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A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 265
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs
and the Cuban Politics of Race
Una escuela propia: Ellen Irene Diggs
y las políticas raciales de Cuba
Vanessa Ohlraun
266 Vanessa Ohlraun
Abstract
The African American anthropologist Ellen Irene Diggs
was one of the rst scholars to write on African-descendant
culture in Latin America. As one of W. E. B. Du Bois’ clos-
est collaborators and a student of the Cuban anthropolo-
gist Fernando Ortiz, Diggs was an active contributor to the
global exchange of ideas on issues of race and the history
of Africa and the African diaspora. This paper focuses on
Diggs’ formative starting point as a student of Cuban an-
thropology, history, and society and asks how her experienc-
es as a participant in the escuela de verano and a doctoral
student at the University of Havana in the 1940s shaped
her views on these issues. It also investigates the complex
intersection of politics and education in the broader context
of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Pan-Americanist policies and
Diggs’ commitment to the internationalist politics of Black
solidarity, showing how Diggs carved out a space for herself
in the racially exclusive environment of the university.
Resumen
La antropóloga afroamericana Ellen Irene Diggs fue una
de las primeras académicas en escribir sobre la cultura
afrodescendiente en América Latina. Como una de las co-
laboradoras más cercanas de W. E. B. Du Bois y alumna
del antropólogo cubano Fernando Ortiz, ella contribuyó ac-
tivamente al intercambio global de ideas sobre cuestiones
de raza e historia de África y la diáspora africana. El pre-
sente artículo se centra en el punto de partida formativo de
Diggs como estudiante de antropología, historia y sociedad
cubana, y se pregunta la manera en que sus experiencias
como participante en la escuela de verano y doctoranda en
la Universidad de La Habana en la década de los cuarenta
conguraron sus puntos de vista acerca de estas cuestiones.
También, se investiga la compleja intersección entre polí-
tica y educación en el contexto más amplio de las políticas
panamericanistas de Franklin D. Roosevelt y el compromiso
de Diggs con la política internacionalista de solidaridad ne-
gra, mostrando cómo dicha autora se creó un espacio para sí
misma en el entorno de exclusión racial de la universidad.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 267
Historians investigating race and gender in Latin America
and the Caribbean have written about the fact that there
are comparatively few studies on the lives and works of Black
women. The historian Takkara Brunson, studying Cuban wom-
en of African descent who were active between the end of the
19th century and the revolution of 1959, has noted that this
is not due to a lack of sources, as is sometimes claimed, but
to the researcher’s perspective. Her approach to this issue is
a prosopographical one: to focus on a small group of individ-
uals who have left substantial records and to analyze them as
sources of exceptional gures who have an exemplary status
regarding the social experiences of Black women in Cuba in
this period (Brunson, 2021). A similar approach is used in this
study of the life and work of Dr. Ellen Irene Diggs. While
working as assistant to and collaborator of W. E. B. Du Bois,
Diggs had a broad academic network at her reach and ex-
changed numerous letters with a wide group of international
scholars, intellectuals, and other public gures. She thus left
a substantial body of documents as well as a large number of
essays published in the Black press of her time.
The purpose of a larger research project on the scholar
Ellen Irene Diggs is to esh out her core concepts in these
documents and writings, in particular those relating to race,
and to place them in relation to the theoretical trends de-
veloping in the elds of anthropology, sociology, and history
internationally at the time of her writing. Diggs offered
her perspective on what anthropologists, Africanists, and
historians wrote about Africa and the African diaspora in
the Americas through her many articles and book reviews.
The present article will analyze where her views coincide
with but also differ from those of other scholars. Navigating
the predominately white-dominated humanities and social
sciences was fraught with difculties for African American
scholars such as Diggs. Dissenting from authoritative
positions in the respective fields would result in fewer
268 Vanessa Ohlraun
professional opportunities and less pay, a point Diggs made
on several occasions (e.g., Diggs, 1978, as cited in Holden,
2022). This project aims to shed light on these complex con-
ditions of academic life and textual production to trace the
multidimensional nature of Diggs’ work, especially on race
and the history of Africa and the African diaspora, in the
context of the global exchanges of ideas and networks in
which she was an active participant.
This paper focuses on one aspect of this larger research
project, Diggs’ formative starting point as a student of Cuban
anthropology, history, and society, and asks the central
question: How did Diggs’ experiences in Cuba shape her
views on the issue of race as well as on the culture and his-
tory of Africa and the African diaspora? Though she does
not give a direct answer in the sources encountered in Cuba,
her understanding of race shifted during her studies at the
University of Havana, leading her to realize that the con-
cept of race had different meanings in Cuba and the United
States. Like Du Bois, Diggs believed that conceptions of ra-
cial hierarchies were at the basis of global societal conicts,
and it was important to study and disseminate knowledge
on African-descendant populations to overcome them. This
view, inuenced also by the Cuban anthropologist Fernando
Ortiz, with whom she studied in Havana, was to become the
foundation of her life’s work.
By reecting upon her experience at the University of
Havana in the 1940s, the article also explores how she was
caught up in the complex intersection of politics and educa-
tion in the broader context of the Americas, where various
forms of internationalist movements were being shaped.
Diggs’ studies in Cuba were predicated on Franklin D.
Roosevelt’s politics of Pan-Americanism, which encouraged
cultural exchange across the Americas, aiming to expand
the inuence of the United States in Latin America. This
strategy dominated the political climate at the University of
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 269
Havana at the time. Diggs’ own political commitments were
oriented towards a very different kind of internationalist
politics, namely that of W. E. B. Du Bois’ Pan-Africanism,
which emphasized Black solidarity and the global ght for
independence from imperial domination. The title of this
paper thus addresses Diggs’ attempt to create a space for
herself to engage notions of race and study Cuba’s African-
descendant culture and history in the racially exclusive en-
vironment of the university.
Throughout this paper, the designation “Black Cuban”
is used interchangeably with “Cuban of African descent” or
“African-descendant Cuban” while the term “Afro-Cuban”
is applied only to descriptions of cultural practices, follow-
ing Takkara Brunson, a leading scholar working on the his-
tory of Black women in the rst and second Cuban republic
(Brunson, 2021). Designations for people from other coun-
tries of the Americas follow the same principle. When cit-
ing primary sources, the original terminology is employed.
Furthermore, the term “race” is frequently used because
it was the concept Diggs was most invested in critiquing.
Using this term without quotation marks is not meant to reify
it as a non-historical fact or entity.1
Ellen Irene Diggs – a biographical sketch
Ellen Irene Diggs (1906–1998) was born in a working-class
community in Monmouth, Illinois, in the United States. She
graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from the
University of Minnesota in 1928 and then studied sociology
with W. E. B. Du Bois at the University of Atlanta, where
she graduated in 1933. Diggs wrote her master’s thesis on
1 The research for this essay was undertaken in the framework of “Connected
Worlds: The Caribbean, Origin of Modern World” and has received funding
from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Program
under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant Agreement No. 823846.
270 Vanessa Ohlraun
female incarcerated youth in African American communities
and contested the widespread criminological assumptions
on delinquency at the time, presenting a scathing critique
of the United States justice system and its racist structures.
During her studies, she was engaged by Du Bois as his re-
search assistant, a position Diggs held until she left Atlanta
for her doctoral studies at the University in Havana in the
fall of 1943. After completing her Ph.D., Diggs continued
collaborating with Du Bois until she obtained a professor-
ship at Morgan State College in Baltimore, Maryland, in
1947, where she taught sociology and anthropology for
almost thirty years (Bolles, 1999).
