Fugitive States

The Life of Charlie Hill, a Black Radical Exile in Socialist Cuba

Cuba in the 1970s was a beacon of Third World liberationand a sanctuary for US radicals on the run.Fugitive Statesis the true story of Charlie Hill, an American exile who has lived in Havana for 55 years. An Illinois native and war veteran who was expelled from the US Army for refusing to fight against the Vietnamese national liberation forces, Hill later joined the Republic of New Afrika, a dynamic Black nationalist movement that called for reparations for slavery and the creation of a sovereign nation-state for Black people in the American South.

Accused of killing a New Mexico state trooper in 1971, Hill hijacked an airplane from Albuquerque to Havana, where the Cuban government granted him asylum. In Havana, Hill hoped to connect with African revolutionaries and to join the armed struggle against colonialism in Angola or Guinea-Bissau; instead, he bec