358 Chapter 15
general elevation of socioeconomic status. He then tied the improve-
ment of the situation of la clase de color to the success of the nationalist
project, so that his educational work and emphasis on economic
improvement was connected to his political work. Serra accepted
Martí’s vision of a race-less, integrated Cuba, but thought that the
position of Afro-Cubans must be improved in order for this vision to
succeed.
Serra understood race relations in the United States to provide use-
ful examples and also cautionary tales for Cuba. When Serra looked at
the racism of the United States, and particularly at the efforts at disen-
franchisement of blacks in the South, he understood the racists to be
justifying their actions based on the professed incapacity and lack of
preparation of African Americans. Literacy tests effectively disenfran-
chised African Americans because they were uneducated. Poll taxes
did the same because black people as a group had not achieved a cer-
tain level of material wealth.^4 Therefore, education and prosperity
were not only generally good for people of African descent, but they
also had the potential to guard against the worst abuses of Jim Crow.
For a Cuban intellectual committed to Cuban independence and
opposed to U.S imperialism and its effects, this would be a cautionary
tale indeed, and the solutions well worth noting. Serra’s call for the
elevation of the moral character and culture of Afro-Cubans was also
a response to real or potential threats to blacks based on their debase-
ment as a race, their lack of culture and refinement. Improving them-
selves in these specific ways would take away justifications for
exclusion from the white racists, as Glenda Gilmore has argued in her
book about African Americans in Richmond (Gilmore 1996: 18).
Serra’s admiration for Booker T. Washington’s strategy of eco-
nomic progress is evident in the articles that he wrote or had trans-
lated from English on Washington’s work and the Tuskegee Institute.
Disappointed with “the lack of [Cuban] solutions,” Serra claimed that
it was necessary to look to foreign strategies as long as they were
- Rafael Serra, “La Brasa a su Sardina,” Para Blancos y Negros, SCRBC.