His parents, Fermin Gómez (Yeye) and Serafina Ferrer (Fina) were African slaves[citation needed] but managed to buy the freedom of their child, Juan, before birth, in accordance to the law of the time.

Because of his literacy skills, rare for Afro-Cubans growing up on plantations in this era of chattel slavery, his parents sent him to school at Nuestra Señora de los Desamparados, in (English: Our Lady of the Forsaken) in Havana, despite the financial sacrifice it meant.

A climate of violence and intimidation prevailed, and after the young Gómez got caught up in a brawl between royalists and independence groups at the Teatro Villanueva, his parents decided to send him to France—with financial help from plantation owner Catalina Gómez—to study the craft of building horse carriages, one of the few trades open to blacks and mestizos in the colonial period.

In 1878, he went to Mexico where he met the abolitionist Nicolas Azcarate, a Cuban exile, and learned of the defeat of the independence forces in Cuba and the end of the Ten Years' War with the Pact of Zanjón.

[citation needed] Once back in Havana, Gómez met José Martí in 1878, beginning a long friendship founded on shared ideals that united the revolutionary action of both.

In December 1898, he accompanied Major General Calixto García to Washington, D.C. as a member of the commission sent to negotiate for the funds necessary for the Cuban Liberation Army and recognition of the rebels.

[4] Throughout the Ten Years' War, and after, "Spain sought, with considerable success, to divide Cubans along racial lines by portraying itself as the defender of white 'civilization'"[12] against blacks who would plunge Cuba into a Haiti-type slave revolt and "Africanize" the island if not suppressed.

[12] Colonial authorities fanned the flames of racial fear so widely that the United States, under President Franklin Pierce, threatened to intervene[13] (See also: Ostend Manifesto).

[citation needed] Upon his 1877 return to Havana, Juan Gualberto began his life as a grassroots activist in earnest, fighting not only for Cuban independence, but racial equality.

"[2] The Brotherhood reported on living conditions: the main concerns and worries of the black population; even publishing the letters of people of color who wrote in about their misfortunes and experiences.

"[1] The Central Directorate, which brought together roughly 100 black organizations, waged a successful civil rights campaign,[1] gaining Spanish colonial[16] edicts "outlawing restrictions on interracial marriage"[12] as well as ending government segregation of schools and other public facilities.

[17] Unfortunately, edicts from Spanish authorities on the island ending state-sponsored segregation had little real impact, with many towns and villages only opening public parks to blacks in subdivided "separate but equal" areas, and numerous businesses and storefronts were still labeled "whites only.

"Juan Gualberto Gómez and Martín Morúa Delgado, the two most prominent black Cuban congressmen at the time, opposed the movement from the beginning and used Cuba’s supposed history of racial harmony as a justification to put down the Independientes."

Most established Cuban politicians of Juan Gualberto's era, both black and white, opposed the development of the PIC, anxious that it would "erode some of their power and popular base" and upset the balance they had spent years building.

His articles attacking chronic graft and subservient, pro-annexation politicians kneeling before U.S. power and influence highlighted the righteousness of those who stayed true to José Martí's legacy.