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More than white

A USF professor and author took on the cause of black Cubans after raising awareness of other forgotten ethnic groups.

By JOSH ZIMMER
Published January 28, 2005

TEMPLE TERRACE - If University of South Florida anthropology professor Susan Greenbaum could rest her laurels on any one building, this might be it.

The simple, two-story structure occupies an unlandscaped lot at the gated entrance to Ybor City. Looking a bit sad amid a sea of modern brick edifices and elaborate, turn-of-the-century masonry, the building nevertheless has a compelling story to tell.

This is home to the Sociedad La Union Marti-Maceo, one of the city's oldest ethnic clubs and a spiritual bedrock for Tampa's much diminished Afro-Cuban population.

Sipping coffee last week behind the club bar, treasurer Herman Monroe said Greenbaum's decision to write about local Afro-Cubans helped save Marti-Maceo from becoming a historical footnote. In her award winning 2002 book, More Than Black: Afro-Cubans in Tampa, she details the lives of Afro-Cubans and their struggle to overcome racism in segregated America.

Afro-Cubans encountered problems with their skin color they never experienced in Cuba.

"She brought awareness to the Tampa community (of) the struggle of Afro-Cubans to survive," Monroe said. "It's a story that needed to be told, and she did a very good job of doing it."

The Immigration and Ethnic History Society gave the book, published by University Press of Florida, top honors in 2002. Awards also rolled in from the American Library Association and the Florida Historical Society, which handed out the Harry T. and Harriette V. Moore Award for best ethnography. USF added recognition for outstanding research.

The Marti-Maceo building consists largely of main room with a tiny stage and circular tables topped by vases with plastic flowers. Faded pictures of Jose Marti, the white spiritual father of Cuban independence, and Antonio Maceo, the black generalissimo of the revolution, stare out nobly from the western wall.

The club limps along with about 40 members. The days when Marti-Maceo, like similar societies formed by immigrant Italians, Spaniards and white Cubans, operated its own health care system are long gone. Annual dues, recently increased from $50 to $60, can't always pay the club's light, water and phone bills, Monroe said. So members make up the difference by dipping into their own pockets.

Still, survival beats the alternative.

More Than Black highlights Greenbaum's longstanding interest in preserving ethnic histories. White-dominated communities are often more complex than they appear on the surface, she thinks.

Born in St. Louis, she moved with her family to Kansas City and attended college at the University of Kansas. Greenbaum, 59, has mixed feelings about conservative Midwestern society. "Pretty boring," she describes it.

"You find the nicest people in the world out there who are also very narrow-minded," she said during an interview at the Temple Terrace home she shares with her husband of nearly 40 years, USF psychology researcher Paul Greenbaum. "I was very parochial for a long time."

After graduating with a degree in sociology, she moved with her husband to Boston to attend graduate schools. But she didn't particularly like the Northeast, finding the people distant. The couple returned to Kansas City, where she found work as a neighborhood liaison and discovered it was more ethnic than she had ever imagined.

That prompted her first major foray into chronicling the histories of immigrants. Using her research skills, she delved into the Slovenian/Croatian community of Strawberry Hill and the black neighborhoods of northeast Kansas City.

Greenbaum said her goal was to present those groups in a positive light. That core value dovetails with her sense of social justice.

Greenbaum was on the side of local Afro-Cubans long before More Than Black hit the press. In the 1980s, the community stood alone and powerless in the face of an Ybor redevelopment plan that ignored the historical significance of the Marti-Maceo club. Supporters never have applied for national historic trust status.

The Afro-Cuban community had intrigued her but remained a mystery because she couldn't find much information about it. Then an acquaintance, the father of a student and current USF associate Africana studies professor Cheryl Rodriguez, spoke to her class about Marti-Maceo's plight.

The guest, Francisco Rodriguez, married an African-American woman and had handled cases for the NAACP. His father once served as club president. Joined by an Afro-Cuban woman, he gave a first-hand account that forever changed her life.

"I knew there had been black Cubans," said Greenbaum, whose book, now in paperback, is available in local bookstores. "I went about in search of what had been written and there was nothing, effectively."

With momentum growing for an Ybor redevelopment project, she researched a basic history in an effort to make Afro-Cubans part of the discussion.

Those still active in the community feared that without a voice, their second building would be vulnerable to future construction plans. The destruction in 1965 of their original headquarters - a grand structure with a second-floor wrap-around balcony on Sixth Avenue - served as ample warning.

Greenbaum discovered a tale of fortitude in the face of discrimination that would inspire her book, a 15-year project. What she found continues to impress her.

In the spirit of Tampa's varied ethnic clubs, Marti-Maceo was a social gathering point.

"My parents would tell me stories of going to dances there," Cheryl Rodriguez said.

It was more, however. In an age when Afro-Cubans and other immigrants were shut out by expensive white doctors, club dues paid for medical care. And if members lost their jobs, they could count on benefits to get by, she said.

"Any time they needed something, they looked at it in a cooperative sense," Greenbaum said.

The slow erosion of segregation gradually weakened the club. Afro-Cubans could find those services elsewhere. Urban redevelopment pushed many out of Ybor into new neighborhoods. Membership declined.

"The demographics of the club caught up with it," Greenbaum said.

Cheryl Rodriguez, a Marti-Maceo member, said Greenbaum's efforts earned her everlasting gratitude from the community. Openly admiring of Greenbaum's social consciousness, she is working with her former professor on a long-term public housing study funded by the National Science Foundation.

As the recently selected Faculty Senate president, Greenbaum automatically got a seat on the university's alumni board. It crowded an already busy schedule, but the former anthropology department head still tries to find time for travel and landscaping.

Now and then she'll attend Marti-Maceo's monthly meetings. Monroe, the treasurer, says she always is welcome.

And why not?

"At the last meeting," Monroe said, "we had seven new members."

Josh Zimmer covers Temple Terrace and the University of South Florida area. He can be reached at 813 269-5314 or zimmer@sptimes.com

[Last modified January 27, 2005, 09:33:08]