Black Freedom and Education in Nineteenth-Century Cuba

Examining the educational legacy of Afro-Cuban teachers and activists





In

this book, Raquel Otheguy argues that Afro-descended teachers and

activists were central to the development of a national education system

in Cuba. Tracing the emergence of a Black Cuban educational tradition

whose hallmarks were at the forefront of transatlantic educational

currents, Otheguy examines how this movement pushed the island's public

school system to be more accessible to children and adults of all races,

genders, and classes.



Otheguy describes Afro-Cuban education before public schools were officially desegregated in 1894, from the maestras amigas--Black

and mulatto women who taught in their homes--to teachers in the schools

of mutual-aid societies for people of color. In the ways that African

descendants interacted with the Spanish colonial school system and its

authorities, and in the separate schools they created, they were

resisting the hardening racial boundaries that characterized Cuban life

and developing alternative visions of possible societies, nations, and

futures. Otheguy demonstrates that Black Cubans pioneered the region's

most progressive innovations in education and influenced the trajectory

of public school systems in their nation and the broader Americas.



A

volume in the series Caribbean Crossroads: Race, Identity, and Freedom

Struggles, edited by Lillian Guerra, Devyn Spence Benson, April Mayes,

and Solsiree del Moral



Publication of this work made

possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan

grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities