Contact:	Suzanne Trimel				For Immediate Release
		(212) 854-5573				May 30, 1997
		smt4@columbia.edu

	
Columbia Professor Leads African-American Delegation
To Cuba to Examine Race and Gender Issues

	Professor Manning Marable of Columbia University will lead a delegation 
of  African-American scholars, writers, artists and political activists to Cuba in
 June to examine race and gender issues, the introduction of a market economy 
and the politics of human rights and dissent in Cuban society.
	Professor Marable, director of Columbia's Institute for Research in 
African-American Studies, will head the 15-member fact-finding delegation that 
will travel for 9 days beginning June 3 for interviews and research in Havana and 
Santiago.  In October, the delegation will present their findings in a symposium to 
be held at Columbia University.
	The group will travel without restrictions as guests of the Center for the 
Study of the Americas, said Professor Marable.  "We will be able to talk with 
anyone and to establish our own itinerary," he added.
	Professor Marable noted that there is a long political, cultural and 
intellectual tradition of contacts between black Americans and the Cuban people,
 extending from the black abolitionist Frederick Douglas to contemporary activists 
in the black liberation movement.
	"Cuba has represented metaphorically the ability of an oppressed people to 
challenge imperialism and colonialism," he said. "In the political imagination of
 black America, Cuba represents the radical possibility of fundamental social 
change.  One of the key questions now is -- What does Cuba represent for black 
America in this period of political transition?"
	The delegation, according to Professor Marable, will examine the
 experiences of Afro-Cubans in politics and society, the images of race and
 "blackness" in Cuban culture and how race has been constructed and 
restructured since the revolution.  In addition, the group's research will focus on 
the changing role of women in Cuban society, the economic transformation of 
Cuba since the end of the cold war, including the introduction of a market 
economy, the growth of class stratification and the elimination of social 
guarantees of employment.  Further, the researchers will look at the politics of 
human rights, democracy and political freedom.
	"The Cuban experiment with socialism raises a number of theoretical 
questions about the difficulties of social transformation in multiracial societies," 
said Professor Marable.  "How successful has Cuba been in uprooting racism and 
sexism?  Are the values of a socialist society possible in a transition to a market 
economy?"
	The group will meet with academics, writers, artists and government 
officials during its trip.  In addition to Professor Marable, members of the 
Columbia faculty who will join the delegation include Michael Eric Dyson and 
Mary Pattillo, and Jewelnel Davis, Columbia University Chaplain.  

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