For ten days in September 1960, Fidel Castro led a large delegation of top Cuban leaders to New York City where he was slated to address the General Assembly of the United Nations. Coming on the heels of an unexpected, blanket nationalization of all foreign-owned businesses that August, the trip catalyzed a frenzy of support. Exiled Cubans who had fought the Batista dictatorship, Puerto Ricans, African Americans, and white progressives lined the streets. Everywhere they hailed Fidel Castro as a liberator and redeemer whose struggle against US imperial policies in Latin America inspired their own fight for rights and justice. Although originally booked at the Shelbourne Hotel, the Cuban delegation soon moved to Harlem’s Hotel Theresa where their presence deliberately illuminated the greatest evidence of the United States’ hypocritical claim to being the world’s leading democracy: legal segregation and anti-Black racism. In these photos, jubilant crowds surge at the sight of Fidel at the airport and on the streets of Harlem; Nation of Islam representatives encounter hostility an all-white police detail in the lobby of the Hotel Theresa; and Fidel Castro, together with Celia Sánchez, Cuban diplomats, and security, arrive at the United Nations for his speech.