Diggs’ position as Du Bois’ assistant and collaborator,
which she held for over ten years, allowed her to gain deep
insights into discussions on what Du Bois famously called
the “color line” and to develop broad networks with intel-
lectuals and public gures across the globe. Du Bois was
research director at the so-called “Negro Association for
the Advancement of Colored People” (NAACP), and Diggs
co-edited the NAACP’s journal entitled The Crisis with him.
She also co-founded Phylon: The Clark Atlanta University
Review of Race and Culture with Du Bois in 1940, worked
with him on his book Black Reconstruction in America 1860-
1880, and did research for his works Black Folk, Then and
Now (1939), Dusk of Dawn (1940), and The Encyclopedia of
the Negro (1945) (Bolles, 1999, p. 158).
A foundational moment for Diggs was a trip to Cuba
with Du Bois in 1941, where she became interested in the
culture and history of Cuba’s large African-descendant
population. She decided to attend a summer school at the
University of Havana to take anthropology classes with
Fernando Ortiz in 1942. Following these studies, Diggs
chose to enroll in the University of Havana’s doctoral pro-
gram and to write her dissertation on the work of Ortiz. Here,
she began the in-depth research into African-descendant
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 271
cultures, histories, and societies, which she would pursue
throughout her career, producing studies, commentaries,
and reports on various related topics, including her most
important published work: Black Chronology: From 4000
B.C. to the Abolition of the Slave Trade (1983).
The Political Situation in Cuba
in the Early 1940s
When Diggs arrived in Cuba in 1941, relative calm had set-
tled on the political scene after Fulgencio Batista took over
the presidency in October 1940 and inaugurated a phase of
consensus politics; the previous decades had been tumultu-
ous. After becoming an independent republic in 1902, Cuba
experienced a long period of unrest as various political forces
fought over resources and political control. The United States
intervened in Cuba’s war of independence against Spain in
1898 and occupied the island until 1902. Before handing
power over to the new republic, the United States had im-
posed a constitutional clause, the so-called Platt Amendment,
which guaranteed their government the right to intervene in
Cuba’s internal affairs at any time the United States or their
local allies considered appropriate. Hence, U.S.-American
occupation was a permanent threat that shaped the rst de-
cades of political struggle as the Cuban elite vied for power in
the shadow of U.S.-American domination.
Among the presidents of this period was Gerardo Machado,
who governed the island in an increasingly repressive fash-
ion from 1925-1932, mainly with support from the United
States. When the U.S.-American economic crash of 1929
was felt the strongest, however, he was not able to satisfy
the demands of the various sectors of society which were
laying claim to their rights as Cuban citizens, most impor-
tantly the students, the labor class, women, and members
of the African-descendant population. Resistance against
272 Vanessa Ohlraun
him increased after he decided to run for reelection (Hatzky,
2009). Machado was ousted from the presidency by a diverse
group of gures from all sectors of society led by the stu-
dent movement in the so-called revolution of 1933, which
young sergeants from the military supported. Amongst these
sergeants was Fulgencio Batista, who would, from then on,
control the political life on the island from behind the scenes
until he took over the presidency through elections and the
support of the United States in 1940.
Through consensus-building, cooptation, and repression
strategies, Batista created a situation where he could gov-
ern relatively unquestioned during the following four years
(Whitney, 2001). Fashioning himself as a populist reformer,
he succeeded in satisfying the demands of various conicting
factions of the political arena in Cuba (Ferrer, 2021). Batista’s
supposedly African, Asian, and indigenous racial and eth-
nic heritage was regularly the subject of debate, and he used
this to ally himself with diverse population groups (Argote-
Freyre, 2006). He actively courted Black civic organiza-
tions, recognizing their importance by offering them funding
(Pappademos, 2011). Batista also heeded the demands of the
United States. As war-torn Europe was not able to contribute
much to the production of sugar, new trade agreements were
made strengthening the economic ties between Cuba and the
United States (Pérez, 1990). The resulting prosperity allowed
Batista to invest in new public projects in agriculture, educa-
tion, and health, among other areas in society.
The year before Batista’s presidency began was dominated
by lively debates on the new Constitution in which members
of all segments of society took part. Black men and women
and working-class members were particularly vocal in de-
manding that their rights be anchored in the Constitution.
Social justice, labor conditions, and especially a strong pro-
nouncement against racial discrimination were central to the
debates, and there was an unusual consensus on these issues
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 273
in the constitutional assembly – if not on the exact manner in
which these issues should be handled in practice (Bronfman,
2004). When the constitution nally took effect in October
1940, it was considered one of the world’s most progressive
constitutions of its time. Batista was able to ride the wave of
enthusiasm in Cuban society following its ratication (Ferrer,
2021). Its clauses covered a broad range of individual rights
as well as workers’, peasants’, and women’s rights and stipu-
lated new regulations regarding land tenure and foreign in-
vestment. Furthermore, it included a clause penalizing any
form of discrimination, especially in the workplace and the
public sphere (Bronfman, 2004).
Diggs was made aware of the prominence of Black gures
in the public sphere when she rst visited the island. In the
1930s and early 1940s, many Black intellectuals and poli-
ticians emerged as visible personalities in the public arena,
for example the educator Salvador García Agüero, the poet
and educator María Dámasa Jova Baró, the former general
secretary of the Unión Revolucionaria Comunista Blas Roca,
and the pharmacist Esperanza Sánchez Mastrapa, all of whom
were active in labor struggles as members of the communist
party.2 In contrast, there were barely any prominent Black
gures at the University of Havana when Diggs studied there;
the majority of the students and almost all persons in a posi-
tion of power were white. The rst Black woman to obtain a
professorship at the University of Havana in the early 1940s
was Ana Echegoyen de Cañizares, who was active in the lead-
ing association for Black women in Havana, theAsociación
Cultural Femeninain the late 1930s and 1940s. Writing on
Cuban-U.S.-American exchanges, Frank Guridy mentions
that Diggs had contact with Echegoyen, but Diggs did not
2 For an extensive treatment of the public activities of these and numerous
other gures from the Cuban African-descendant population, see Robaina
(1990), Pappademos (2011), and Brunson (2021).
274 Vanessa Ohlraun
take any of Echegoyen’s courses while at the summer school
or during her doctoral studies in Havana (Guridy, 2010 and
Archivo Central de la Universidad de la Habana, Fondo
Documental, le 37,157, henceforth, AC-Diggs).
The discrepancy between the active public life of Black
Cubans outside of the university and within it would have
been apparent to Diggs, who had accompanied Du Bois on
his trip to Cuba in June 1941. However, she did not write
about this fact. Du Bois had been invited to meet members
of the political and academic establishment, including the
president of Republican Cuba, Fulgencio Batista, as well as
the anthropologist mentioned above, Fernando Ortiz.3 The
prestigious Club Atenas, Cuba’s most important club for
the African-descendant political elite, dedicated a special
event to Du Bois. Diggs attended these meetings and events
with Du Bois and thus gained insights into various segments
of the Cuban middle and upper classes. After this trip, she
decided to return to Havana to pursue studies into African-
descendant culture and history in the Americas.
Pan-Americanism, the Institute of
International Education, and the escuela
de verano of the University of Havana
Diggs arrived in Havana in July 1942 on a scholarship
from the Institute of International Education (IIE), a U.S.-
American funding agency for scholarly exchange. Founded
as a philanthropic organization supported by the Carnegie
Corporation in 1919 with the aim of contributing to global
peace and understanding, this agency became an instru-
ment of Theodor Roosevelt’s “Good Neighbor” policy in
3 See letters of Or tiz to Du Bois, 09.06.1941, and Du Bois to Cespedes,
07.07.1941, in the University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries, Robert
S. Cox Special Collections, W.E.B. Du Bois papers (henceforth, UMass-Du
Bois), MS 312.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 275
the 1940s, promoting Pan-Americanism as a way to exert
inuence on Latin America and the Caribbean. This approach
was a non-military intervention emphasizing economic, dip-
lomatic, cultural, and educational ties. Roosevelt aimed to
establish a U.S.-driven internationalism in which cultural
and educational exchange between the United States and
Latin America played a main part (Schmitz, 1999). This was
meant to counteract alternative internationalist movements
such as Pan-Africanism or socialism and to inuence young
global intellectuals to follow U.S.-American values (Brooks,
2015). Within this framework, the rationale for the IIE’s
educational policies was to ght the inuence of fascist move-
ments in Latin America and disseminate democratic ideals.
