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Fair Play for Cuba Committee

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Lee Harvey Oswald and others handing out "Fair Play for Cuba" leaflets in New Orleans, August 16, 1963

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City by Robert Taber in April 1960.[1][2][3] It was active in both the USA and Canada.

History

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The group was set up as a result of a reception in the Cuban Consulate General in New York City on 1 April 1960 for "friends of Cuba". The Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party was involved in the organisation.[4]

The FPCC's purpose was to provide grassroots support for the Cuban Revolution against attacks by the United States government, once Fidel Castro began openly stating his commitment to Marxism and began the expropriation and nationalization of Cuban assets belonging to U.S. corporations. The FPCC opposed the Bay of Pigs invasion of 1961, the imposition of the United States embargo against Cuba, and was sympathetic to the Cuban view during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. Its members were placed under surveillance by the FBI.[5]

The group organised trips to Cuba and at one point had dozens of chapters across the USA.[6] The Committee was open to members of all races, and on the first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution a group of black civil rights activists, composed of Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, Julian Mayfield and John Henrik Clarke, travelled to Havana in a trip organised by the FPCC.[7]

Subsidiary Fair Play for Cuba groups were set up throughout the United States and Canada.[8][9]

In Canada the organisation had an office in Toronto, which obtained and distributed pro-Castro literature coming from Cuba itself. It also produced its own literature based upon testimonies from those who had travelled to Cuba and wanted to report their experiences on the island.[10] The first Canadian chapter was founded by Vernel and Anne Olson, they held their first meeting in February 1961 at the First Unitarian Church in Toronto.[11]

Lee Harvey Oswald

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On May 26 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald wrote to the New York City headquarters of FPCC, proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans".[12] Three days later, the FPCC responded to Oswald's letter advising against opening a New Orleans office "at least not ... at the very beginning".[13] In a follow-up letter, Oswald replied, "Against your advice, I have decided to take an office from the very beginning."[14] On May 29, Oswald ordered the following items from a local printer: 500 application forms, 300 membership cards, and 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba".[15]

According to anti-Castro militant Carlos Bringuier, Oswald visited him on August 5 and 6 at a store he owned in New Orleans. Bringuier was the New Orleans delegate for the anti-Castro organization Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil (DRE). Bringuier would later tell the Warren Commission that he believed Oswald's visits were an attempt by Oswald to infiltrate his group.[16] On August 9, Oswald turned up in downtown New Orleans handing out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets. Bringuier confronted Oswald, claiming he was tipped off about Oswald's leafleting by a friend. A scuffle ensued and Oswald, Bringuier, and two of Bringuier's friends were arrested for disturbing the peace.[17][18] Prior to leaving the police station, Oswald requested to speak with an FBI agent.[19] Oswald told the agent that he was a member of the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee which he claimed had 35 members and was led by A. J. Hidell.[19] In fact, Oswald was the branch's only member and it had never been chartered by the national organization.[20]

Surveillance and infiltration

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In 1961 the Committee was the target of the FBI's COINTELPRO program.[21] In June 1961 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover approved "establishing counterintelligence programs in Cuban field in an attempt to disillusion current members of such pro-Castro groups as July 26 Movement and Fair Play for Cuba Committee". Among these suggestions was a plot to get leaders arrested by luring them with prostitutes.[22] In December 1961 the FBI mailed anonymous leaflets to select members of the organisation "for [the] purpose of disrupting FPCC and causing split between FPCC and its Socialist Workers Party (SWP) supporters", a tactic they noted was "very effective". Due to the help of an informant the FBI also possessed photographs of the FPCC financial records and the mailing list of the organisation.[23]

The FBI had informers in the FPCC, such as Victor Thomas Vicente in the New York chapter,[24] and its members and activities underwent surveillance by the Detroit Police Department.[25] The Committee was the subject of investigation from both the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security and the House Un-American Activities Committee.[26] CIA interest in the FPCC was also documented by the Church Committee in 1975. It uncovered a memo dated to 16 September 1963 which stated that the CIA is "giving some thought to planting deceptive information which might embarrass the Committee in areas where it does have some support".[27]

By December 1963, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was defunct, largely in part to the fallout from the assassination of John F. Kennedy by FPCC member, Lee Harvey Oswald. FBI investigations concluded in 1964.[28][29]

