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 Rosemari
Mealy
Rosemari Mealy is Adjunct
Assistant Professor at City College of NY (CUNY) Center for Worker
Education. Professor Mealy has been honored for her community involvement
on numerous occasions and was the recipient of the prestigious Claudia
Jones Fellow in the African New World Studies Program at Florida
International University (Miami). Mealy has lived and worked in Cuba where
she collaborated on several projects in support of US political prisoners
with Assata Shakur. She is also an activist in the International Human
rights and political prisoner movement.
She is the author of
Fidel & Malcolm X: Memories of a Meeting, now out in a second
edition from
Black Classic Press.
Also available from Amazon.com ==>
"More than five decades have lapsed since September 1960, when African
American Muslim leader Malcolm X welcomed Cuban President Fidel Castro to
a midnight meeting at Harlem s Black-owned Hotel Theresa. Castro and his
delegation had come to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, but the
management of the Manhattan hotel they had booked refused to house them.
Upon learning of their plight, Malcolm invited the Cuban emissaries to
come uptown to Harlem, where he claimed they would be greeted with open
arms.
Indeed, Harlemites by the thousands gave Castro a rousing, even
magnificent welcome, keeping a round-the-clock vigil in the pouring rain
outside his balcony window. To Harlem s masses, unfazed by the red baiting
and anti-Cuba hysteria of the day, Castro was that bearded revolutionary
who had told White America to go to hell. They crowded the streets to see
and cheer the Cuban delegation and its then thirty-four-year-old
revolutionary leader.
Sadly, however, little is said, even today, about the far-reaching
conversations that took place between Malcolm and Fidel that September
evening. Only three newsmen were allowed to join them: two representatives
and a photographer from the Negro press. They noted that the two leaders
exchanged pleasantries, then spoke candidly, through their interpreters,
about self-determination and national liberation. Though language
differences proved a formidable barrier, author Rosemari Mealy maintains
that the respect that both men expressed towards each other...solidified
the ties of friendship between the Cuban revolution and the relentless
struggles of the African American people.
In this slim yet significant volume, Mealy, along with contributors
Elombe Brath, LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Sarah E. Wright, and Bill Epton,
compile the recollections of a number of persons who played important
roles in this historic summit. They add to these their own perspectives as
historians, poets, journalists, and political activists on the two leaders
and the revolutionary movements they spawned. The combined reflections,
coupled with Malcolm s and Fidel s own writings about the encounter and
rare photographs of the two men together, yield an authentic accounting of
a remarkable meeting of the minds." -- from
Amazon.com listing
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