George H. Junne, Professor
University of Northern Colorado, Greeley

During a January 1997 research trip (my fourth to Cuba), the Eleggua Project enabled me -- in addition to collecting fresh and significant data -- to have the opportunity to submit some of my research findings. The general focus of my work is early African presence in the New World, including the history of African slaves who were Muslims and other themes related to the experiences of Africans seized for the transatlantic slave trade. On January 8, the Project arranged for me to present a paper in Guantºnamo to the British West Indian Welfare Centre, where it was warmly received.

One of the most important civil rights cases that the U.S. Supreme Court decided was that of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896). Plessy was not declared unconstitutional until Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas (1954). It was the Plessy case that authorized legal segregation ("separate but equal") in the United States. That case also had ramifications for the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam and Cuba.

In 1868, Cubans began a war of independence that ended with the truce of 1877. Leader Antonio Maceo, who was dedicated to manumitting Cuban slaves, refused to sign the treaty with Spain. Though Spain preached racial integration, Cubans continued to live in a segregated society in which slavery still existed. JosÇ Marti initiated another independence movement in 1895. The United States became involved in that war upon the explosion of the battleship Maine in Havana's harbor on February 15, 1898, two years after the Plessy decision. By 1898, the United States was seeing itself as a world power, and that year it annexed the republic of Hawaii and forced Spain to cede the Philippines, Puerto Rico, Guam and Cuba.

The U.S. acquired Cuba and, as it also did in Puerto Rico, installed a racially-segregated society modelled after the "separate but equal" practice of this country. Though they were in Cuba before 1898, white Southern churches established themselves more firmly. They also introduced their supposedly religious°based philosophy of racial segregation. Unlike the U.S., with its de jure (legal) system of segregation, Cubans lived under a de facto (in effect) system.

The system of "separate but equal" in Cuba, modelled after Plessy, remained almost intact until the 1959 revolution. That was five years after the U.S. Supreme Court over°threw that decision here. Though the Plessy v. Ferguson decision certainly did not introduce racism to Cuba, it proved to be a successful model favoring United States interests.