Cuban President Fidel Castro’s illness and the subsequent prospect of a post-Castro Cuba have reinvigorated the issue of U.S.-Cuba relations in the public arena. Lisa Brock, professor of African history and Diaspora studies at Columbia College Chicago, has been researching and writing on African-American and Cuban relations since the early 1990s. Her book, Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans Before the Cuban Revolution, explores historical ties between the Black freedom struggle in the U.S. and revolutionary movements among Afro-Cubans.

Recorded Saturday, August 26, 2006 at Chicago Public Library-Englewood Branch.