Afro-Cubans pushed out of the Cuban club: La Unión Martí-Maceo (Ybor City, Tampa, 1900–1965)

SUMMARYAfro-Cubans pushed out of the Cuban club: La Unión Martí-Maceo (Ybor City, Tampa, 1900–1965) [Connections: Tampa Bay, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDAfro-Cubans were excluded in late 1900 from El Club Nacional Cubano (later Círculo Cubano), which had first admitted members of any race; on October 26, 1900, twenty-four members formed Los Libres Pensadores de Martí y Maceo, merging in 1904 with La Unión into La Unión Martí-Maceo, a mutual aid society with medical benefits, sick pay and a school. Wikipedia attributes the exclusion to Anglo political power and Jim Crow pressure. A USF Libraries exhibit quotes Francisco Rodriguez Sr.: "White Cubans embraced the laws of Jim Crow and excluded Afro-Cubans," and says Ybor's diversity "could not be contained within a biracial structure." Its original clubhouse was demolished in 1965 under urban renewal. Historian Susan Greenbaum called it "the focal institution around which, and inside of which, the Afro-Cuban identity emerged in Tampa."

PATTERNFlorida's two-box color line forced Cubans of color into the "Black" box, splitting one nationality by skin

LENS (WW9)Jim Crow had only two boxes, and it pushed our Caribbean cousins into the same one it put us in

OPENHow Afro-Cubans were recorded in the 1900–1930 censuses of Ybor City (see Greenbaum, More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa, 2002); whether any members claimed Taíno or other Native ancestry (needs deep research)

SOURCELa Unión Martí-Maceo (Wikipedia); USF Libraries, Civil Rights in Tampa: Afro-Cubans.