The Day Fidel Stayed in Harlem with the Poor Black People of New York
“I go to a hotel where the humble are.”
By Sergio Alejandro Gómez
The Waldorf Astoria, one of New York’s most expensive hotels, was out of the question. It was the favorite of corrupt Latin American dictators such as Fulgencio Batista, who spent several years in the 1940s alternating between his luxurious Waldorf room with a house in Daytona Beach, Florida.
The Cuban ambassador to the United Nations, Manuel Bisbé Alberni, proposed that Fidel stay at the Shelburne, located on Lexington Avenue and 37th, just a few blocks from the buildings of the Cuban mission in New York. From the point of view of security and logistics, it was the best option.
Raúl Roa Kourí, a young diplomat barely 24 years old in 1960, decided not to put too much pressure on his proposal: a simple hotel in Harlem’s Black neighborhood called Theresa.
The U.S. press dedicated headlines to Fidel’s upcoming visit to the United States, one of the speakers scheduled for the 15th session of the General Assembly.
Although the Revolution was just over a year old, the U.S. government had already declared an open war against the new authorities in Havana and was leading a disinformation campaign on Cuba, which at that time announced the intervention of the U.S. banks and the transfer of Channel 6 of the CMQ into public hands.
“At that time there were still full diplomatic relations with the United States, even though we knew all the things that were happening,” recalls Roa, a Cuban representative at the United Nations Economic Commission and one of those in charge of the preparations for Fidel’s visit.
If the bearded Sierra Maestra was a concern for Washington, progressive Americans welcomed him as a hero. Hundreds of people flocked to the then Idlewild Airport, now John F. Kennedy, on September 18, 1960, to witness the arrival of the Commander-in-Chief’s plane.
His arrival also attracted counterrevolutionaries a small group who met at the entrance to the Shelburne, on Madison. Called the “The White Rose” this pro Batista group was a pioneer of what would later become a multimillion-dollar mafia organization dedicated to aggressions against Cuba.
The Shelburne bandits
The stay at the Shelburne was short. Roa remembers that the hotel manager demanded from the Cuban delegation a deposit of 20,000 dollars as a guarantee against possible damages.
“They feared, they said, that the counterrevolutionary groups could affect the hotel with stones or an attack.”
Fidel, recalls Roa, considered that this was extortion and a lack of respect for the Cuban delegation. “He ordered me to talk to the hotel manager and tell him that there was no way we were going to pay the 20,000 dollars.
“Tell them they are bandits,” he emphasized.
The commander in chief ordered Captain Núñez Jiménez to buy tents. “If we don’t find a hotel, we camp in the United Nations garden,” he said.
And, addressing Ambassador Bisbe, he instructed him to request an urgent meeting with Dag Hammarskjold, then U.N. Secretary General.
Hammarskjold preferred that Fidel stay at some mid-town hotel in New York to avoid scandals, but the Cuban delegation’s decision would surprise United Nations officials and Americans themselves.
The Hotel Theresa
The Commander, as he used to do, was walking with great strides from one side of the office room to the other thinking about what decision to make. That’s when Roa said, “I have a hotel.” Fidel didn’t even listen.
“I have a hotel in Harlem,” he repeated.
“In Harlem, in the neighborhood of Blacks and Puerto Ricans?,” Fidel asked.
- “Yes, responded Roa.
“And can you get it?” continued Fidel.
“I think so,” answered Roa once again.
A few days earlier, the young diplomat had received a proposal for the Cuban delegation to stay at the Hotel Theresa in a conversation with Bob Taber, the CBS journalist who had interviewed Fidel in the Sierra Maestra. But who was behind the invitation was Malcolm X, leader of the Black Muslims and one of the best-known progressive figures in the United States.
Roa summed up the story and Fidel agreed.
“Talk to Bob Taber and let me know when you have the hotel,” he concluded.
Long live Castro!
“Harlem mobilized to welcome Fidel,” Roa recalls. “Malcolm X, of course, summoned the Black community, and they in turn spread the word to everyone, all their friends, the Puerto Ricans, the Cubans who lived in Harlem at the time.”
The images of the situation show the New York police unable to contain the mass of people who gathered to receive the Cuban revolutionary.
“When the caravan arrived, they began to shout Fidel, Fidel,” says Roa. “It was like being in Cuba.”
The Commander in Chief greeted those present and entered the hotel where Malcolm X and Bob Taber, among others, were waiting for him.
Journalist Ralph D. Matthews wrote an article for the weekly New York Citizen-Call about the encounter.
“As long as Uncle Sam is against you, we know you’re a good man,” Malcolm X told Fidel.
“We fight for all oppressed people,” said the Cuban to his host, a symbol of the social struggle and the rights of Blacks within the United States. “That’s what we’ll talk about at the United Nations.
A few days later, Fidel would make history in the hemicycle of the General Assembly. His speech lasted more than four hours and was one of the most applauded in the history of the United Nations.
Indeed, he addressed discrimination against minorities, claimed the right of poor countries to their development and denounced the injustices of the prevailing system as never before done in that room. “The philosophy of dispossession will cease and the philosophy of war will cease,” he said.
High level diplomacy in Harlem
World leaders and personalities traveled to the Hotel Theresa to greet Fidel.
One of the most notorious was the prime minister of the Soviet Union, Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev, accompanied by his foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko.
“I was at the United Nations that day and I wasn’t at the hotel, but then I was,” Roa recalls.
The young diplomat served as Fidel’s translator in his meeting with Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India.
“No, you shouldn’t have bothered, Prime Minister, to come here,” Nehru told the Cuban leader, who had come down to the entrance of the elevator to receive his Indian guests. “It was I who wanted to shake a hero’s hand.”
The Egyptian president, Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the Ghanaian politician and philosopher, Kwame Nkrumah, who had recently achieved independence for his country, also walked through Harlem.
The reason for the decision to lodge the Cuban delegation in a humble hotel in Harlem was summed up by Fidel himself in his meeting with Dag Hammarskjöld:
“I go to a hotel where the humble are, the excluded ones, because the Cuban Revolution is the Revolution of the humble, by the humble and for the humble,” Roa recalls that Fidel told the UN Secretary General. “That effectively had great repercussions in the United States, because no head of state had ever stayed in a place like Harlem.”