Nevertheless, its agenda of undermining the development of
left-leaning intellectual currents was evident. It can thus be
seen within a context in which the Cold War was beginning
to take form on a global scale, which, in Latin America, was
shaped as much by North-South as by East-West ideological
conicts (Joseph, 2010).
The rst iteration of the summer school took place in
1941 and was directed at international students, though lo-
cal students were also admitted (AC, Subfondo Escuela de
Verano (henceforth, AC-EdV)).4 In his preface to the pro-
gram, the secretary of the summer school, Luis A. Baralt,
acknowledged the importance of U.S.-American interests
in the establishment of the summer school: “The courses
offered answer the great demand felt, especially in cultur-
al centers of the United States, for a better knowledge of
matters pertaining to Latin America and Spain” (AC, le
Institute of International Education, henceforth AC-IIE)).
4 Thanks to Virginia Paz San Pedro and Francisco Vera for supporting this
research in the Archivo Central of the University of Havana and Armando
Cartaya for providing access to valuable archival materials in the university’s
Biblioteca Central.
276 Vanessa Ohlraun
This close collaboration between the University of Havana
and the U.S.-American policymakers took place in the
context of a general program of economic and military rap-
prochement between the Cuban government and the United
States, with President Fulgencio Batista proclaiming that
Cuba was willing “to enter into a far-reaching military alli-
ance with [the U.S.] for an indenite period” in a display of
solidarity with the United States in the ght against Fascism
in Europe (Thomas, 1998, p. 727). The school was mod-
eled on a summer school in Santiago de Chile organized by
the Chilean Division of Intellectual Cooperation of the Pan
American Union in cooperation with the IIE, which explic-
itly mentioned the “Good Neighbor” policy as its inspira-
tion (AC-IIE). The program booklet of the summer school of
Havana likewise mentions the Pan-American exchange as
its motivation and the IIE as its sponsor (AC-IIE).
Various reasons have been given for the decision of the
University of Havana to establish a summer school. The so-
ciologist Judith Salermo Izquierdo writes that the curricular
additions were meant to bring a more practical approach
to the theoretical nature of university education (Salermo
Izquierdo, 2004). However, this only concerns the cours-
es offered to local students to compensate for the lack of
more applied education at the university, not the courses
addressed to foreign students. The geographer Andrés Lazo
Machado mentions that there was a desire to provide a plat-
form for acclaimed scholars to present their work — their
prestige, of course, reecting on the university — as well as
to offer foreign students the opportunity to learn Spanish in
a touristic environment (Machado, 1996).
While the present article does not disagree with these as-
sessments, the decision to establish an international summer
school at the University of Havana in the 1940s is placed
within a larger political context, where the concept of Pan-
Americanism and “Good Neighbor” policies played a major role.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 277
This makes the summer school a model precursor to the
so-called “Area Studies” programs in U.S.-American univer-
sities, which used education as a means to expand the geo-
political inuence of the United States in the context of the
Cold War. In addition, the intention to cater to U.S.-American
needs regarding its war efforts is given a certain importance,
as will become clear below. Furthermore, the point is made
that the extracurricular activities of the summer school were
designed with an understanding of travel and entertainment,
which ignored the racialized and class-based character of
tourism and social life in Cuba in the 1940s. That Black
Cubans were often rejected from the major hotels of Havana
made it difcult for African Americans such as Diggs to take
part in some of the touristic entertainment offered to the uni-
versity’s foreign students.
The escuela de verano, as it was called, lasted six weeks
and generally took place in July and August of each year be-
tween 1941 and 1960. There was an interruption from 1957
to 1959 due to the political turmoil preceding the revolu-
tion led by Fidel Castro (AC-EdV). By the time of its 17th
edition in 1960, which was much smaller than its previous
editions, the summer school was suffering from severe
nancial difculties (AC-EdV). The severance of diplomatic
relations between Cuba and the United States in January
1961 made it impossible to continue any kind of exchange
program under the auspices of the respective ministries of
education. Therefore, the summer school, which had re-
ceived most of its funding through students from the United
States, was discontinued.
Diggs was one of 40 students awarded the prestigious
Roosevelt scholarship of the IIE to attend the Summer
School of the University of Havana in 1942 (AC-EdV). It
was the second edition of the summer school, a much-ex-
panded version of the first. The faculty was considerably
larger, and the program extended into more elds than the
278 Vanessa Ohlraun
previous edition. In 1942, there were 64 professors from
all of the university’s faculties (as opposed to 23 professors
in 1941) and guest professors from Cuban universities out-
side Havana, Spain, and the United States (AC-EdV). The
school’s administration collected statistics on the origin of the
students. In 1941, 216 students were enrolled, 128 of which
were from Cuba, the majority being from Havana, some from
the provinces of Matanzas, Santa Clara, and Oriente, among
others. There were 88 foreign students; all except a British
and a Haitian student were from the United States (15 of
whom were living in Cuba). Approximately 85% of the
students were female, 15% male. The statistics make no
mention of race (AC-EdV).
In an elegantly designed booklet on the program of the
summer school of 1942, there was a section referred to as
“cursos generales” in which Spanish language instruction
and courses on Latin American and Spanish culture and so-
ciety were offered; these were clearly addressed to foreigners
in the spirit of Pan-American exchange. Furthermore, there
were courses directed at medical professionals “in view of
the present state of war” (AC-EdV, program of the summer
school, p. 8). By then, the United States had entered the
war in the Pacic, and a contingent of military personnel
were sent to Havana to learn about tropical medicine. As
Baralt wrote to the IIE: “these measures have been con-
ceived precisely as a war measure and are most valuable
to U.S. military or naval doctors detached to tropical coun-
tries” (AC-IIE, Baralt to Field, 24.06.1942), demonstrating
how tightly connected the educational project of the sum-
mer school was to war-time interests of the United States.
Moreover, there were courses addressed to U.S.-American
entrepreneurs with interests in the Cuban sugar indus-
try and tourism sector activities, coinciding with Batista’s
aim to attract foreign investment to the island. In addition,
there were education courses aimed at Cuban public school
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 279
teachers and agricultural courses addressed to Cubans. These
sections of the summer school had very different curricula,
structures, and aims than the ones designed for foreign stu-
dents. In this paper, there will be an emphasis on the latter,
especially on the “cursos generales,” which were of interest
to the U.S.-American student Diggs.
The range of these so-called “general courses” resem-
bled the emergent “Area Studies” programs in the United
States, which were created during and shortly after the
Second World War as an educational element of U.S. foreign
policy (Khosrowjah, 2011). As Rey Chow (2006) writes:
Despite the claims about the apolitical and disin-
terested nature of the pursuits of higher learning,
activities undertaken under the rubric of area
studies, such as language training, historiography,
anthropology, economics, political science, and so
forth, are fully inscribed in the politics and ideology
of war. (pp. 40-41)
Knowledge of Latin America and other regions pertinent to
U.S.-American geopolitical interests was to ensure political
and ideological hegemony. Sending students such as Diggs
to study Spanish and Cuban culture and society aimed to
strengthen the alliances with Cuba in terms of economy and
politics. This is not to say that the University of Havana de-
vised its summer school merely to serve the political interests
of the United States. Neither is it argued in this paper that
foreign students who participated in these courses were in-
volved in “fact gathering” for intelligence purposes or that
they shared the anti-socialist agenda of the U.S. Department of
State, attempting to inuence Cuban intellectuals in terms
of U.S.-American views on freedom and democracy. Instead,
the point is that there was a conuence of diverging inter-
ests, including the objectives of Pan-Americanism that led to
280 Vanessa Ohlraun
the founding of the summer school in Havana, its nancial
support by the United States, and the participation of foreign
students in its program. The reasons for which U.S.-American
agencies supported foreign student exchange between Cuba
and the United States as part and parcel of “Good Neighbor”
policies were not always explicit and did not necessarily co-
incide with the interests of the recipients of the fellowships.
