African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
247 p., Describes how black Cubans experience racism on two levels. Cuban racism might result in less access for black Cubans to their group's resources, including protection within Cuban enclaves from society-wide discrimination. In society at large, black Cubans are below white Cubans on every socioeconomic indicator. Rejected by their white co-ethnics, black Cubans are welcomed by other groups of African descent. Many hold similar political views as African Americans. Identifying with African Americans neither negatively affects social mobility nor leads to a rejection of mainstream values and norms.
The dramatic vision and delicate balance of composition found in Adona's photographic works were developed while working with painter Rozzell Sykes. Her vision was literally changed. The awareness of light, shadows, colors, textures, tones and balance had changed. Soon she began creating with paint, stark images with the feel of Japanese simplicity. [Alisa Adona]'s paintings showed a freshly textured view and an exciting new eye in the Los Angeles art world. Over time, she was compelled to capture what she saw through the lens of a camera, ultimately making photography her new love.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
311 p., Focuses on conflict and convergence among African Americans, Cuban exiles, and Afro-Cubans in the United States. Argues that the racializing discourses found in the Miami Times, which painted Cuban immigrants as an economic threat, and discourses in the Herald, which affirmed the presumed inferiority of blackness and superiority of whiteness, reproduce the centrality of ideologies of exclusivity and white supremacy in the construction of the U.S. nation.
[Assata Shakur]'s comments highlight the long and continuing relationship between African Americans and Cuba. Black abolitionists such as Frederick Douglass and Henry Highland Garnet had actively supported Cuba's struggle for independence from Spain over a century ago. After the revolutionaries seized power in 1959, [Fidel Castro] made a powerful impression among African Americans by staying in Harlem during his first visit to the United Nations. Castro's famous September, 1960 meeting with Malcolm X, to the great consternation of the U.S. government, reinforced the solidarity felt by progressive black Americans toward the revolutionary government.
As if her precious life and freedom were a game of poker, the FBI upped the ante or bounty on [Assata Shakur] to $1 million two weeks ago. In a television address last Tuesday, Cuban leader Fidel Castro rejected calls to hand over Shakur, stating that she was not a terrorist but a victim of racial persecution. "They wanted to portray her as a terrorist, something that was an injustice, a brutality, an infamous lie," Castro said in his televised speech, while never mentioning Shakur's name. "They have always been hunting her, searching for her because of the fact that there was an accident in which a policeman died."
"Cuba has represented metaphorically the ability of an oppressed people to challenge imperialism and colonialism," Marable explained. "In the political imagination of Black America, Cuba represents the radical possibility of fundamental social change. One of the key questions now is -- what does Cuba represent for Black America in this period of political transition?"
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Location:
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
365 p., As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late 19th Century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Observes the people, places, legislation and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation.
An editorial asserts that petty politics and diplomatic one-upmanship should not play a part in a stated request by Dr Juan Carrizo Estevez, the director of Cuba's two-year-old Latin American School of Medical Sciences, to obtain a visa to the US to meet with black college officials and the Congressional Black Caucus to discuss a grandiose, gratuitous offer from Cuba of a free medical education to US students.
Shunning warnings that Cuban Pres Fidel Castro was using them for propaganda purposes, eight US residents have taken Castro up on his offer to grant them free medical education, provided they return to poor communities in the US. On Apr 4, 2001, the eight African-American students took part in welcoming ceremonies hosted by Cuba's Latin American School of Medical Sciences.
African American Research Center, Library, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Notes:
270 p., Cuba's geographic proximity to the United States and its centrality to US imperial designs following the War of 1898 led to the creation of a unique relationship between Afro-descended populations in the two countries. Drawing on archival sources in both countries, the author traces four encounters between Afro-Cubans and African Americans.
