During the weeks that preceded Nelson and Winnie Mandela’s rally in Harlem, posters in storefront windows, on vacant buildings and lampposts throughout the community announced their impending arrival, “Harlem Salutes Nelson Mandela; Keep the Pressure On. Thursday, June 21, 1990 2PM-7PM, Africa Square.”

It had only been four months since Nelson Mandela’s release from prison. Harlem was a stop on the Mandela’s international political tour that continued through the end of the year. The tens of thousands of African Americans at the Mandelas’ rallies in Harlem, the Bronx, Bedford Stuyvesant, Los Angeles and Miami reflected African Americans’ deep political investment in South Africa.

I was a 16-year-old eager consumer of African history and politics waiting on the south side of 125th Street, across from the Victoria Theater. I was squeezed among the tens of thousands staring expectantly at the large stage erected at Africa Square for the Mandelas, in the shadow of the Hotel Theresa.

The sun was going down when the icons of African liberation arrived and approached the front of the stage, clenched right fists raised. The first couple of African nationalism stood smiling before the throng of adoring African Americans.

We cheered with pride as Winnie hugged pan-Africanist and Harlem activist Queen Mother Moore, who was on stage with business leader Percy Sutton, pan-Africanist activist Elombe Brath, rapper Flavor Flav of Public Enemy, and a few others who I either did not recognize or do not recall.

I had no doubt that this special moment was part of an African political renaissance that would buttress Third World solidarity in the US.

“There is an umbilical cord that ties us together,” Mr. Mandela told us. Then added, ”My only regret is that I am unable to embrace each and every one of you.” He said that Harlem, whose events he had followed for 30 years, “signifies the glory of resistance.” The rapture in the crowd after seeing Mandela and hearing his voice was immense.

Meanwhile Ms. Mandela greeted us with “Amandla!” Elated and full of love, we thundered back, “Awethu!” Harlem, she said, is “the Soweto of America” and she called for an immediate end to Apartheid.

What I did not know at the time was that thirty years earlier, at that same intersection, Third World solidarity in the US had its symbolic beginning. In 1960, Fidel Castro stayed with his entourage at the Hotel Theresa, while in New York to address the UN General Assembly. During his brief stay, Castro refashioned Harlem into the center of Third World and anticolonial solidarity, in the heart of New York, the center of First World capitalism. He invited African American leaders to the hotel to meet with him, including Malcolm X and Langston Hughes. In a dramatic play on Cold War tensions, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru of India also each traveled to Harlem to greet the Cuban leader.

Framed in the context of Castro’s time in Harlem, and the subsequent defining events of Third World solidarity, anti-racism, and anticolonialism, the Mandelas’ Harlem rally had added meaning.

At 16, I was not aware of this historical nuance. I regarded Mandela’s freedom and the couple’s presence in Harlem as significant steps toward our pan-Africanist triumph over global white supremacy. I could not have known that rather than inaugurate a new age, the Mandelas’ appearance marked an ironic end to that era.