Members and sponsors

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Archives

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References

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  1. ^ Gott, Richard, Cuba: a new History, Yale University Press, 2004, 177–178
  2. ^ Cassels, Louis (June 17, 1961). "Fair Play for Cuba Committee Activated". Lodi News-Sentinel. Lodi, California. UPI. p. 11. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
  3. ^ Edson, Peter (October 21, 1962). "Edson in Washington; Defectors to Castro". The Park City Daily News. Bowling Green, Kentucky. NEA. p. 21. Retrieved May 29, 2013.
  4. ^ International Trotskyism, 1929-1985 A Documented Analysis of the Movement. Duke University Press. 1991. p. 852.
  5. ^ a b Cold War Stories: William Worthy, the Right to Travel, and Afro-American Reporting on the Cuban Revolution (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 2020-07-09, retrieved 2020-08-13
  6. ^ Iyengar, Kavitha (Winter 2015). "The Venceremos Brigade: North Americans in Cuba Since 1969". International Journal of Cuban Studies. 7 (2): 236–264.
  7. ^ Sieving, Christopher (2011). Soul Searching: Black-Themed Cinema from the March on Washington to the Rise of Blaxploitation. Wesleyan University Press. p. 129.
  8. ^ Gosse, Van, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of the New Left, London: Verso, 1993.
  9. ^ "Pro-Castro Organization Now Defunct". Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Vol. 39, no. 87. Sarasota, Florida: Lindsay Newspapers, Inc. UPI. December 29, 1963. p. 20. Retrieved May 18, 2017.
  10. ^ Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era. University of Toronto Press. 2009. p. 112.
  11. ^ Canada and the Third World: Overlapping Histories. University of Toronto Press. 2016. p. 252.
  12. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 2 Archived August 19, 2014, at the Wayback Machine, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 512.
  13. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 3 Archived January 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 515.
  14. ^ Lee (Vincent T.), Exhibit No. 4 Archived January 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 20, p. 518.
  15. ^ FBI Report of Investigation of Lee Harvey Oswald's Activities for Fair Play for Cuba Committee in New Orleans Archived June 2, 2013, at the Wayback Machine, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 25, pp. 770, 773.
  16. ^ Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 10, pp. 34–37, Testimony of Carlos Bringuier Archived January 11, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  17. ^ Summers 1998, p. 211.
  18. ^ Federal Bureau of Investigation Archived October 23, 2003, at the Wayback Machine, August 15, 1963, Warren Commission Hearings, vol. 17, pp. 758–764, Commission Exhibit 826
  19. ^ a b Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13 1964, p. 728.
  20. ^ Report of the President's Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Appendix 13 1964, pp. 728–729.
  21. ^ "The Nation: FBI Dirty Tricks". Time. 5 December 1977.
  22. ^ Jacobs, John (21 November 1977). "FBI Proposed Using Prostitutes to Shame Castro Backers". The Washington Post.
  23. ^ The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, Book V, Final Report. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1976. p. 66.
  24. ^ Kaiser, David (2009). The Road to Dallas The Assassination of John F. Kennedy. Harvard University Press. p. 289.
  25. ^ Hearings Before the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act Laws of the Committee on the Judiciary United States Senate: Eight Seventh Congress, First Session Part 3. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1961. p. 273.
  26. ^ McKercher, Asa (2013). "Steamed Up: Domestic Politics, Congress, and Cuba, 1959–1963". Diplomatic History. 38 (3): 599–627.
  27. ^ The Investigation of the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy: Performance of the Intelligence Agencies, Book V, Final Report. U.S. Government Printing Office. 1976. p. 65.
  28. ^ https://fau.digital.flvc.org/islandora/object/fau%3A9815 Cold War comes to Ybor City: Tampa Bay's chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee
  29. ^ Our Place in the Sun: Canada and Cuba in the Castro Era. University of Toronto Press. 2009. p. 114.
  30. ^ We Changed the World African Americans 1945-1970. Oxford University Press. 1997. p. 75.
  31. ^ Field, Douglas (2011). James Baldwin. Liverpool University Press. p. 34.
  32. ^ Felten, Peter (2002). "Book Review: Playa Girón: Bay of Pigs: Washington's First Military Defeat in the Americas". Hispanic American Historical Review. 82 (2): 412–4.
  33. ^ 104-10001-10015 2022 RELEASE UNDER THE PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY ASSASSINATION RECORDS ACT OF 1992. UNCLASSIFIED. FRNAL. BONLY? CON. INITIAL SECRET. archives.gov
  34. ^ "FBI - HSCA Subject Files: Richard Thomas Gibson". maryferrell.org. Retrieved 7 February 2023.
  35. ^ Lambe, Jennifer (2020). "The Revolution's Fourth Face on the Fourth Network: Feuding over Cuba on U.S. Educational Television, 1959– 1970". Journal of American History. 107 (3): 636–57.
  36. ^ a b "Fair Play for Cuba Committee". 1961.
  37. ^ The Movements of the New Left, 1950-1975: A Brief History with Documents. Palgrave Macmillan. 2005. pp. 55–6.
  38. ^ https://www.archives.gov/files/research/jfk/releases/2018/104-10308-10163.pdf [bare URL PDF]
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