Fair Play for Cuba Committee

The Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC) was an activist group set up in New York City by Robert Taber in April 1960.

[6] The Committee was open to members of all races, and on the first anniversary of the Cuban Revolution a group of black civil rights activists, composed of Harold Cruse, Amiri Baraka, Julian Mayfield and John Henrik Clarke, travelled to Havana in a trip organised by the FPCC.

"[14] On May 29, Oswald ordered the following items from a local printer: 500 application forms, 300 membership cards, and 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba".

[21] In June 1961 FBI director J. Edgar Hoover approved "establishing counterintelligence programs in Cuban field in an attempt to disillusion current members of such pro-Castro groups as July 26 Movement and Fair Play for Cuba Committee".

[23] The FBI had informers in the FPCC, such as Victor Thomas Vicente in the New York chapter,[24] and its members and activities underwent surveillance by the Detroit Police Department.

It uncovered a memo dated to 16 September 1963 which stated that the CIA is "giving some thought to planting deceptive information which might embarrass the Committee in areas where it does have some support".

[27] By December 1963, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee was defunct, largely in part to the fallout from the assassination of John F. Kennedy by FPCC member, Lee Harvey Oswald.