Diggs would certainly not have approved of the State
Department’s strategic aim of U.S.-American penetration of
Latin American societies for economic and political domi-
nation and even less of the intention to undermine socialist
tendencies. Her endeavor to study in Cuba was motivated
by an entirely different agenda. Rather than learning about
Cuban society as a means to better control it, Black scholars
like herself were searching for commonalities in the African-
descendant cultures of Latin America as a point of depar-
ture for a politics of Black solidarity – quite the opposite of
what Roosevelt had in mind with his “Good Neighbor” pol-
icies. Like other Black intellectuals in the Americas, Diggs
used the funding opportunity the U.S. government offered
her to find comrades and friends in the struggle against
racism and imperialism.
5
As a close collaborator of Du
Bois, a key gure in the Black Power movement and mod-
ern Pan-Africanism, her commitments were more closely
aligned with an agenda of global Black Liberation than with
Hemispheric cooperation under the auspices of the United
States. Following Du Bois, she believed in the importance of
African diasporic unity and advocated self-determination,
social justice, and civil rights.
Furthermore, Diggs was more aligned with Du Bois’ so-
cialist sympathies than with the kind of U.S.-American lib-
eral economic policy with little to offer to African Americans
5 See Polyné (2010) for a comparable analysis of how African Americans
critically engaged Pan-Americanism to their advantage.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 281
and Cubans of African descent. While “Good Neighbor”
Batista (Schmitz, 1999, p. 72) was strengthening the networks
of the capitalist classes of Cuba and the United States, Black
Cubans remained largely in poverty, struggling for access to
jobs and equal rights in the workplace (De la Fuente, 2011).
As Diggs wrote in her introduction to Du Bois’ publication
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race
Concept (2017 [1984]): “This was what the struggle was all
about; this was what democracy, socialism, communism were
all about: how to bring about individual equality.” Ironically,
Diggs represented exactly the kind of left-leaning student
whom Roosevelt’s policies of educational exchange hoped
to recuperate for a U.S.-American-driven project of Pan-
Americanism – in the case of Diggs, with little success, as she
would remain loyal to the Du Boisian approach of anti-impe-
rialist critique throughout her life.
Ellen Irene Diggs, Fernando Ortiz, and the
course “Factores etnográcos de Cuba”
In a letter following her rst trip to Havana, Diggs inquired
with Ortiz about the possibility of obtaining a doctoral de-
gree in anthropology at the University of Havana, giving as
the reason for her interest that, as Du Bois’ collaborator,
she had “become familiar with a considerable part of the
literature on Negro history and culture as well as the race
problems of the world” (Biblioteca Nacional de Cuba José
Martí, Colección Cubana, Fondo Fernando Ortiz (hereaf-
ter, BNJM-FFO), Diggs to Ortiz, 07.07.1941). Ortiz replied
that the university only offered a doctorate in sciences or
philosophy and letters. He informed her about his course
“Ethnographic Factors of Cuba” at the newly established
summer school, including information on participation fees,
hereby suggesting that she could join this course. He add-
ed that “the majority of the students are North Americans”
282 Vanessa Ohlraun
(BNJM-FFO, le 303, Ortiz to Diggs, 25.07.1941).6 Indeed,
Diggs would decide to do so in the summer of 1942.
When Diggs arrived in Havana for the summer school,
Ortiz was already one of Cuba’s most prominent public
intellectuals. His career had begun with a publication in-
spired by the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso, Los
negros brujos (Ortiz, 1906), a work perpetuating the racist
views of positivist science at the turn of the 20th century.
Gradually changing his views over time, Ortiz had, by the
1940s, become a vocal champion against racism and estab-
lished various institutions focusing on Afro-Cuban culture,
such as the Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos. He had re-
cently published his seminal work Contrapunteo cubano del
tabaco y el azúcar (Ortiz, 1940) and was involved in many
international projects, most importantly the founding of
the Instituto Internacional de Estudios Afroamericanos in
Mexico in 1943 (Carrenza-García, 1970). Ortiz was a regu-
lar speaker in Havana at prestigious institutions such as the
Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura or the Black associa-
tion Club Atenas. Reminiscing about his career to date in a
speech at Club Atenas in 1942, Ortiz concluded by saying
that the ethnographic investigations he had initiated forty
years ago were now receiving more appreciation, implying
that research such as his was the only way to ght racism:
Today, condence in ethnographic research is grow-
ing and there is a select minority in Cuba, conscious,
trained and with a clear vision of the future, which
understands that the only way to liberate themselves
from all prejudices is in the knowledge of the realities,
without passions or suspicions; based on scientic
research and a positive appreciation of the facts and
circumstances. (Ortiz, 1942, in Diggs, 1944, p. 37)
6 All translations from Spanish are the author’s unless otherwise indicated.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 283
Here, Ortiz expressed a common view among sociologists
and anthropologists such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Melville
Herskovits, namely that knowledge and education about the
culture and history of African-descendant people would dis-
pel anti-Black racism in society. Diggs was strongly inu-
enced by this idea, which she would become more familiar
with during her studies with Ortiz.
The course Diggs attended was held annually by Ortiz
in the summer from 1941-51 (with the exception of 1949,
see Salermo Izquierdo, 2004) and included sessions on the
various population groups in Cuba, respectively entitled
“Los Indios,” “Los Blancos,” and “Los Negros”. Here, Ortiz
imparted the knowledge he had acquired on the history,
culture, language, and religion of the various groups and
introduced his concept of transculturation, which he had
coined in his work “Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el
azúcar” (1940). The bibliography for this course included
this and other books he had written by then, such as “Los
negros brujos” (1906), “Los negros esclavos” (1916), and
“Historia de la arqueología indocubana” (1935), as well as
a number of widely read essays and talks such as “Martí y
las razas” (1941). The course content was based on Ortiz’s
ethnographic ndings and anthropological theories, espe-
cially those pertaining to the African-descendant popu-
lation of Cuba and his understanding of Cuban identity.
According to Ortiz, Cuban society had developed through
the cultural exchange of its diverse populations, which
had mutually influenced each other and changed, if to
varying degrees, in a process he called “transculturation.”
Addressing the participants of the summer school of 1942,
Ortiz employed the metaphor of the ajiaco, a Cuban stew
containing a mix of ingredients including root vegetables
indigenous to Cuba as well as meats and vegetables intro-
duced to Cuba in the course of its colonial history, which
he often used in his writings and speeches to explain what he
considered to be the essence of Cuban identity:
284 Vanessa Ohlraun
All of them have left substances and avors in the
boiling of the cultures that on our island, as in a
casserole on the re of the tropics, have produced
and avored this human ajiaco that is the people of
Cuba. Both Cubans and foreigners are interested in
knowing the multiple and complex factors that have
formed the Cuban population and have inuenced
the character of its soul. (AC-EdV)
In his statement, Ortiz addressed the international students,
using the familiar argument whereby knowledge of the “cul-
ture” or “soul” of another people would lead to better mutual
understanding.
