and the Cold War, Souls 5, no. 3 (2003): 7182.
8. Max Elbaum, What Legacy from the Radical Internationalism of 1968?, Radical History
Review, no. 82 (2002): 3764; Max Elbaum, Revolution in the Air: Sixties Radicals Turn to
Lenin, Mao, and Che (New York: Verso, 2002); Robin D. G. Kelley and Betsy Esch, Black
Like Mao: Red China and Black Revolution, Souls 1 (1999): 641; Joseph, Waiting Till
the Midnight Hour; Cynthia Young, Soul Power: Cultural Radicalism and the Formation
of a U.S. Third World Left (PhD diss., Yale University, 1999); Cynthia Young, Havana
Up in Harlem: LeRoi Jones, Harold Cruse, and the Making of a Cultural Revolution,
Science and Society 65, no. 1 (2001): 1238. Joseph and Elbaum both locate the roots of
this late-1960s black radicalism within the black internationalist Left of the late 1950s.
9. This genealogy of radical tricontinentalism, which includes gures such as Langston
Hughes, Grace Lee Boggs, Shirley Graham Du Bois, and Angela Davis, is the subject of
my dissertation, Beyond Nation. In an attempt to move beyond Pan-Africanism, the
dissertation also discusses writings on radical governments in China, Ghana, and parts of
the Arab world.
10. Singh and Jones, The Afro-Asian Century, 3.
11. For more on this global tide of revolution, see Robin D. G. Kelley, But a Local Phase
of a World Problem: Black Historys Global Vision, 18831950, Journal of American
History 86 (1999): 1075; Robin D. G. Kelley, A Poetics of Anticolonialism, Monthly
Review 51, no. 6 (1999): 121; Mary Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the
Image of American Democracy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2000); Penny
Von Eschen, Race against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 19371957
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997); Brenda Gayle Plummer, Rising Wind: Black
Americans and US Foreign Affairs, 19351960 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 1996); Joseph, Waiting Till the Midnight Hour; Thomas Borstelmann, The Cold
War and the Color Line: American Race Relations in the Global Arena (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2001).
12. Kelley, But a Local Phase of a World Problem, 1075. See also Borstelmann, The Cold
War and the Color Line; Dudziak, Cold War Civil Rights; Joseph, Waiting Till the
Midnight Hour; Michael L. Krenn, ed., The African American Voice in U.S. Foreign
Policy since World War II (New York: Garland, 1999).

13. Marifeli Prez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution: Origins, Course, and Legacies (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1998), 53.
14. Fidel Castro, La historia me absolver (History Will Absolve Me) (Havana: Instituto
Cubano del Libro, 1971), 84.
15. Prez-Stable, The Cuban Revolution, 55.
16. Ral Castro had been a member of the Cuban Communist Partys (PSP) youth group, and
Ernesto Guevara considered himself a Marxist-Leninist by the time he joined the July
26 Movement. Fidel Castro remained much more ideologically exible and moved closer
to the Soviet Union only after tensions escalated with the United States. Piero Gleijeses,
Conicting Missions: Havana, Washington, and Africa, 19591976 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 1718.
17. Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 137.
18. Cynthia Young describes this political formation as a U.S. Third World Left. Young,
Soul Power, iv.
19. Ibid., vi.
20. Ibid.
21. By July 1960, three months after its rst public action, the FPCC saw subscriptions to its
newsletter, Fair Play, rise to over three thousand. Report to the Membership, Fair Play,
July 22, 1960, 2. By November, forty student chapters were in existence at institutions
throughout the country, including Oberlin College, the University of California at
Berkeley, the City College of New York, and Harvard and Wayne State Universities. After
1963, the FPCC lost much of its original membership and eventually dissolved.
22. Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 13840; Jules Benjamin, Interpreting the U.S. Reaction to
the Cuban Revolution, 19591960, Cuban Studies 19 (1989): 14565.
24. F-P Tour Dees Washington Warnings, Miami Mob, Fair Play, December 31, 1960, 1.
25. Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 263; Benjamin, Interpreting the U.S. Reaction to the Cuban
Revolution, 19591960, 153.
26. Richard Gibson, letter to the author, March 20, 2002.
27. Alan Sagner, How the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was Formed, Fair Play, May 6,
1960, 4; Robert Taber, Castros Cuba, Nation, January 23, 1960, 6371.
29. Views of the American PressFrom Adlai Stevenson to Clare Booth Luce, Fair Play,
April 29, 1960, 3; see also Sensational versus Responsible Press, Fair Play, May 6,
1960, 1.
30. The Try It Yourself Test: Penetrating the Press Propaganda Smoke Screen, Fair Play,
May 6, 1960, 2.
31. The Old World Looks at Cuba: The Possibilities of Man: Simone de Beauvoir on
Revolution, Fair Play, June 3, 1960, 3; and Progress Report: The Second Year of
Revolution, Fair Play, June 24, 1960, 1.
32. Gibson to Gosse, September 24, 1989, as quoted in Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 147.
Amitava Kumar writes, Fanon wrote with lyrical power against Sartres assertion that the
idea of race is concrete and particular and that the idea of class is universal and abstract.
Fanons foe was a deracinated socialism. This description is especially pertinent because
of Gibson and Williamss critiques of U.S. and, later, Cuban Communists, in spite of their
Socialist leanings. Amitava Kumar, Passport Photos (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2000), 145.

