360 Chapter 15
the support of white people such as José Martí. Between his experi-
ences and his confidence in the myth of racial equality promoted by
Cuban nationalists, Serra grew to expect white cooperation for the
solution of black problems. The efforts of black people would not
suffice on their own. The only fix, wrote Serra in 1899, was their own
efforts, but assisted by the cooperation of pure souls. Serra believed
that Afro-Cubans had earned the brotherhood of whites in the fight
for independence, and that whites, no less than blacks, should be con-
cerned about the welfare of la clase de color. Afro-Cubans don’t ask for
much, he wrote: only that they be “protected, respected, and encour-
aged.” He was disappointed in white Cubans. White Cubans “do not
value the progress of la clase de color”, he wrote, which forced the black
population to “resort to the force of the vote, which is its only amulet
so far.”^8 Therefore, he particularly lauded the Tuskegee Project for the
participation of white philanthropists. He mentioned that the fifty-
seven buildings at Tuskegee were due to the foresight, good morals,
and real and constant philanthropy of white Americans, and that
almost all the whites of the South generously helped Booker T. Wash-
ington.^9 This is obviously an exaggeration—in fact, most of the pri-
vate funds that Washington got were from white northerners, not
southerners.
Still, here we find a Cuban contemporary lauding Washington for
the very same strategies that made him suspect in his own time and
have damned him in the historiography. For Serra, white cooperation
was sadly lacking in Cuba, though he believed it should have been
forthcoming, given the ideological underpinnings of the Cuban nation
and the service of Afro-Cubans to the wars of independence. Looking
at the United States at a time of increased segregation and oppression
of blacks, he found in Tuskegee a collaboration between blacks and
whites whose fruits are physically evident in the campus and in the
students, and which approximated more closely the Cuban ideal. This
kind of cooperation between whites and blacks was not only impor-
- Serra, Para Blancos y Negros: 74, SCRBC.
- Serra, Para Blancos y Negros: 140, SCRBC.