Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power

In this chapter, Tyson covers Williams’s friendship with Fidel Castro and the impact of the Cuban revolution of the civil rights movement. In 1959, Castro’s rebel forces defeated then-president Fulgencio Batista and installed Castro as Cuba’s Prime Minister. Though the United States government initially supported Castro’s revolution, public opinion soured within a year as Castro transformed Cuba into a socialist state. The CIA began formulating a plan to execute Castro.

Support for Castro was slow to fade among Black Americans, who doubted the finger-pointing accusations of communism that had been used against them. Castro’s regime courted support from Black Americans by playing up Cuba’s abolition of racial boundaries, promising that Black visitors to the country would be “treated as first-class citizen[s]” (223).

In 1960 Williams became a founding member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, whose stated purpose was to fight back against anti-Cuban propaganda in the United States. Approximately one-third of the group’s initial membership was drawn from Williams’s supporters in Harlem. In the summer of 1960, Williams was invited to visit Cuba with other Fair Play members. The visit left a deep impression on Williams, who noted in a postcard to a friend: “[I am] enjoying the only freedom I have ever known” (224).