Daily Prince­ton­ian photo of Cas­tro on Wash­ing­ton Street.

In 1959, not even three months after he came to power, Fidel Cas­tro was invited to speak to a small group of under­grad­u­ate stu­dents and fac­ulty mem­bers of the Woodrow Wil­son School. In a recent dona­tion to the Uni­ver­sity Archives, we received some key items related to Castro’s visit, includ­ing this let­ter of invitation.

Let­ter sent to Cas­tro. March 5, 1959

This telegram response to the ini­tial let­ter is also part of the dona­tion, which was added to the Amer­i­can Whig-Cliosophic Soci­ety Records.

Ulti­mately, Cas­tro did accept the invi­ta­tion and spoke for the Woodrow Wil­son School’s Spe­cial Pro­gram in Amer­i­can Civ­i­liza­tion. Admis­sion to the pro­gram was by invi­ta­tion only, and it was held in Wil­son Hall, now known as Cor­win Hall.

These mate­ri­als were donated by Ambas­sador Paul D. Tay­lor ’60 and include a car­bon copy of three pages of notes of excerpts from Castro’s speech taken by Taylor.

The rest of Castro’s visit included a tour of cam­pus with Pres­i­dent Goheen ’40 as well as being the guest of honor at the Present Day Club in town.

Dur­ing his visit, Cas­tro stayed in the home of Mr. & Mrs. Roland T. Ely ’46. Below is a piece of bio­graph­i­cal infor­ma­tion that is included in the His­tor­i­cal Sub­ject Files: Box 309, Folder 20.

If you would like to learn more about Castro’s visit, please search the dig­i­tized archives of The Daily Prince­ton­ian.

The fol­low­ing links are just two of the arti­cles related to Castro’s visit.

Cas­tro Vio­lates Secu­rity Regulations

The Story Behind Castro’s Visit