University Press of Florida has recently issued a trio of noteworthy books on Hispanic subjects by Tampa authors.The most scholarly and unique of the three is More Than Black by Susan Greenbaum, a University of South Florida professor and anthropologist who has contributed a great deal to the understanding of local ethnopolitics during the 20 years she has lived, taught and studied here. Much of her research has focused on Afro-Cubans, but she is also currently researching the effects of dislocation on residents who were moved out of College Hill and Ponce de Leon public housing projects in the wake of local and federal redevelopment plans for their homes.
More Than Black traces an historic dislocation — the journey of black Cubans from the relative egalitarianism of 1890s revolutionary Cuba to the Jim Crow racism of Tampa at that time. It explores the shifting alliances between black and white Cuban immigrants and between black Cubans and black Americans.
Greenbaum initially became interested in the story of Afro-Cubans when members of the Marti-Maceo Society approached her for help in 1985.
Marti-Maceo is a mutual aid society of Afro-Cubans like the ones Spaniards, Italians and other Cubans created in Ybor City and West Tampa. These societies provided social, cultural, financial, legal and medical services to members and — in the case of Cuban clubs — to support Jose Marti's battle for Cuban independence from Spain. Marti-Maceo was in danger of being deliberately erased from the history of Ybor City and the group needed a scholar to document their place in history and preserve their heritage.
For 15 years, Greenbaum researched documents and interviewed elderly people who are now dead. She recorded systematic efforts to disenfranchise Afro-Cubans, from the earliest days of their arrival all the way through the 1960s urban renewal project that leveled Marti-Maceo's historic building while leaving those of the white societies untouched, to the most recent, and most ironic, omission — when historic preservationists completely ignored Marti-Maceo's existence in their records.
If Greenbaum had not undertaken the project when she did, the story of these people might well have been lost and an important piece of our heritage would be missing.
More Than Black is not a light read; but it is a highly readable and extremely important reference book that adds immeasurably to the already fascinating historical record of Ybor City and provides an unflinching look at race and gender politics within Marti-Maceo and the larger community.
The book was recently recognized by the Immigration and Ethnic History Society with the Theodore Saloutos Book Prize, which is awarded each year to the best book in the nation on immigration studies.
Also out this year is Tampa Cigar Workers, a picture book by Robert Ingalls and Louis A. Perez Jr. that covers more than a century, from the 1880s to the 1990s. The photos are accompanied by quotes from newspapers, historians, writers, government records and other sources in a sort of Ken Burns treatment of the subject.
It's a beautiful book and probably a good introduction to the very special world of historic Ybor City. But it may be a bit of a disappointment to people who read Ingalls' stunning revelations in Urban Vigilantes of the New South, the first book to detail intimidation techniques and sometimes violent actions employed by Tampa's civic leaders to control Ybor City's labor union organizers. Serious students of Ybor history have already seen most of the text and many of the photos in Tampa Cigar Workers, and aside from an introductory chapter, the book lacks a narrative that could create a deeper and more coherent context for the quotes and pictures. Nonetheless, it is a lovely and useful addition to the growing library of books on a population that once put Tampa on the map and has made this town's history and its current landscape far more interesting than it would have been without them.
The third and most recently released book in the trio, Florida's Farmworkers in the Twenty-first Century, written by Nano Riley with eloquent photos by Davida Johns, visits the people who grow and harvest our food.
It isn't always a pretty picture.
Not much has changed since Edward R. Murrow exposed the inhumane working conditions in his 1960 documentary Harvest of Shame. That's where Riley picks up the narrative, reporting responses to Murrow's revelations and proceeding from there to address the still appalling living and working conditions. She examines health and safety issues as well as the education and family life of today's migrant laborers, who are largely Hispanics and blacks from Latin America and the Caribbean.
In simple, direct prose that honors the dignity of her subjects and the intelligence of her readers, Riley captures the lives and characters of the workers and reveals the lies and greed that continue to victimize the people who feed us.
For information about these books and other publications of the University Press of Florida, visit www.upf.com.
Senior Editor Susan F. Edwards can be reached at ed@weeklyplanet.com or 813-248-8888, ext. 122.
This article appears in Apr 9-15, 2003.