7 Diggs was very much convinced by Ortiz’s
position, especially the notion that racism could be combated
through the dissemination of anthropological and historical
knowledge about African-descendant populations, and wrote
enthusiastically about his teachings:
The courses on the “Ethnic Factors of Cuba” [sic]
given at the Summer School of the University of
Havana by Dr. Ortiz have been received with appre-
ciation and great interest by scholars of all races and
it can already be said that the “culminating phase
of interracial understanding has begun in Cuba” [a
quote by Ortiz cited by Diggs]. (Diggs, 1944, p. 103)
Diggs had learned much that was of interest to her as an
emerging African-descendant scholar in this course. It had
strengthened her view of the importance of studying African
and African-diasporic culture and history and offered her
7 Already in 1928, Ortiz had written an essay entitled “La creación de
colegios panamericanos” where he advocated for the creation of a network
of North and South American universities that would exchange students
and professors for the purpose of “mutual understanding and appreciation”
(Bernard, 1930, p. 601).
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 285
valuable perspectives into issues of race in Cuba and, by
extension, Latin America, on which she would later publi-
sh various essays, for example, “Color in Colonial Spanish
America” (1953). She also came to a more precise unders-
tanding of the differences in notions of race in Cuba and
the United States: “Basically, the difference between the
“problem of race” in the United States and Latin America
is their different denitions of who is white” (Diggs, 1971,
p. 107). Her experiences as a Black female scholar in Havana
would contribute to a deeper understanding of those diffe-
rences, as will become clear below.
Doctoral studies at the University of Havana
After her studies at the summer school of Havana in 1942,
Diggs decided to enroll in the university’s postgraduate pro-
gram, where she pursued doctoral studies from 1943-1944,
graduating with a dissertation on the work of Fernando Ortiz
entitled “Fernando Ortiz y Fernández. La vida y la obra”
(Diggs, 1944). She was able to complete most of the coursework
for her degree within a year, as she received credit transfers
for some of the subjects she had taken as part of her previous
studies in Minnesota and Atlanta. According to Diggs’ doctor-
al certicate, she took thirteen subjects in the academic year
of 1943-45 and two subjects in the following year (AC-Diggs).
As Ortiz had informed her, the study program was of a very
general nature and included a list of diverse subjects, ranging
from Greek Literature to Geography (BNJM-FFO, le 303,
Ortiz to Diggs, 25.07.1941). There were no courses on anthro-
pology, Afro-Cuban culture, or issues of race; hence, Diggs
had to acquire knowledge in these areas for her dissertation
through other means, for example, in conversations with Ortiz.
One of the subjects Diggs took was entitled “History of
Cuba,” given by one of Cuba’s most renowned historians at
the time, José Elias Entralgo Vallina. As head librarian of
286 Vanessa Ohlraun
the Sociedad Económica de Amigos del País and editorial
secretary of its journal Revista Bimestre Cubana, Entralgo was
a collaborator of Ortiz, who had presided over this prestigious
institution. It is unlikely, however, that their collaboration
extended to university issues or discussions of students such
as Diggs, as Ortiz was not then a regular professor. Entralgo’s
course within the doctoral program offered a detailed histor-
ical overview of the history of Cuba (AC-EdV). Diggs failed
this course at rst and had to repeat it in September 1942,
a fact she commented on by saying that this was her “worst
exam” (MSU-EID, Series E, Box 14-4, Diggs to Du Bois,
17.09.1945). Considering Diggs’ interests in Latin American
thought on issues of race and identity, she would perhaps
have appreciated Entralgo’s other courses more. In a course
entitled “Social Thought in Latin America,” for example,
Entralgo lectured on issues of race and mestizaje, covering
authors such as the Peruvian Marxist José Carlos Mariátegui,
the Uruguayan poet José Enrique Rodó, and the Mexican phi-
losopher José Vasconcelos, all of whom were gures of great
importance to a scholar such as Diggs interested in issues of
race and colonialism. Unfortunately, there are no records at
the University of Havana on why she did not take this course
or whether it was even offered to doctoral students.
During her doctoral studies, Diggs also followed the sub-
jects “Aesthetics,” “Logics,” and “Theory of Knowledge,”
taught by the professor of philosophy Luis A. Baralt (AC-
Diggs). Much to her dismay, she failed one of her exams, as
she wrote to Ortiz:
All my plans have changed within two or three
hours. Mr. Baralt failed me in the subject “theory
of knowledge”. This was more than a surprise. It
is not possible for me to finish my degree at the
moment so I will embark for my country tomorrow.
(BNJM, FFO, le 304, Diggs to Ortiz, 27.09.1944)
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 287
Ortiz replied to Diggs, expressing his regret regarding her
difculties at the university: “I’m very sorry for your trou-
bles which we could not explain to ourselves” (BNJM, FFO,
le 304, Ortiz to Diggs, 02.10.1944). Since Ortiz only taught
classes at the escuela de verano and in the newly found-
ed Instituto de Investigaciones Cientícas y Ampliación de
Estudios at the time, he had no inside perspective on the
examination procedures for doctoral students neither was
involved in Diggs’s studies.
8
He was probably unaware
that it was not uncommon for students to fail in the sub-
jects Baralt taught – nor, in fact, in any other subject within
the doctoral program. The records of students who studied
during the same year as Diggs show that many students ei-
ther failed or received a “D” in any subject. The workload of
the doctoral program was heavy, and expectations were high.
Students had to take several exams or write essay-length pa-
pers for each of their subjects, often based on independent
research.9 Considering that Diggs had to work entirely in
Spanish, a language she had only begun to master in the
previous year, her accomplishment as a doctoral student can
be considered quite remarkable.
There is no record of the content of her coursework or her
dissertation in the archives of the University of Havana, so it
is difcult to ascertain how her professors assessed Diggs’s
performance as a doctoral student. It is clear, however, that
Diggs encountered many administrative problems, wheth-
er due to language issues, racial discrimination, or simply
the excessively bureaucratic nature of the university ad-
ministration. Diggs often commented on the administrative
8 For more on Ortiz and the Instituto de Investigaciones Cientícas y Ampliación
de Estudios, see Salermo Izquierdo (2004, p. 137).
9 Araceli García-Carranza, personal communication in Havana, 11.02.2023.
Thanks to García-Carranza for sharing her experience as a student within
this doctoral program in the late 1950s and offering some valuable points
of comparison.
288 Vanessa Ohlraun
difculties she had in getting her doctoral degree approved,
describing the process sarcastically as “one of the most in-
teresting sagas of my life” in a letter to Ortiz (BNJM-FFO,
le 304, Diggs to Ortiz, 23.01.1946). To Du Bois, she hu-
morously wrote: “I was or I should say am prepared for new
developments” regarding the approval process for her dis-
sertation (Morgan State University, Beulah Davis Research
Room, Ellen Irene Diggs Papers (henceforth MSU-Diggs),
Series E, Box 14-4, Diggs to Du Bois, 17.09.1945).10
Indeed, the correspondence between Diggs and the uni-
versity administration shows how tedious even minor admin-
istrative procedures were. There is a myriad of documents
in her student le in which the approval of requirements is
considered. Diggs handed in various records for the approval
of credit transfer, often accompanied by long explanations,
which were rejected with comments such as: “This request
was not resolved by the faculty because the interested party
did not present all the facts that were requested of her” (hand-
written note from the Faculty of Social Sciences, 06.02.1945,
AC-Diggs). Her case even required a special presentation by
Professor Gerardo Portela y Portela before the faculty board
(AC-Boletín Ocial Universitario, XII, 1945). It seems that at
some point, Diggs asked Ortiz to help resolve some of these
issues and Portela’s presentation before the faculty board
may have been a consequence of this, as she thanked Ortiz
in a letter for making a phone call: “Thank you very much
for all your help, especially for the phone call to Dr. Portela”
(BNJM-FFO, le 304, Diggs to Ortiz, 11.11.1945).
