William Worthy, the foreign correspondent for the Baltimore Afro-American and member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, aimed to provide more balanced news accounts of post-Revolution Cuba. In so doing, he defied State Department regulations by secretly traveling to Cuba. In 1962, federal authorities arrested and convicted him for returning to the U.S. without a valid passport. Worthy, the first U.S. citizen indicted for violating the travel ban, charged that he was being selectively prosecuted due to his radical journalism. I explore how Worthy challenged Cold War limitations on the right to travel. Worthy and his supporters framed their international campaign around the Fifth Amendment and Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Fifth Circuit overturned his conviction, declaring that “inherent in the concept of citizenship…[is] a right to return.” I also demonstrate that Worthy’s efforts to domesticate human rights in the U.S. had global ramifications.
