On February 23, 1903, Cuba leased Guantanamo Bay to the United States "in perpetuity" as part of the Cuban-American Treaty. The United States subsequently used the lease to establish a Naval Base at Guantanamo. With the US invasion of Afghanistan in October 2001, a military prison was built at Guantanamo to house prisoners of war and terrorism suspects captured by American forces, becoming the subject of much controversy over its detentions without trial.

W.E.B. DuBois, founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), was born on February 23, 1868. Review the W.E.B. DuBois Papers at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and released FBI files on DuBois kept because of his affiliation with "communist front groups."