Nancy A. Hewitt, Southern Discomfort: Women’s Activism in Tampa, Florida, 1880s-1920s
The best microhistories speak powerfully to established historiographies of their fields. In the case of Southern Discomfort, Hewitt complicates the familiar narratives of the South at the turn of the twentieth century by telling the story of a single city that does not comply with traditional renderings of Jim Crow logics elsewhere. In Tampa, Florida, as Hewitt shows in her study of women’s activism, the rules of biracialism did not apply the way they did in other areas of the country. To be sure, African Americans and Latin émigrés were discriminated against in systematic ways sustained by white supremacy. Still, the multi-ethnic racial climate of Tampa from the 1880s to the 1920s was such that it allowed the different racial and ethnic groups that made the city their home to negotiate their social positioning in unique ways. By telling a story of how Tampa women maneuvered the system of white supremacy and imperial mentality in the United States, Hewitt shows that the boundaries of gendered, racial, ethnic, and class hierarchies that reigned supreme in other parts of the South were more porous in Tampa.
Due to Tampa’s proximity to Cuba, its racial and ethnic makeup was more varied than that of the biracial South. Tampa, as Hewitt explains, was “in, but not entirely of, the South” (17). Unlike other southern cities, the Cigar City’s economy at the end of the nineteenth century thrived due to the tobacco industry and the skilled labor that immigrants from Latin America provided. By 1900, Tampa became a busy city comprised of native-born Anglos, African Americans, and Latin (and, later, Italian, Spanish, and Eastern European) immigrants. These groups socialized, established separate neighborhoods, nourished the lives of their religious communities, and organized for better working conditions and fairer wages. Women, in particular, demonstrated remarkable skill in negotiating alliances across class, race, and gender lines. And just as the climate of Jim Crow Tampa was more porous than elsewhere in the South, so, too, were the alliances that these women built; the people and the causes with which Tampa women associated changed over time, neighborhood geographies, and political climates. What was constant in turn-of-the-century Tampa is the remarkable amount of ingenuity and flexibility that women of different backgrounds demonstrated through their work and activism.
For example, in the late 1880s and 1890s, whereas elite Anglo women of upper classes tended to not work outside of the home and, therefore, formed civic-minded organizations that were comprised of other white women, working class Cuban women, united in solidarity by the Cuban revolution, tended to affiliate with mixed-sex groups, mutual aid societies, and labor unions. Indeed, the Cuban independence movement afforded these women the opportunity for active political engagement beyond the generally expected contributions of wives and mothers. Different still was the configuration of African American women’s activism: although race solidarity was a constant feature of these communities, African American women in Tampa also began to make alliances along class lines—to better economic opportunities for themselves and others in a political climate that severely limited civic participation for non-whites.
Hewitt structures her book chronologically, and smaller sections of the book deal with Anglo, Africa-American, and Latin women separately. Hewitt’s goal is to show just how diverse and context-specific different women’s approaches and strategies were. Hewitt is faithful to the logic of organizing that she finds in her archive, and she persists to tell a story that follows that logic. There persisted, to use Hewitt’s metaphor, a “kaleidoscopic interplay” among women of different classes, races, and ethnic background (275). In the first decades of the twentieth century, Latin immigrants and African Americans occasionally built alliances with one another. In others, class distinctions overpowered ethnic identification, and more well-to-do Latin immigrants chose, instead, to side with affluent Tampa Anglos. Occasionally, inter-class distinctions dictated women’s affiliations in terms of both race and gender, such that Latin immigrant factory workers were more likely to affiliate with fellow male workers in their unions than with African Americans who, at the time, may have been more concerned with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Throughout the book, Hewitt insists that these alliances shifted depending on women’s varying interests; no one category—race, gender, class, or ethnicity—could determine where these alliances would lie with any given issue.
This inherent multiplicity of motivations, backgrounds, and identifications is what makes Tampa—and Hewitt’s depiction of the city—stand out among other narratives of women’s activism in the South. Traditional narratives of Jim Crow biracialism fail to appreciate the variety of identities and affinities that women took on at the turn of the century. In Hewitt’s rendering, both race-based and sex-based organizing efforts of American women were too complex and multifaceted to be obscured by the familiar narratives of a biracial South.
Due to Tampa’s proximity to Cuba, its racial and ethnic makeup was more varied than that of the biracial South. Tampa, as Hewitt explains, was “in, but not entirely of, the South” (17). Unlike other southern cities, the Cigar City’s economy at the end of the nineteenth century thrived due to the tobacco industry and the skilled labor that immigrants from Latin America provided. By 1900, Tampa became a busy city comprised of native-born Anglos, African Americans, and Latin (and, later, Italian, Spanish, and Eastern European) immigrants. These groups socialized, established separate neighborhoods, nourished the lives of their religious communities, and organized for better working conditions and fairer wages. Women, in particular, demonstrated remarkable skill in negotiating alliances across class, race, and gender lines. And just as the climate of Jim Crow Tampa was more porous than elsewhere in the South, so, too, were the alliances that these women built; the people and the causes with which Tampa women associated changed over time, neighborhood geographies, and political climates. What was constant in turn-of-the-century Tampa is the remarkable amount of ingenuity and flexibility that women of different backgrounds demonstrated through their work and activism.
For example, in the late 1880s and 1890s, whereas elite Anglo women of upper classes tended to not work outside of the home and, therefore, formed civic-minded organizations that were comprised of other white women, working class Cuban women, united in solidarity by the Cuban revolution, tended to affiliate with mixed-sex groups, mutual aid societies, and labor unions. Indeed, the Cuban independence movement afforded these women the opportunity for active political engagement beyond the generally expected contributions of wives and mothers. Different still was the configuration of African American women’s activism: although race solidarity was a constant feature of these communities, African American women in Tampa also began to make alliances along class lines—to better economic opportunities for themselves and others in a political climate that severely limited civic participation for non-whites.
Hewitt structures her book chronologically, and smaller sections of the book deal with Anglo, Africa-American, and Latin women separately. Hewitt’s goal is to show just how diverse and context-specific different women’s approaches and strategies were. Hewitt is faithful to the logic of organizing that she finds in her archive, and she persists to tell a story that follows that logic. There persisted, to use Hewitt’s metaphor, a “kaleidoscopic interplay” among women of different classes, races, and ethnic background (275). In the first decades of the twentieth century, Latin immigrants and African Americans occasionally built alliances with one another. In others, class distinctions overpowered ethnic identification, and more well-to-do Latin immigrants chose, instead, to side with affluent Tampa Anglos. Occasionally, inter-class distinctions dictated women’s affiliations in terms of both race and gender, such that Latin immigrant factory workers were more likely to affiliate with fellow male workers in their unions than with African Americans who, at the time, may have been more concerned with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment. Throughout the book, Hewitt insists that these alliances shifted depending on women’s varying interests; no one category—race, gender, class, or ethnicity—could determine where these alliances would lie with any given issue.
This inherent multiplicity of motivations, backgrounds, and identifications is what makes Tampa—and Hewitt’s depiction of the city—stand out among other narratives of women’s activism in the South. Traditional narratives of Jim Crow biracialism fail to appreciate the variety of identities and affinities that women took on at the turn of the century. In Hewitt’s rendering, both race-based and sex-based organizing efforts of American women were too complex and multifaceted to be obscured by the familiar narratives of a biracial South.