33. Revolution and FreedomHow Much and for Whom? Fair Play, May 20, 1960, 1.
34. Ibid.
35. Cuba as I See It: William Worthy on Cuba; an American Journalist Views the New
Freedom South of Key West, Fair Play, July 22, 1960, 3.
36. Ibid.
37. NAACP Leader in Cuba to Learn What US Fears, Fair Play, July 8, 1960, 4.
38. Martin Luther King Jr., Birth of a New Age, vol. 3 of The Papers of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., ed. Clayborne Carson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). Available
at www.Stanford.edu/group/King/papers/vol3/chronology.htm.
39. Grace Lee Boggs, Remembering James Boggs, Third World Viewpoint: Advocating a
Just World Order 1 (1993): 12.
40. William Worthy, Why They Dont Want U.S. Negroes to Visit Cuba, Fair Play, June 10,
1960, 1.
41. See Aline Helg, Our Rightful Share: The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 18861912
(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995).
42. Worthy, Cuba as I See It, 3.
43. Ibid.
44. Ibid.
45. Julian Mayeld, Julian Mayeld in the Afro-American: Author Says Cuba Has Solution to
Race Problem, Fair Play, October 25, 1960, 2.
46. Julian Mayeld to Mr. and Mrs. Mayeld, September 21, 1953, in Julian Mayeld Papers,
box 7, folder 1, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York.
47. Mayeld, Julian Mayeld in the Afro-American, 2.
48. Ibid.
49. Julian Mayeld to unknown, September 25, 1960, in Julian Mayeld Papers, box 7,
folder 2.
50. Mayeld, Julian Mayeld in the Afro-American, 2.
51. LeRoi Jones, Cuba Libre, in The LeRoi Jones/Amiri Baraka Reader, ed. William J. Harris
(New York: Thunders Mouth, 1999), 12560.
52. Young, Soul Power, 21.
53. Jones, Cuba Libre, 120.
54. Although some have argued that Castros antiracism was disingenuous and only sparked
by his attempts to court U.S. blacks, Alejandro de la Fuente demonstrates the demands
made by Afro-Cuban intellectuals such as Nicols Guilln, Blas Roca, and Salvador Garca
Agero, who, as early as January 1959, perceived the revolution as an unprecedented
opportunity to redress previous inequities. Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race,
Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2001), 261. In a speech given on March 25, 1959, Castro outlined, however
vaguely, his position on racism, unequivocally assert[ing] that racial discrimination was
socially and morally wrong, as well as anti-Cuban and counterrevolutionary. However,
consistent with the difculties U.S. blacks would face in Cuba, his emphasis was on making
gradual changes in employment, while private and personal spaces would be respected.
Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All, 266.
55. Robert F. Williams, New York, Crusader, November 12, 1960, 4.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.; Williams, Editor to Continue Tour, Crusader, April 8, 1961, 8.

