Constructing Cuban America

Book excerpt: "On July 4th, 1876, during the centennial celebration of U.S. independence, the city of Key West held a different type of celebration. In some areas in post-Civil War Florida, Black residents were hindered from 4th of July festivities, which would lead to reflecting on the events of the Civil War. However, Key West's celebration, led by a Cuban revolutionary mayor working in concert with a city council composed of Afro-Bahamians, Cubans, African Americans, and Anglos, marked the centennial in the halls of an institution that boasted an interracial school and proudly hung a Cuban flag outside its building. Deep into the Radical Reconstruction era, this represented one of the most profound exercises in interracial democracy. Gomez explores how race shaped the first Cuban-American communities in South Florida, specifically in Key West and Tampa, which were the locations of the first groups of Cuban Americans, with race being a central factor of unity and division during Radical Reconstruction, the Cuban independence movement, Jim Crow, and Cuba's 1912 Race War. While looking at factors such as ethnicity, gender, labor and foreign policy, Gomez makes the argument that Cuban-American interracial unity in the nineteenth century disintegrated due to the racism held by white Cuban-Americans, which then led Black Cubans to organize with Florida's multiethnic Black communities"--