IFAJS Special Report:
Cuba in Black and White

IFAJS Cuba trips provide opportunity, enlightenment for black journalists

By Courtland Milloy
The Washington Post

When you get a telephone call from DeWayne Wickham, a columnist for USA Today and director of the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies at North Carolina A&T University, you never know what adventure lies ahead.

He might ask if you'd like to accompany him to the White House for a meeting with President Obama; get a briefing from the president's national security adviser; participate in a conference call with the nation's top civil rights leaders.

Or, in my case recently, go to Cuba with him and a group of black journalists on an assignment sponsored by the IFAJS, which he founded in 2002.

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Courtland Milloy, a columnist for The Washington Post, chats with Gisela Arandia, an author and researcher on race relations in Cuba. According to Milloy, such trips, sponsored by the Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies, gives black journalists a rare chance to gain insights abroad.

Cubans want middle class to be built on achievements as well as income

By Tonyaa J. Weathersbee
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies

Abel Contreras, a guide for Havanatur, checks out a map in the cozy confines of his bedroom. By Cuban standards Contreras, who owns a computer, CD player and color TV, is well off.

HAVANA – By Cuban standards, Abel Contreras de la Guardia is living large.

He lives on the top floor of a 65-year-old building in the Old Town section of the city. The only person he shares it with is his mother – a luxury considering the fact that housing shortages often means generations of Cuban families wind up being packed into sparse quarters.

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Young Cubans say Revolution is due for a makeover, not an overthrow

By Kelcie C. McCrae
Institute for Advanced Journalism Studies

Raidel Luiz Iglesia, 25, Surely Delarosa, 20 and Brenda Lorenzo, 17, discuss the future of Cuba. While they still support the Revolution, they say it's due for a makeover.

HAVANA – Twenty-five-year-old Raidel Luiz Iglesia isn’t all that enamored with the Revolution.

“The revolution has done many good things, but it has done many bad things too,” said Iglesias, a musician who has spent all of his life in Havana.  “People work for nothing and you never can see the fruits of your efforts.”

Neither is 17-year-old Brenda Lorenzo.

“(The revolution) has brought changes good for the people, but it needs to change with the time,” said Lorenzo, who is studying piano at the National Havana School of Music. “The Cuban people now are not the same ones as the ones 60 years ago.”

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Index of IFAJS Special Report: Cuba in Black and White

Index of Black-White Achievement Gap Stories