The historian Trinidad Pérez Valdés writes in her im-
pressive collection of letters, Correspondencia de Fernando
Ortiz - 1940-1949 (2016), that racial discrimination may
have been a reason for Diggs’ struggles with the university.
10 Thanks to Jorge Vasquez Arreaga for exchanging documents relating to the
correspondence of Diggs, Du Bois, and Ortiz.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 289
As there is no trace of the proceedings of her exams other
than administrative notes nor a report of the nal examina-
tion board’s assessment of her dissertation, this is difcult to
prove. Diggs’ experience as a Black woman in Havana in the
1940s is typical in this regard, as racist prejudice tended
to be expressed in less visible ways than in the United
States. There may not have been any explicit discrimina-
tion against Black students at the University of Havana, but
these students were very few, so their perspectives were cer-
tainly underrepresented. Their mentors were predominantly
white, upper-class male professors with a Eurocentric bias.
This is visible in the curriculum of Diggs’ doctoral studies,
which exclusively covered topics relating to European his-
tory, culture, and society, with the exception of Entralgo’s
course on Cuban history – which, considering the current
historiography of the time, probably focused more on the
contributions of white Cubans than on that of the African-
descendant population. How this bias translated into subtle
forms of discrimination is impossible to say, and Diggs did
not write about this in her letters.
When Diggs returned to Havana in the fall of 1945 to take
her nal exams, her experience at the university was a posi-
tive one; “everything was facilitated,” she wrote in a letter to
Du Bois (MSU-Diggs, Series E, Box 14-4, Diggs to Du Bois,
17.09.1945). Some formalities still needed taking care of, but
as she wrote, “they involve no anxiety, merely patience for
in my estimation these are the slowest folk on earth – – de-
tails, details, cumbersome administration, etc.” (MSU-Diggs,
Series E, Box 14-4, Diggs to Du Bois, 03.10.1945).
At the end of October 1945, Diggs received the title of
Doctora en Filosofía y Letras, having experienced that, in or-
der to succeed at the University of Havana, it was essential
to use her connections to white elite gures of authority such
as Ortiz. She had undoubtedly learned much about Europe’s
culture, history, and society through her coursework but
290 Vanessa Ohlraun
little on race or issues of African-descendant Cuba, which
were of greater interest to her. She had to rely on her ex-
changes with Ortiz on these topics, which formed the basis
for her doctoral work.
Diggs’ dissertation on Fernando Ortiz
y Fernández. La vida y la obra
When Diggs was nally awarded her doctoral degree, she
promised to send a copy of her dissertation to Fernando Ortiz:
“Since the thesis is approved, I am going to make another
copy (I only have one) especially for your library” (BNJM,
FFO, le 304, Diggs to Ortiz, 01.11.1945).11 Reecting the
cordial professional relationship between Ortiz and Diggs,
which they would maintain until the end of his life, Ortiz
replied self-mockingly:
I am anxious to receive the copy that you announced
to me of the doctoral thesis that you presented at
the University. I am very intimately related to the
topic of that thesis. (BNJM, FFO, le 304, Ortiz to
Diggs, 08.01.1946)
11 This copy of the dissertation, which reappeared in February 2023 after being
lost for a few years, seems to be the only globally available, currently archived
at the BNJM’s Sala Cubana (FFO, le 00). Its circuitous history is in itself
worth investigating. After having been archived in the library of the Sociedad
Económica de Amigos del País (now housed in the Instituto de Literatura y
Lingüistica), it was somewhat mysteriously claimed by the so-called “biblioteca
recuperada” which collected publications of Cubans who left the country
after the revolution of 1959, only to redistribute them into various, partly
newly established, libraries (García-Carranza et al., 1978, p. 9; Howes, 1982,
p. 325). Thanks to Carlos Valenciaga for pointing out the various stamps of
these libraries on the pages of Diggs’ dissertation, and María del Rosario
Díaz for recounting the history of the Fernando Ortiz archive, personal
communication in Havana, 10.02.2023 and 15.02.2023, respectively. See also
Díaz (2021). Why Diggs’ thesis was seized by the socialist state’s biblioteca
recuperada remains unanswered.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 291
From the University of Havana records, it does not seem like
Ortiz was involved in the writing of her dissertation, nor is
it apparent that Diggs received any supervision or guidance
from a university professor. At roughly 120 pages, the dis-
sertation’s length seems average compared to other theses in
the social sciences and humanities. However, the fact that
she wrote parts in Spanish and parts in English was certainly
unusual. Most of the work consists of direct citations of ei-
ther Ortiz’s or Du Bois’ work interspersed with commentaries
by other scholars or her own, which can also be considered
unusual for a doctoral thesis. On the cover page of her dis-
sertation, Diggs wrote authoritatively that she is:
Junior Roosevelt Fellow of the Institute of Inter-
national Education; assistant in the Department
of Sociology at Atlanta University and assistant to
the Editor-in-Chief of Phylon, the Review of Race
and Culture, at Atlanta University. (Diggs, 1944,
cover page)
She also wrote that she is “Co-author of the List of Suggested
Subjects for the proposed Encyclopedia of the Negro”
(Diggs,
1944, cover page), furthermore mentioning her master’s the-
sis entitled A Study of Fifty Delinquent Negro Girls in the City
of Atlanta (Diggs, 1933). This self-positioning on the cover
page of a doctoral thesis is rather uncommon. Perhaps Diggs
did not want to be underestimated, as she had witnessed
with other Black gures in the history of the African dias-
pora. Indeed, making visible the achievements of African
and African-descendant peoples was the main agenda during
her long career.
Diggs dedicates her dissertation to Du Bois and begins
with a quote from a work of his on racism and equality, The
Revelation of Saint Orgne the Damned (1939):
292 Vanessa Ohlraun
[M]ust I, ignoring all seeming difference, rise to
some upper realm where there is no color nor
race, sex, wealth nor age, but all men stand equal
in the sun? (Du Bois, 1939, in Diggs, 1944, epi-
graph page)
With this, she clearly expressed an anti-racist stance, the
foundation for all of her academic work. By referring to Du
Bois as a “philosopher, teacher, guide and friend” (Diggs,
1944, dedication page), she places herself in his lineage
and sets the frame for her dissertation, which is ultimately a
fervent appeal to ght racism across the globe.
The dissertation begins with a prologue in which Diggs
extols the virtues and accomplishments of Ortiz. It is fol-
lowed by a description of the various stages of his life until
the early 1940s and a postscript with her reections on the
issue of race. In her prologue, she emphasizes Ortiz’s contri-
butions to the anti-racist struggle in Cuba, his philanthropy
and patriotic engagement:
He has fought and continues to ght against igno-
rance, lack of faith and the crime of racism. All
his power, all his intelligence has been placed at
the service of his country and the protection and
defense of those less favored by fate itself. (Diggs,
1944, p. 6)
In what is probably the most original part of her dissertation,
Diggs recounts Ortiz’s childhood memories from Menorca
and anecdotes from his youth, which he had shared with her
in personal conversations.12 On a formative moment of his
life as an intellectual, for example, she writes:
12 According to Díaz (2021, p. 55), this biographical information has, until
recently, been practically unknown to scholars of Ortiz.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 293
He tells me that one day he bought a work by Enrique
Ferri on criminal sociology at the used bookstore. In
the rst chapter he read about the evolution of na-
ture: he was amazed that to study law he had to study
the stars, mineralogical evolution, in short, universal
evolution. That lesson impressed him greatly and
inuenced his life because the study of the human
being was made up of the study of nature, philoso-
phy, history, and so on. (Diggs, 1944, pp. 27-28)
As can be gleaned from this passage, Diggs’ narration of
Ortiz’s life helped build a favorable image of the great
Cuban polymath, which was to a certain degree shaped by
Ortiz himself, having offered Diggs unpublished informa-
tion about his life in his own words.
