How Barbara Lee’s 30-year Cuba Campaign Paid Off

In it, the Cuban leader documents a meeting at his Havana home with East Bay Rep. Barbara Lee, a woman he lauded for great political courage’’ as the then-leader of the Congressional Black Caucus, and for more than two decades an activist for normalizing relations with the island nation. Both brothers, Lee recalled, expressed hope that the newly elected President Obama would change history and restore ties between the two countries. Obama was announcing a thawing of relations, an exchange of prisoners and the freeing of American Alan Gross, whom Lee had visited several times during his five-year Cuban captivity. Obama’s move represented something of a vindication of Lee’s behind-the-scenes work in Cuba dating back to 1977, when she made her first trip for the National Conference of Black Lawyers to talk to Cubans about their country’s judicial system and race relations. The trips and her introductions to many average Afro-Cubans — “who looked just like me, who acted just like me” — cemented her belief that the embargo was an unjust burden on the people of the island nation. Ron Dellums, Lee facilitated a landmark 1978 visit by prominent African Americans, including Bay Area journalist Belva Davis, who interviewed Fidel Castro. The remarkable 2009 memo from “Comrade Fidel” — which includes a detailed account of his discussions with American lawmakers, and his thoughts regarding geopolitical changes with the election of Obama — also indicated Castro’s abiding admiration for Lee. “It was unbeatable proof of political courage,” he wrote in the memo, which Lee supplied to The Chronicle. Days later, U.S.