Fidel Castro and his delegation arrived in New York for the UN General Assembly one year after the Cuban Revolution, but the Manhattan hotel they had reserved refused to give them a room after the U.S. government had already put pressure on other hotels to turn them away.
When he heard about their predicament, Malcolm X extended an invitation for them to travel to Harlem and stay at the Black-owned Hotel Theresa, where he assured them that they would be welcomed with open arms.
People from Harlem received the 34-year-old Cuban revolutionary leader by the thousands, with masses huddling round-the-clock in front of the hotel.
Castro was to them that bearded revolutionary who had told white America to go to hell and his stay there was an important acknowledgment of the struggle African Americans shared with the rest of the Global South in resisting racism, colonialism, and imperialism.
Malcolm X’s daughter says there has long been “an alliance between the Black people of America and the Cuban people.”
Ilyasah Shabazz praised Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel for visiting Harlem 60 years after revolutionary leader Fidel Castro met with her father. pic.twitter.com/FYDgTKnYEi
— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) September 22, 2023
When the 35-year-old Malcolm X received Fidel Castro they talked about the inconceivable inhospitality the Cuban party had experienced at the Shelburne hotel, and the insulting demand made upon them for a $10,000 deposit against damage to be expected from Cuban “barbarians” following a racist slander campaign in the press that included baseless charges of plucking live chickens at the hotel.
Also read: Che Guevara: Facts and Fiction
But above all, Fidel spoke of Harlem. “I always wanted to come to Harlem,” said Castro, “but I was not sure of what kind of welcome I would get. When I got the news that I would be welcome in Harlem, I was happy.”
“The Black people of the United States were not as brainwashed by the government’s anti-Cuban propaganda as whites,” he continued.
Revolutionary Cuba, a majority Black nation, was wiping out racial discrimination. Cubans, Africans, and the Black people of the United States were all in the same boat.
“I feel as if I were in Cuba now. I feel very warm here.” Malcolm X responded that it was indeed true that, “We in Harlem are not addicted to all the propaganda the U.S. government puts out.” And then they embraced.
“As long as Uncle Sam is against you, you know you’re a good man,” Malcolm X told Fidel Castro.
