Vol. 71/No. 6      February 12, 2007

Hansen spoke at 31 colleges and universities in 17 states, in addition to other meetings and forums. A good number of events drew between 100 and 200 participants, with several thousand attending overall. Thousands more read, heard, or watched Hansen on radio, television, or campus papers and major dailies.

Among the main organizers of the tour was the Young Socialist Alliance—predecessor of today’s Young Socialists—which had held its founding national convention just two years earlier. A wide range of groups sponsored the meetings, including local student organizations and chapters of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee. The latter organized solidarity with the Cuban Revolution and opposition to Washington's economic war against Cuba.

Several campus meetings were organized as debates between Hansen and opponents of the Cuban Revolution, often local professors. In the course of spirited exchanges from the platform and by members of the audience, many young people were won to support the Cuban Revolution. A number were also attracted to the perspective Hansen presented of emulating the Cuban example by organizing to make a socialist revolution in the United States too.

When administrators at San Diego State College and San Diego City College banned scheduled meetings for Hansen—a move covered widely in the local press—students at California Western University (now United States International University) organized a campus meeting of 65 on 24 hours’ notice.

In a number of cities, Hansen spoke at the Militant Labor Forum. Coming at the tail end of the anticommunist witch-hunt in the United States, many of these were the largest such forums in years.

The Militant’s regular coverage of the tour had a special feature, too. Since Hansen’s Latin American tour took place well before the days of electronic cameras, or even cheap international express-mail service, the many vivid photos he took during the trip couldn’t be featured together with the dispatches mailed in to the Militant each week.

So the editors took advantage of the U.S. speaking tour to run a number of these photos along with the weekly coverage (some of these appear above). In those days of lead type, photos couldn’t simply be dropped into the page on a computer either. Each photo was a zinc engraving on a wood block!
 
 
Related articles:
‘The desire to follow Cuban road is deep’
Chronicle of 1961-62 tour of Latin America by ‘Militant’ editor Joseph Hansen  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home