Fidel Castro’s 1959 Visit to Washington, DC

In April 1959, a triumphant Fidel Castro spent the better part of a week in Washington, and the pictures from those days are startling.

Here he is, a 32-year-old revolutionary who had ousted the Batista regime just months earlier (as a teenager, he even wrote a letter to FDR), standing in Meridian Hill Park holding 16-month-old Sherry Robin Hayes.

We dug this gem up on one of our favorite Facebook pages, Old Time D.C. If you haven’t checked them out, you should.

To go with the photo, we pulled the coverage from the Washington Post and Times Herald, published April 17, 1959. Castro had only recently pushed out Fulgencio Batista to become prime minister of Cuba, and reporters trailed him everywhere he went.

Cuban Prime Minister Fidel Castro said yesterday the executions in Cuba are “a lesson for the future.”

The bearded, 32-year-old revolutionary said in an interview at the Cuban Embassy that the people’s faith that the Batista regime leaders would be punished legally prevented great bloodshed in the final days of the revolt.

The interview took place at the foot of the long, marble staircase in the red-carpeted Embassy foyer, just as the weary Castro was hoping to escape to his room for a brief rest. Through the day, he had been interviewed almost endlessly, mostly by the Spanish press, lunched at the Statler Hotel with Acting Secretary of State Christian Herter, and returned to the Embassy for more interviews and for a walk.

At the luncheon, he told Acting Secretary Herter and others that he hoped the people of the United States would one day “recognize the whole truth of the revolutionary struggle” and said he saw no reason why relations between Cuba and the United States should not be “the best,” and he and Herter exchanged assurances of friendship.

Castro, smiling and at ease most of the day, though perpetually surrounded by a herd of Spanish and American reporters and photographers, was dressed in his usual offhand manner. The collar of his olive green shirt was open. He kept his Army hat on, and he carried a great big Cuban cigar that kept going out.

When he arrived at the Embassy, at 2630 16th St. NW, Wednesday night, he showed the same disdain for security regulations that he had at the airport.

Esther Guzman, Embassy attache, pointed to a crowd of about 150 persons, both Cuban and American and apparently not unfriendly, across the street. She suggested he go up to the balcony and wave.

“I’m no man on a balcony,” Castro snorted, and took off, dodging nimbly through the traffic, to meet the people.

Returning to the Embassy, where a crowd of about 200, all cleared by security guards, awaited him, he went to his third-floor room, flopped on a bed fully clothed, and announced, “I’m tired. Tired.”

And check this out. The photo above is the same one the paper ran that day.

Here’s one more. It’s a shot of Castro arriving at National Airport on April 15, 1959.

The night Castro dropped in on a DC radio show

The strangest scene of the whole week may have unfolded near midnight. Here is a first-hand memory of it, from a Washingtonian who was working the night sports desk at the old Washington Daily News.

“It’s Midnight in Washington…and this is the Steve Allison show.”

I can remember those lines from 1959 just like it was yesterday. WWDC (1260 on the AM dial) had hired a talk show host from Philadelphia named Steve Allison, who ruled the airwaves from 10:30 pm to 1 am every night. At the time, this was cutting-edge programming for local radio.

It was light years ahead of Larry King, Jim Bohannon and all the late-night talkers who came along later.

All sorts of guests, from politicians and show-biz stars to sports heroes and the merely infamous, stopped by the Ceres Restaurant at 1307 E Street, NW to appear on Allison’s late-night show. But the night of April 20, 1959 was one for the history books.

Fidel Castro dropped in as a “surprise” guest. I got word he was there, hustled down to the restaurant, and was standing outside when Fidel emerged in his green Army fatigues and waved to the small crowd that had gathered. Earlier that day, he had spoken at the National Press Club, denied any ambition to become a “dictator,” and drawn what was described as a thunderous ovation.

I’m fairly certain I heard at least part of Allison’s interview with Castro on my car radio that night. Years later, thanks to the miracle of the “Google machine,” I stumbled on it again. The interview had been captured back in 1959 by WWDC newsman Sam Smith, one of the few recordings of that strange, electric evening to survive.

How the welcome curdled

What’s remarkable in hindsight is how quickly the American view of Castro shifted.

President Eisenhower, possibly on the advice of CIA Director Allen Dulles, wanted nothing to do with the Cuban leader. He left town to play golf and handed the job to Vice President Nixon.

Nixon came away from their meeting convinced that Castro was, in his words, “either incredibly naive about Communism or under Communist discipline.” His guess was the former.

Yet in early 1959 the new Cuban leader was hugely popular with many Americans. Former Secretary of State Dean Acheson called him “a true democrat.”

After Fidel returned to Cuba, relations between the two countries spiraled downward fast. Two years later, President Kennedy launched the disastrous “Bay of Pigs” invasion, which historians consider his biggest mistake.