Sharing Strategies for Racial Uplift: Afro-Cubans, Afro-Puerto Ricans, and African Amer-
and surely greatly helped, these men. But the Afro-Cubans did not
graduate in large numbers. Although many of them advanced from
year to year, the commencement lists do not include too many
Cubans. On the other hand, the Puerto Ricans, who specialized in
trades, blue-collar work, and agriculture, graduated at much higher
rates.^14 The reasons for this are still unclear and much more research is
needed.
However, the difference in graduation rates coupled with the dif-
ference in the demographic background of these two groups of stu-
dents may suggest that though Afro-Cuban leaders were intellectually
interested in Washington’s strategy of economic advancement, this
strategy did not apply to the students that they sent to Tuskegee.
Being of a higher class with better connections than the Puerto Rican
students, they may have found that the emphasis on agriculture and
trades did not suit their professional aspirations. Despite the Puerto
Rican students having been sent by the US government as part of a
larger imperial strategy, their personal aspirations may have been more
in line with the curriculum of Tuskegee.ConclusionsThe Cuban leaders discussed here and Booker T. Washington shred a
concern for the economic progress of black people in Cuba and the
United States. Afro-Cuban leaders thought that Washington’s strate-
gies could be applied to their Cuban context. They believed in racial
harmony and had fought hard for it in conjunction with indepen-
dence. Washington’s program linking economic progress as a road to
racial uplift as well as racial harmony was especially appealing to them.
And yet the economic situation that Afro-Cuban leaders such as Serra
and Gómez focused on was not the same one facing all Afro-Cubans.
Serra and Gómez were concerned with the dearth of secondary edu-
cation which contributed to a lack of access to public service jobs.- Tuskegee Institute Commencement Programs, 1908-1949 and Tuskegee Institute Commencement
Programs, 1908-1969. Tuskegee University Archives.