Examining the educational legacy of Afro-Cuban teachers and activists
Congratulations to Dr. Raquel Otheguy (Associate Professor) whose new book Black Freedom and Education in Nineteenth-Century Cuba (University of Florida Press, 2025) 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’s insightful analysis is engaging and persuasive; it represents an original and significant contribution to the scholarship on the history of education. This book offers important context for understanding how pivotal moments in education shaped Cuban history, especially amid the transition from slavery to freedom.”—Kabria Baumgartner, author of In Pursuit of Knowledge: Black Women and Educational Activism in Antebellum America
Otheguy describes Afro-Cuban education before public schools were officially desegregated in 1894, from the maestras amigas—Black and mulata women who taught in their homes—to teachers in the schools of mutual-aid societies for people of color. In the ways that Afr0-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.
Dr. Otheguy recently gave a talk with the CUNY Academy for the Humanities and Sciences. You can watch her book talk here.
