Fidel, Malcolm X and the Black Revolution
Published in Juventud Rebelde
(Cuba) on 18 September 2010
by Enrique Ubieta Gómez (link to
original)
Today, Sept. 19, marks a half century since the meeting of Fidel and Malcolm X at the Theresa Hotel in Harlem in New York City. In order to understand the context of that interview, one must know the facts that surround it: The young leader of the triumphant Cuban Revolution attended a session of the United Nations General Assembly. The U.S. government refused to give him official treatment. The most important and lavish Manhattan hotels closed their doors or demanded unacceptable conditions from the Cuban delegation. The black neighborhood of the great city and its Theresa Hotel opened themselves to the delegation without reservation. Malcolm X facilitated the transfer of the Cubans and organized a defense guard on the outskirts of the base.
The Theresa transformed itself into an alternative site for a new era that was beginning: Thousands of Harlem residents congregated in front of the hotel all day and night, in order to applaud and support Fidel’s presence. These were years of open racial segregation in the United States; neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, and even seats on city buses were reserved exclusively for whites, and many black leaders were fighting for civil rights for their communities. Malcolm X was a black leader who confronted racial discrimination as a top priority.
It is therefore important to point out the class instinct that led those fighters, for the sake of their rights, to understand that the Cuban Revolution was also representing them. According to the report about the event, published by the [Cuban] magazine, Bohemia, in October 1960: “When thousands of black citizens were shouting last night, 'We love Castro!' what they were actually saying was: We want a Castro!” Malcolm X would say, during their encounter, that as long as Uncle Sam spoke ill of Fidel, it meant that he was doing the right thing.
Those were times of change, and, in New York that week, they all joined together: Jawaharlal Nehru of India; the Egyptian, Gamal Abdel Nasser; Africans Sekou Touré of Guinea and Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana; Nikita Khrushchev of The Soviet Union; and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, among others. The Assembly formalized the entry of 14 new sovereign states, 13 of them African. Not only were the streets of Harlem filled with residents but also with thousands of Latin Americans who expressed solidarity with Fidel and the Cuban Revolution. Khrushchev and Nasser went to the hotel in order to meet with the Cuban revolutionary. “The presence of the leader of the United Arab Republic made the racial scene of that district more complex, by adding Arab contingents to the general mobilization,” noted Bohemia in its report.
In the U.N. building, other struggles have lapsed: the American indifference for disarmament, proposed by the Soviets; the complicity of the international organization with imperialism in the destabilizing war of the Congo, which attempted to overthrow Prime Minister Lumumba (finally assassinated); the moral and material debt of Western countries, never settled with the African peoples; and the example of the Cuban Revolution, and the sharp word from its leader. Fidel casually broke protocol, and it opened a new era of social and political irreverence. His speech was interrupted 30 times, and in quite an unusual way: by applause. Arabs, Asians and Cuban revolutionaries, met, applauded, and mutually supported one another for the first time.
The admiration of Malcolm X for the Cuban Revolution and the rapid radicalization of his thinking have, as a backdrop, this international context of popular struggles. Being a leader of the blacks, the African-American would transform himself into a leader of the oppressed ones, into an anti-capitalist fighter. This radical change would cost him his life. His concept of “Black Revolution” would acquire a classist sense: “Now the Black Revolution has been taking place in Africa and Asia and Latin America; when I say black, I mean non-white — black, brown, red or yellow” were his words in 1964. That is to say, the ones exploited in the South (that includes those in the North). In 1965 it was even clearer: “It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the exploited against the exploiter.”
In 1964, Che went to a session of the U.N. General Assembly, representing Cuba. Malcolm X invited him to participate in an act of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Babu, was also there, a high official of Tanzania whose government was then presided over by Julius Nyerere. The guerilla commander could not attend but sent a supportive message that the Afro-American leader read. It recalled Fidel’s visit to Harlem and finished with this sentence: “United we will win.”
Both the Cuban Revolution and Malcolm X were worried about the events in the Congo because the Congolese revolutionaries, after the assassin of Lumumba, fought on unequal terms against the pro-imperialist government which had been imposed. But, on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was also assassinated. “All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of Congo,” Che Guevara said at the United Nations. Che Guevara himself and a handful of Cubans were in the Congolese jungles between April and December of 1965, fighting shoulder to shoulder with their African brothers.
Malcolm X failed to see how far the internationalist spirit of the Cuban Revolution would go. A decade later it would be involved in the definitive process of the African Liberation in Angolan lands. “For the Cuban people, internationalism is not merely a word but something that we have seen practiced to the benefit of large sections of humankind,” Nelson Mandela affirmed on July 26, 1999, in Matanzas. A North American internationalist, and black like Malcolm X, would also dedicate his life to combating the unjust economic blockade of his country against ours. I refer to Reverend Lucius Walker, who died recently in New York. There are moments of the other history’s relationships between the peoples of Cuba and the United States, the history of the Black Revolution, which we will have to write sometime.
Editor’s Note: Quotations from Bohemia were unable to be verified.
