15
Neither Black, or White:
Just Cuban
g By Alicia Centelles
I was barely 2 when the Montgomery bus boycott happened, and 14 when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, in Memphis.
My first exposure to the United States civil rights movement was through the campaign developed in Cuba to demand freedom for Angela Davis, a personality who became very dear to the Cuban people and who visited our country on several occasions. I remember clearly the ads on television, the song that was composed in Cuba dedicated to her and I even attended some meetings at the University of Havana to support her. The day we learned of her release was a national holiday.
For my generation, the figures of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X became true idols. Dr. King´s "I Have a Dream" speech is a text that many Cubans know, and I remember that
Alicia Centelles, right, an Afro-Cuban radio journalist in Havana, remembers a time when neither blacks in the U.S. or Cuba had any civil rights.