Q: Who was there with you?
SB: I don’t recall who the other journalists were, but there were many of us there, including a good contingent from black newspapers. Jet photographer Ellsworth Davis (who later went on to a distinguished career at the Washington Post) wasn’t in the car, but he was in Cuba with me. The New York Amsterdam News was there. Harlem Representative Adam Clayton Powell was making the first of two trips in one month for private talks with Fidel Castro. He was expected to urge the rebel leader to hold fair trials for the country’s “war criminals” because of mounting indignation in the U.S. over continuing executions on the island. As the first U.S. lawmaker to openly sympathize with Castro, Powell was considered the best envoy to get that message across. He received rousing applause everywhere he went in Havana. Jet’s “Week’s Best Photo” in the Feb. 5 issue was of Powell and Castro huddling in serious conversation at a reception.
Q: How was Castro viewed by black Americans at that time?
SB: Castro seemed like a folk hero, a liberator. In January 1959, black Americans were fighting Jim Crow on many fronts in the U.S., and especially in the South. In Little Rock, Arkansas, for example, Gov. Orville Faubus had closed the public schools for the 1958-59 school year rather than obey court-ordered desegregation. It was a year before the start of our student sit-in movement at lunch counters across the South and two years before the Freedom Rides of 1961. The Civil Rights Movement was gaining momentum in the U.S., and Castro seized the moment to send a message that there would be no racial segregation in Cuba after the revolution. Within his first month in Havana, he hosted more than 300 reporters for what he called “Operation Truth,” during which he declared that his new Cuba would follow the same pattern of non-discrimination as had his guerilla army. Among his first measures was to ban segregation in Santa Clara (considered the most prejudiced Cuban province), and close private clubs unless Negroes were admitted. He also made sure we met top black officers from his mountain brigades, including women who had led rebel units.
Q: Jet featured one such woman on the cover of its Feb. 19, 1959 issue.
SB: Yes, she was a very pretty, 22-year-old, former school teacher, who said she longed to return to the classroom. I wonder if she ever did. In that same article, was a picture of a reportedly 114-year-old woman, said to be the oldest of Castro’s underground militia in Havana. So there was, initially, a sense of admiration for what Castro was doing, at least in terms of racial and gender equality. Blacks visiting the island, including the reporters, brought home souvenirs, such as copies of the English-language Havana newspaper, and hats similar to the one worn by Castro to distribute to friends.
Q: Castro came to power at a time when African nations were also throwing off colonial rule. Did that affect black Americans’ feeling of kinship with the revolution?
SB: Very much so. Ghana, led by President Kwame Nkrumah, had been independent since early 1957, and Guinea, under Sekou Toure, since October, 1958. Even while we were in Havana, Jet carried a report that 30 people were killed and another 100 injured in two days of pro-independence rioting in Leopoldville, the Belgian Congo. As I recall, at least 17 African nations would gain independence from colonial rule the following year, followed by a number of others over the rest of the decade. So Castro was definitely riding the crest of a wave – a surge for freedom – as far as blacks were concerned, both in the Americas and in Africa.
Q: Was black American support for Castro unequivocal or were there some doubts?
SB: It didn’t take long before we realized that not everything Castro was saying should be taken at face value. There was a lot of confusion. For all of his pronouncements regarding race, for example, we found there had been considerable racial integration in Cuba for decades, and what he was really interested in were class issues. For example, we saw right away the fear and terror among middle-class blacks in Havana, where pro-Batista feeling had prevailed. So while poor Negroes were elated, the middle class was not. We also learned that half of Batista’s 40,000-man army, which was now confined
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