Besides the biographical descriptions of Ortiz’s life, the
dissertation includes long passages from Ortiz’s speeches,
for example, at Club Atenas in 1942. While these are of
great interest to a biographer of Ortiz, Diggs does not offer
an analysis of them. The merit of her work on Ortiz consists
more in collecting materials that until then had not been
made broadly available and viewing them through her own
anti-racist perspective than in offering a unique theory of
race, culture, or society. This she would develop later in life
through book reviews, travel reports, and publications.
Diggs ends her dissertation with a long postscript in
which she quotes excerpts from various texts, especially Du
Bois’ Black Folk Then and Now (1939), which she collab-
orated on (Bolles, 1999). Here, the central ideas of Diggs’
thought are expressed: that race has no basis in biology,
that it is important to study and disseminate knowledge on
various cultures and societies to overcome racism, and that
the history of Africa and the African diaspora is marked
by achievements of individuals that have been ignored or
distorted in Eurocentric historiography.
294 Vanessa Ohlraun
She begins by claiming that “[t]he study of different cul-
tures has important bearing upon present-day thought and
behavior” (Diggs, 1944, p. 107) and explains that “there are
no longer any primary races if there ever were such” (Diggs,
1944, p. 107), dismissing pseudoscientic theories of poly-
genism from the late 19th and early 20th century, which were
still prevalent at the time of her writing. Following Du Bois
in spirit but not letter, she says, “race is a “myth,” a “su-
perstition” (Diggs, 1944, p. 110). Quoting from Black Folk
Then and Now, she writes the following:
Not only is the general estimate of what great men
have done colored largely by selected facts and un-
conscious propaganda but in the case of foreigners
and members of alien races their work is quite apt
to be forgotten or distorted. (Du Bois, 1939, p. 86,
in Diggs, 1944, p. 108)
Diggs adds that “[f]ew today are interested in Negro history
because they feel the matter already settled: the Negro has
no history” (Du Bois, 1939, p. xxxi, in Diggs, 1944, p. 109).
Furthermore, she writes on the constructed nature of the con-
cept of race. Diggs maintains that this concept differs in the
United States and Latin America as well as Germany, whose
fascist and antisemitic racial policies were sending shockwaves
across the planet: “The concepts of race and Negro in Cuba
differ widely, for example, from those of Negro and race in the
United States or race in Hitler’s Germany” (Diggs, 1944, p. 113).
This statement reected her experiences as a Black woman in
Havana and how these experiences fed into her awareness of
transnational politics of race, as shown in the following section.
Diggs ends the postscript to her dissertation on a rather
ominous note, quoting Edwin R. Embree, a social scientist,
philanthropist, and president of the Rosenwald Fund, and an
advocate of racial integration in the United States of the rst
half of the 20th century:
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 295
If the western white man persists in trying to run
the show, in exploiting the whole earth, in treating
the hundreds of millions of his neighbors as infe-
riors, then the fresh might of the 1,500,000,000 of
non-white, non-western people might, in surging
rebellion, smash him into nonentity. (Embree, 1944,
p. 114, in Diggs, 1944, p. 117)
The forbidding tone of this quote is somewhat unusual for
Diggs, who tended to couch her criticisms and contentions
in more subtle, often dry, sarcastic language. Since there is
no record of the examination board’s assessment of her dis-
sertation, we cannot know how it was received. We can assu-
me, however, that this ending would have struck her Cuban
readers as somewhat aggressive, considering the consensual
climate of public debate in the early 1940s, especially re-
garding the topic of race.
While a detailed discussion of Diggs’ dissertation is
beyond the scope of this essay, it is worth noting that it
summarizes Diggs’ understanding of race at the time in a
very concise way, if mostly through the words of Du Bois
and Ortiz. Her experiences as a Black woman in the United
States and Cuba were markedly different, prompting her to
articulate a concept of race from these experiences and her
studies and research with her two main mentors. In her dis-
sertation, she insists on racial differences as being of cul-
tural, not biological origin, and rejects the pseudoscientic
theories of biological race, current across the globe until
the end of the Second World War. She makes a claim for the
importance of anthropological and historical research on
Africa and the African diaspora, which she began to engage
in during her studies in Havana and would pursue until the
end of her life. Finally, she makes an ardent declaration on
the necessity of ghting racism worldwide by forging ties of
international solidarity.
296 Vanessa Ohlraun
A Black woman in Havana
Diggs was the only non-white U.S.-American student at the
summer school of 1942 and had to find her way around
Havana’s racial barriers. Having visited the city with Du
Bois the previous year, she was aware that it was difcult for
African-descendant people to access to the main touristic
venues and accommodations in Havana, even though seg-
regation was not an ofcial state policy. Black visitors were
regularly rejected from restaurants and hotels in countries
such as Cuba and Brazil, which promoted the idea of “ra-
cial harmony,” though only the cases of public interest have
been documented, as they generally provoked an outcry in
the Black press. The Hotel Nacional, for example, adopted
an explicit policy of segregation in the 1940s, inciting the
Black Cuban poet Nicolas Guillén to call it “Yankee territory
[where] our laws are not worth the paper they are written
on” (Roorda, 2004, p. 123). Josephine Baker was denied
entrance to the Hotel Nacional when she visited Havana
in 1952. Two years after leaving Havana, in 1947, Diggs
would also be denied entry to a hotel in Rio de Janeiro,
an incident widely discussed in the Black press in Brazil
(Alberto et al., 2022).
The University of Havana had negotiated special prices
with selected hotels and landlords for the international stu-
dents of the summer school and sent a list of recommended
accommodations to these students (AC-EdV). The issue of
race, however, had not been taken into consideration. Hence,
Diggs had inquired with Ortiz’s assistant, Conchita Pinochet,
for accommodation, specifying that she was looking for a
place “where I should probably be free from difculty be-
cause of my color” (BNJM-FFO, le 303, Diggs to Pinochet,
24.06.1942). Pinochet arranged a modest accommodation
about twenty minutes away by foot from the university, in the
Black working-class area adjoining the Barrio Cayo Hueso and
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 297
Barrio Chino (Chinatown). Thus, Diggs lived with a family at
calle Jesús Peregrino no. 362 during her studies at the summer
school (BNJM, FFO, le 303, Diggs to Pinochet, 04.07.1942).
The Black freedman José Antonio Aponte, leader of the so-
called “Aponte Rebellion,” had lived in this street around
the turn of the 18th century – a historical detail that Diggs
would have appreciated, given her interest in raising the
visibility of African-descendant actors and their exploits
in global historiography.13 Whether or not she was aware of
this important historical gure when she lived in this street
is uncertain; in her review of Black historical gures and
events, Diggs does not write about him, though she does
mention the rebellion (Diggs, 1983).
When Diggs returned to Havana for her doctoral studies
in 1943, she decided to reside at the mid-scale Hotel Royal
Palm behind the seat of the congress, El Capitolio (AC-
Diggs). In September 1945, when she visited Havana for her
nal exams, she stayed at the Sevilla Biltmore, an upscale ho-
tel on the Prado, one of the most expensive hotels in Havana
at the time (AC-Diggs). It was the same hotel Josene Baker
had resided at after having been rejected from the Hotel
Nacional, as this hotel had a more open policy towards Black
customers. From her choice of accommodation, we can infer
that Diggs’ Roosevelt scholarship afforded her a comfortable
nancial situation during her doctoral studies.
