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. Brock traces "the relationship between the two peoples of color, their similar experiences with slavery and reaching for political power, and their parallel race consciousness."

As a scholar-activist, Professor Brock served in the leadership of the Chicago Committee in Support of Southern Africa during the 1980s and currently works with the Hands Off Assata Coalition to raise awareness about the former Black Panther Party member who is currently exiled in Cuba.

Copies of Between Race and Empire are available for purchase on-line and at the event.

Please join the Public Square at IHC for an important, lively, and timely discussion of historical and contemporary collective struggles among African-Americans and Afro-Cubans in the "Black Atlantic Diaspora."

Refreshments will be served. Reservations are not required.

For more information, please call 312.422.5580.