On February 18, 2016 it was announced that President Barack Obama will visit Cuba. This trip will make him the first sitting U.S. president to visit the island since President Calvin Coolidge went in January 1928. This lecture about Coolidge’s Cuba excursion was given by Coolidge Foundation program associate Rushad Thomas on Presidents’ Day Weekend 2015.

Earlier this week President Obama announced a shift in America’s policy toward our neighbor Cuba. This decision is the first major change in our relationship with Cuba in more than fifty years. America’s association with the island is long and fraught with controversy. In the late 1890s American foreign policy was mobilized to pressure Spain into relinquishing its control of Cuba, which eventually led to the Spanish-American War. That conflict ended with America directly influencing much of the former Spanish Empire, which included nations such as the Philippines. The Platt Amendment, which governed our policy toward Cuba for much of the first half of the 20th century, gave the United States the authority to unilaterally intervene in Cuban domestic affairs (incidentally, the Platt Amendment also forms the basis for our continued lease of the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base).