This Week In National Press Club History: Fidel Castro speaks in 1959

April 20, 1959: Fidel Castro, prime minister of Cuba, addresses a National Press Club Lunch less than four months after he and his guerrilla forces oust President Fulgencio Batista. Castro, dressed in his trademark combat fatigues, says he has no dictatorial ambitions. For the next 35 years, no high-level Cuban leader is allowed in Washington until Cuban National Assembly President Ricardo Alarcon appears at a Press Club Lunch in 1994 and is confronted by hecklers protesting Cuba’s totalitarian regime.

April 20, 1948: The NPC constitution is amended to admit broadcast journalists. Five years later, in 1953, Ted Koop of CBS Radio becomes the first broadcast journalist elected president of the Club and oversees the installation of air conditioning in the main dining room, lounge and ballroom.

April 22, 1980: Opera star Luciano Pavarotti appears at an NPC Lunch. Future NPC member Amy Henderson, a friend of the famous tenor, organizes colleagues from the National Portrait Gallery to greet him on arrival at the 14th Street entrance with a huge banner reading LUCIANO! She is rewarded with a big kiss and hug.

This Week In National Press Club History is brought to you by the History & Heritage Committee, which preserves and revitalizes the Club’s century-plus history with lobby displays, events, panel discussions and an ongoing oral-history project.

For more information about the activities of the Committee, or to join it, contact Chair Gilbert Klein at [email protected].