Mixed Race Studies

NAACP to Tampa: For Juneteenth, find Robert Meacham, a slave who became senator

Tampa Bay Times
2021-06-12

Paul Guzzo, Tampa Bay LIfe Reporter

This portrait of Robert Meacham was taken around 1870. Meacham was an enslaved man who was later elected Florida senator. [Courtesy of State Archives of Florida, Florida Memory]

He was buried in the erased College Hill Cemetery believed to be located in what is now the Italian Club Cemetery’s parking lot.

TAMPA — Robert Meacham was an enslaved man who became a Florida state senator pushing for educational opportunities for Black children.

“Robert Meacham is the type of man who deserves a street named for him,” said Fred Hearns, the curator of Black history at the Tampa Bay History Center. “Maybe even a statue.”

But he doesn’t even have a marked grave.

Meacham is among the more than 1,200 buried in Tampa’s erased College Hill Cemetery for Blacks and Cubans, believed to be located in what is now the Italian Club Cemetery’s parking lot.

June 19 is Juneteenth, the day commemorating the anniversary of when in 1865 the enslaved in Texas were freed. It serves as the day to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States…

…Meacham was born in Gadsden County in 1835. His mother was an enslaved woman. His father was her white owner.

As a child, Meacham rode alongside his father in the family buggy and was educated. But, when he turned 18, Meacham was taken to Tallahassee to “fulfill the role of a house-servant for an affluent Leon County family.” When his father died, Meacham became that family’s “property.”…

Read the entire article here.

This interracial couple got engaged in Obama’s America. Then Trump took office.

The Washington Post
2020-10-20

Sydney Trent, Local enterprise reporter

David and Jessica Figari with daughter Liliana at their home outside of Tampa. (Eve Edelheit for The Washington Post)

David and Jessica Figari are navigating racial and political divides in their country — and in their family — that they never anticipated when they fell in love

On the already muggy morning of Aug. 28, 2013, David Figari and Jessica Jones held hands in the billowing crowd near the steps of the Georgetown University Law Center. The young lovers had traveled from Florida to meet each other’s relatives and attend the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington.

The reminiscences from 1963 march veterans had ended and the trek to the Lincoln Memorial was about to begin when David saw an organizer standing near a microphone at the top of the stairs. He walked up to the man with the mic and introduced himself.

“Hey, I’d like to say something. Can I do it?” David said.

The man gave him the once-over and immediately said “No.”

“No, no, you don’t understand. I’d like to propose to my girlfriend.”

“No,” the man said again.

“I said, ‘No, you don’t understand,’” David said. “‘That’s my girlfriend.’”

He pointed to Jessica. Something clicked — this couple, this moment — and the man gasped.

“Everyone, everyone, really quick!” he announced. “David actually has something to say.”…

Read the entire article here.

Identity A Challenge For Latinas Who Are Black

WUSF News
WUSF Public Media
Tampa, Florida
2016-02-03

Naomi Prioleau

Evelin Diaz is Afro-Dominican and a Spanish teacher’s assistant at Lennard High School in Ruskin. Naomi Prioleau/WUSF

When people think of famous Latina women, Jennifer Lopez or Sofia Vergara come to mind.

Not Zoe Saldana or Rosario Dawson.

The difference between these pairs of Latina actresses isn’t one of talent or fame. Saldana and Dawson also happen to identify as Black – a reality some Tampa-area Afro-Latinas say is difficult to navigate.

“People respect our (Latino) community but for the Afro-Latinas, people just like to group us as Black and stuff and want to deny that we’re Spanish,” said University of South Florida student Jessica Roberts, who is Puerto Rican and Dominican. And Black.

Roberts said she doesn’t speak Spanish, and as a result is told that she’s not “truly” Latina. People say she should only identify as Black…

…However, it’s not so easy to break down the number of Afro-Latinos here – or elsewhere. The U.S. Census doesn’t currently give the option for Latinos to identify as another race, meaning even if someone is Afro-Latino or Asian-Latino, they can only mark Latino.

USF sociology professor and author Dr. Elizabeth Hordge-Freeman said the inability to count Afro-Latinos isn’t the big problem. Latinas who are also Black struggle to find acceptance in both the Latino and Black communities, as well as with themselves…

Read and listen to the story here. Download the story (00:04:19) here.

One Drop of Love at the Straz Center

Straz Center for the Performing Arts
Jaeb Theater
1010 N. W.C. MacInnes Place
Tampa, Florida 33602
Saturday, 2014-11-08, 19:30 EST (Local Time)

Produced by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, this extraordinary one-woman show by Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni incorporates filmed images, photographs and animation to tell the story of how the notion of ‘race’ came to be in the United States and how it affected her relationship with her father. This show is a moving memoir that takes audiences from the 1600s to the present, to cities all over the U.S. and West and East Africa, where both father and daughter spent time in search of their ‘racial’ roots. Funny and provocative, One Drop of Love is a spellbinding and honest journey into the heart of finding one’s place in the world and in the complicated microcosm of one’s family.

For more information, click here.