The Theresa transformed itself into an alternative site for a new era that was beginning: Thousands of Harlem residents congregated in front of the hotel all day and night, in order to applaud and support Fidel’s presence. These were years of open racial segregation in the United States; neighborhoods, schools, restaurants, and even seats on city buses were reserved exclusively for whites, and many black leaders were fighting for civil rights for their communities. Malcolm X was a black leader who confronted racial discrimination as a top priority.
It is therefore important to point out the class instinct that led those fighters, for the sake of their rights, to understand that the Cuban Revolution was also representing them. According to the report about the event, published by the [Cuban] magazine, Bohemia, in October 1960: “When thousands of black citizens were shouting last night, 'We love Castro!' what they were actually saying was: We want a Castro!” Malcolm X would say, during their encounter, that as long as Uncle Sam spoke ill of Fidel, it meant that he was doing the right thing.
Those were times of change, and, in New York that week, they all joined together: Jawaharlal Nehru of India; the Egyptian, Gamal Abdel Nasser; Africans Sekou Touré of Guinea and Kwane Nkrumah of Ghana; Nikita Khrushchev of The Soviet Union; and Josip Broz Tito of Yugoslavia, among others. The Assembly formalized the entry of 14 new sovereign states, 13 of them African. Not only were the streets of Harlem filled with residents but also with thousands of Latin Americans who expressed solidarity with Fidel and the Cuban Revolution. Khrushchev and Nasser went to the hotel in order to meet with the Cuban revolutionary. “The presence of the leader of the United Arab Republic made the racial scene of that district more complex, by adding Arab contingents to the general mobilization,” noted Bohemia in its report.
In the U.N. building, other struggles have lapsed: the American indifference for disarmament, proposed by the Soviets; the complicity of the international organization with imperialism in the destabilizing war of the Congo, which attempted to overthrow Prime Minister Lumumba (finally assassinated); the moral and material debt of Western countries, never settled with the African peoples; and the example of the Cuban Revolution, and the sharp word from its leader. Fidel casually broke protocol, and it opened a new era of social and political irreverence. His speech was interrupted 30 times, and in quite an unusual way: by applause. Arabs, Asians and Cuban revolutionaries, met, applauded, and mutually supported one another for the first time.
The admiration of Malcolm X for the Cuban Revolution and the rapid radicalization of his thinking have, as a backdrop, this international context of popular struggles. Being a leader of the blacks, the African-American would transform himself into a leader of the oppressed ones, into an anti-capitalist fighter. This radical change would cost him his life. His concept of “Black Revolution” would acquire a classist sense: “Now the Black Revolution has been taking place in Africa and Asia and Latin America; when I say black, I mean non-white — black, brown, red or yellow” were his words in 1964. That is to say, the ones exploited in the South (that includes those in the North). In 1965 it was even clearer: “It is incorrect to classify the revolt of the Negro as simply a racial conflict of Black against white or as a purely American problem. Rather, we are today seeing a global rebellion of the oppressed against the oppressor, of the exploited against the exploiter.”
In 1964, Che went to a session of the U.N. General Assembly, representing Cuba. Malcolm X invited him to participate in an act of the Organization of Afro-American Unity. Babu, was also there, a high official of Tanzania whose government was then presided over by Julius Nyerere. The guerilla commander could not attend but sent a supportive message that the Afro-American leader read. It recalled Fidel’s visit to Harlem and finished with this sentence: “United we will win.”
Both the Cuban Revolution and Malcolm X were worried about the events in the Congo because the Congolese revolutionaries, after the assassin of Lumumba, fought on unequal terms against the pro-imperialist government which had been imposed. But, on Feb. 21, 1965, Malcolm X was also assassinated. “All free men of the world must be prepared to avenge the crime of Congo,” Che Guevara said at the United Nations. Che Guevara himself and a handful of Cubans were in the Congolese jungles between April and December of 1965, fighting shoulder to shoulder with their African brothers.
Malcolm X failed to see how far the internationalist spirit of the Cuban Revolution would go. A decade later it would be involved in the definitive process of the African Liberation in Angolan lands. “For the Cuban people, internationalism is not merely a word but something that we have seen practiced to the benefit of large sections of humankind,” Nelson Mandela affirmed on July 26, 1999, in Matanzas. A North American internationalist, and black like Malcolm X, would also dedicate his life to combating the unjust economic blockade of his country against ours. I refer to Reverend Lucius Walker, who died recently in New York. There are moments of the other history’s relationships between the peoples of Cuba and the United States, the history of the Black Revolution, which we will have to write sometime.
Editor’s Note: Quotations from Bohemia were unable to be verified.
This is a very interesting article, I ‘m doing a research on the perception of the Cuban revolution by the African American leadership in the Sixties.
Just two remarks:
– to say that Malcom X was an anti-capitalist fighter is deeply wrong.
– from my studies, Malcom X did not organize a defense guard in front of the Theresa Hotel. Their meeting, even if it has been very important symbollically, was poor of contents because of Castro’s bad English and the lack of a translator.