Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow

4 Destination without Humiliation: Black Travel within the Routes of Discrimination

151 Go to the Black Countries Cuba—Haiti—West Indies, Brazil, Africa Rates and means No passports to C[uba] & H[aiti] Hotels South by car Spanish and French at your very door Cultural and racial advantages Invaluable contacts—to see one[’]s own people in banks, shops, fine clubs, high positions. Negro artists—exchange of ideas, musicians and painters, new rhythms, new colors and faces. Poets and writers new background and basis for comparisons. A paradise for a Kodak camera . . . strange dark beauties, and interesting (unknown) contacts in a world of color. Beer, wines, and liquors. Tropical fruits you’ve never heard of before. Langston Hughes, 1931 — Langston Hughes issued the call to “go to the black countries” from the diary of his 1931 trip to Cuba. His entry highlights the desire of many African Americans to travel to see their “own people” abroad. It documents an emerging African American tourism in the early 1930s, one geared toward developing “invaluable contacts” and an “exchange of ideas,” not to mention the pleasures of “new rhythms” and “beer, wines, and liquors.” Cuba and Haiti were particularly appealing to black travelers since they did not require passports or visas for entry, due to their incorporation into the U.S. imperial order in the region. Moreover, the islands’ geographic proximity made them close enough to be within easy reach by boat from south Florida. Traveling to Cuba and Haiti could provide educational opportunities for African American travelers while Chapter Four Destination without Humiliation Black Travel within the Routes of Discrimination 152 Destination without Humiliation affirming the potentialities of African descendants in Cuba and the United States. A central concern of Afro-Cuban and African American institutions from the early 1930s until the dawn of the Cuban Revolution and the civil rights movement in the 1950s was equal access to opportunities for travel. This chapter considers the importance of travel in the making of Afro-diasporic linkages in the mid-twentieth century. In this period, leisure travel was transformed from an exclusively elite activity to one that became more widely available to theexpandingmiddleclass.Oneramificationoftheexpansionandtransformation of passenger travel service from steamships and railways to buses and airplanes in this period was an increase in the opportunities for Afro-Cubans and African Americans to interact. At the same time, black travel had to contend with persistent transnational structures of racialization that pervaded every corner of the transportation industry from Havana through the Jim Crow South to the northeastern United States. Instances of racial discrimination against black travelers helped propel the growth of civil rights activism in both countries, not only against the transit companies and state legislatures of the South, but also against the steamship lines that operated between Cuba and the United States. Yet Afro-Cuban and African American travelers did not wait for the abolition of racial discrimination to take their excursions. The de jure and de facto racial segregation of leisure and recreation in both countries created opportunities for black entrepreneurs to assemble a tourist network that relied upon segregated institutions and businesses that catered to African American travelers. Thus, what follows is not simply a tale of black bodies experiencing discrimination but a continuation of the theme of diasporamaking as a form of adaptation; of Afro-descended elites developing their own transnational strategies to counter persistent forms of racial exclusion within the imperial structures that governed travel and leisure between Cuba and the United States in this period. Travel, like migration, has been central to the Afro-diasporic experience. From Olaudah Equiano to Mary Prince to Langston Hughes and beyond, the writings of black travelers have illuminated the complexities of Afro-diasporic identifications. This chapter analyzes the actual making of black tourist networks , rather than the texts of black travel narratives, as evidence of diasporamaking . From the interwar period until the early years of the Cold War, African American and Afro-Cuban institutions and entrepreneurs attempted to accommodate an expanding number of black travelers. In this period, the class of black travelers expanded beyond the category of the cosmopolitan itiner- Destination without Humiliation 153 ant intellectual. An increasing number of African American professionals and leaders of prominent black associations began to view themselves as “tourists” eager to visit other parts of the world, particularly countries with significant Afro-descended populations. The growth of tourism allowed more African descendants to see their “own people” in the flesh more frequently. The proliferation of...