58. Kelley, But a Local Phase of a World Problem, 1075.

60. Stanley Nelson, dir., The Black Press: Soldiers without Swords, PBS broadcast February
8, 1999.
61. See Robert Cohen, Black Crusader: A Biography of Robert Franklin Williams (Secaucus,
NJ: Lyle Stuart, 1972); Tyson, Radio Free Dixie.
62. Timothy Tyson, Robert F. Williams, Black Power, and the Roots of the African American
Freedom Struggle, Journal of American History 85 (1998): 54070.
63. Williamss NAACP chapter is noteworthy for its working-class composition and leadership,
consisting primarily of women, namely domestics, as well as other workers and displaced
farmers. Tyson, Robert F. Williams, 550.
64. Mabel Williams, Looking Back, Crusader, September 9, 1959, 3; Robert F. Williams, An
Open Letter to President Toure, Crusader, October 31, 1959, 2; Williams, The Negro,
the New Africa, and the White World, Crusader, January 23, 1960, 3.
65. Robert F. Williams, untitled questionnaire administered by Max Stanford, Robert F.
Williams Papers, Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan, microlm reel 16,
frame 00047, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York City.
66. Robert F. Williams, Flash! On Urban Renewal: City Lied! Government Lied! Negroes
Move Much Too Slow! Fight? Or Go? Crusader, November 28, 1959, 1.
67. Williams, US Gunning for Castro, Crusader, January 2, 1960, 3.
68. Ibid.
69. Williams, The Worlds Greatest Liar, Crusader, August 13, 1960, 2.
70. Williams, Why I Am Going to Cuba, Crusader, June 11, 1960, 2.
71. Nicols Guilln, Encuentro con Robert F. Williams (An Encounter with Robert F.
Williams), La Habana, July 6, 1960, 2.
72. Williams, Greetings from Cuba, Crusader, June 18, 1961, 7.
73. Williams, n.t., Crusader, June 25, 1960, 2.
74. For example, Williams, A Southern Negro Leader Looks at Freedom in the USand in
Cuba, Fair Play, July 22, 1960, 2.
75. Williams, Negro Leader Calls Cubas Schools an Example to the USA, Crusader, June
25, 1960, 2.
76. Williams, Sierra Maestra: The Face of Cuba, Crusader, August 13, 1960, 1.
77. Williams, The Streets of Cuba, Crusader, September 3, 1960, 1.
78. Williams, Land of Token Democracy, Crusader, September 17, 1960, 3.
79. Williams, The Big Sleep, Crusader, August 20, 1960, 1.
80. Williams, n.t., Crusader, July, 30, 1960, 4.
81. Williams, n.t., Crusader, June 25, 1960, 2.
82. Williams, Bulletin, Crusader, September 17, 1960, 8.
83. Williams, Untitled, Crusader, October 1, 1960, 1.
84. Mae Mallory, Fidel Castro in New York, 1961, box 2, folder 10, Mae Mallory Collection,
Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University Archives,
Detroit, Michigan.
85. Mallory, Fidel Castro in New York, 1.
86. Williams, Editor Goes to Jail, Crusader, May 14, 1960, 1.
87. Williams, Local Mob Rule, Crusader, July 10, 1961, 1.

88. Williams, Lynch Mob Failed, Crusader, July 10, 1961.

89. Williams, Passport to Cuba Denied Williams, Crusader, July 24, 1961.
90. Mabel Williams, Arms Appeal, Crusader, August 7, 1961, 8.
91. Tyson, Robert F. Williams, Black Power, and the Roots of the African American
Freedom Struggle, 563.
92. V. T. Lee, Monroe Still Stands, Crusader, October 21, 1961, 1.
93. Vicente Cubillas, Robert Williams: De la esclavitud yanqui a la libertad cubana (Robert
Williams: From Yanqui Slavery to Cuban Liberty), Bohemia (1961): 7477.
95. CIA agents reportedly published two intentionally divisive counterfeit Crusader issues.
Richard Gibson, letter to author, March 26, 2002.
96. The Black Scholar Interviews Robert F. Williams, Black Scholar 1, no. 7 (1970): 5.
97. Williams, Abuse and Loyalty, Crusader, September 24, 1960, 2.
98. Komozi Woodard, A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) and Black Power
Politics (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999).



US Black Radicals, The Cuban Revolution, and The Formation of A Tricontinental Ideology

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Radical History Review

De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad

Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 63

Castro and revolutionary Cuba secured a strong following among progres-

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64 Radical History Review

The Cuban Revolution and the Formation of a Tricontinental Movement

The Formation of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 65

an international anti-imperialist, antiracist, pro-worker politicsbegan at least as

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66 Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 67

An American Journalist Views the New Freedom South of Key West

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68 Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 69

Proof That It Doesnt Take Decades of Gentle Persuasion

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70 Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 71

of its espousal of democratic ideals. If the democratic process, of which we boast,

Cuba Libre: From Beat Poet to Black Arts Leader

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72 Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 73

achievements of Cubas Revolutionary Government . . . but we believe that the Afro-

A Crusader Gets to Know the Face of Cuba

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74 Radical History Review

Examining Williamss language is central if one wishes to gain a sense of his

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 75

mixingis identied as colored by virtue of its exploitative and racialized relations

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76 Radical History Review

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 77

At the staging area in the valley of the Sierra Maestra, I experienced a

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78 Radical History Review

The Spirit of Christ Visits the Land of Jim Crow

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 79

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80 Radical History Review

Illusion Meets Reality

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Rodriguez | De la Esclavitud Yanqui a la Libertad Cubana 81

Conclusion: Reconceptualizing International Radicalisms

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82 Radical History Review

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84 Radical History Review