In addition to providing advantageous accommodation
to its international students, the University of Havana or-
ganized entertainment and access to the exclusive private
clubs of Havana. Leisure and cultural life were considered
important elements of the foreign student’s experience as
articulated in the educational policies of the IIE. As Edgar
Fisher, its assistant director, declared:
13 Thanks to Zuleica Romay for pointing out this historical fact (personal
communication in Bonn, 31.03.2023).
298 Vanessa Ohlraun
The requirements of national defense in any of the
twenty-one American Republics are not limited
to a half-dozen of the most obvious elds of work,
but are as broad as the nest elements of our way
of life. Students, professors, business and profes-
sional people, all, must have an appreciative un-
derstanding of our reciprocal international cultural
interests, if we are to be led to that effective joint
political action which will be an adequate defense
for our common democratic life. (Fisher, 1942, p. 8)
Hence, the new secretary of the summer school wrote to se-
lected elite clubs in Havana, asking for some of the students to
be granted special access “to show foreign students …the so-
cial and sporting progress of our country, at the same time that
we contribute to providing them with distraction and enter-
tainment during their short stay with us” (AC-EdV, Abelardo
Moreno to the presidents of selected clubs, here the Havana
Biltmore and the Country Club of Havana, 15.06.1943).
Moreno made explicit that this courtesy was not to be extend-
ed to local students: “It is understood that these courtesies
will only be extended to students who come from abroad with
the sole purpose of enrolling in our school … and not to resi-
dent students” (AC-EdV, Abelardo Moreno to the presidents
of selected clubs, 15.06.1943).
Though not expressly mentioning race issues, this com-
ment reects the racialized and class-based nature of Cuban
social life at the time. Moreno differentiates between res-
ident and non-resident students, assuming the latter to be
white and upper-class, as he must have known that these
clubs would not accept Black visitors. Since the mid-19th
century, the social clubs of Havana have played an important
political role, and the Country Club of Havana, in particular,
had been an institution where white U.S.-Americans and
elite Cubans met to discuss politics (Roorda, 2004). By the
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 299
1940s, these clubs operated as central venues for politicians
and the economic elite of the country to gather; some of its
members at the time included Luis Bacardi, vice-president of
Ron Bacardi, Guillermo Carreras, administrator of the Chase
National Bank, Antonio Beruff Mendieta, former mayor of
Havana and ex-president of the senate, and senator Eduardo
“Eddy” Chibas (Roorda, 2004). From the correspondence
between Moreno and these clubs, we can conclude that the
students who were provided access to these clubs through
the support of the university’s administration did not include
students of African descent. Diggs, in any case, was not on
the lists of names provided to the clubs (AC-EdV). Either
Moreno was unaware that there was one African American
student among the international students of the summer school,
or he did not care to include her in this exclusive part of the
extracurricular program designed for these students.
As Diggs’ biographer, Lynne Bolles, writes: “Most stu-
dents in the only university of Cuba were members of the
upper classes, white or light-skinned Cubans” (Bolles, 1999,
p. 161). This is conrmed by research in the university year-
books of the 1940s – no Black students appear in any of the
photographs. Araceli García Carranza, who studied within the
same doctoral program as Diggs in the late 1950s, afrms not
having met any Black students during her studies (personal
communication in Havana, 11.02.2023). “Yet,” writes Bolles,
“because class counted more heavily than race, Diggs, as a
student and an American, was perceived as upper class, de-
spite her dark skin” (Bolles, 1999, p. 161). This perception,
however, would not have been sufcient for her to be granted
access to the private clubs reserved for Havana’s white elite.
As mentioned above, even famous African-descendant per-
sons were denied entry to these venues.
For Diggs, access to the private clubs may not have been
of much concern as her interests lay elsewhere. Rather than
touristic entertainment, she sought to familiarize herself
300 Vanessa Ohlraun
with Afro-Cuban culture, attending talks on this topic at
the
distinguished Club Atenas and visiting sites of eth
nographic
interest with Ortiz. She writes: “I was a guest in the palatial
home of Ortiz at least once a week, and he saw to it that I
witnessed many of the African survivals
in Cuba” (Bolles,
1999, p. 160). Diggs’ connections with the renowned Cuban
anthropologist allowed her to have
an active social life inde-
pendent of the racially exclusive offers of the summer school.
Conclusion
As much as Diggs would have been aware of her privileged
access to the university and the spaces occupied mainly by
middle and upper-class white Cubans as an expression of what
was considered class privilege, there is no explicit expression
of a feminist or class-based analysis of her own situation in
her writing of the time. It is as if the multi-dimensionality
of her experience as a Black woman receded behind her Du
Boisian approach, which centered on issues of race. Because
of her relatively comfortable nancial situation at the time
and her social connections to Ortiz, class issues did not seem
to cause problems for her in the same way as race. Diggs did
understand, however, that accomplishing a doctoral degree
was a tremendous feat for a female academic like herself,
writing in a foreign language, when she proudly exclaimed to
Du Bois: “As a matter of fact, I am a doctora. Isn’t it wonder-
ful in Spanish one does not lose her femininity!” (MSU-Diggs,
Series E, Box 14-4, Diggs to Du Bois, 17.09.1945).
As Crenshaw writes in her seminal essay on intersec-
tionality:
[R]ace is still seen by many as the primary opposi-
tional force in Black lives. If one accepts that the
social experience of race creates both a primary
group identity as well as a shared sense of being
under collective assault, some of the reasons that
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 301
Black feminist theory and politics have not gured
prominently in the Black political agenda may be
better understood. (Crenshaw, 1989, p. 161-162)
This position resonates with Brunson’s (2021) analysis of
Black women’s political activism in Havana in the 1940s.
According to Brunson, many Black women found that the
Communist Party and labor unions offered more useful plat-
forms for their ght for better social conditions than other
organizations, especially if they were laborers. Though they
were well aware of the intersectionality of categories of dis-
crimination, these women of African descent spoke on be-
half of different groups depending on the context, ultimately
raising the visibility and improving the social conditions of
Black women in general (Brunson, 2022). As the communist
politician Esperanza Sánchez Mastrapa stated: “Yet com-
plete parity [between Black and white women] does not exist
in our country due to their skin color. If [Black women] are
also workers, they suffer a triple discrimination” (Brunson,
2021, p. 181). Diggs followed a similar approach, writing
mostly on issues of racial discrimination with an awareness of
class issues but also pointing out the specicities of women’s
experiences when it seemed pertinent to her general critique
of systems of oppression.
Having traveled to Havana under the umbrella of U.S.-
American-led Pan-Americanism, Diggs carved out a space
for herself to pursue her own personal and political interests
in Cuba. The “Good Neighbor” policies were meaningful
to her only insofar as they could provide a means to con-
nect with like-minded scholars who shared her interest
in the African diaspora in the Americas. Her studies with
Ortiz, with whom she developed a life-long friendship, were
foundational for her career as a pioneering scholar of Latin
America’s African-descendant history, culture, and society.
Here, she learned to differentiate notions of race, which
302 Vanessa Ohlraun
were much more uid in Cuba than in the United States.
Her experiences as a Black woman in Havana taught her
that the proclaimed principle of racial fraternity had its
limits. However, she was able to forge personal connections
with members of the white elite and use these to her advan-
tage when it came to asserting herself in the face of admin-
istrative hurdles. In Cuba, her view that racial conicts were
based on ignorance was bolstered, and she would write pro-
lically about the African-descendant populations of Latin
America and their histories in the following decades, mak-
ing disseminating knowledge on this topic her life’s work.
Diggs’ doctoral thesis is thus to be seen in the light of her
future achievements, as it offered Diggs an entry point into
the world of academia as a Black female scholar engaged in
the cause of Black solidarity and the global rewriting of the
history of Africa and the African diaspora.
A School of One’s Own: Ellen Irene Diggs and the Cuban Politics… 303
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