Linked to the Caribbean and southern Europe as well as to the Confederacy, the Cigar City of Tampa, Florida, never fit comfortably into the biracial mold of the New South. Nancy A. Hewitt explores the interactions among distinct groups of women--native-born white, African American, Cuban and Italian immigrant women--that shaped women's activism in the vibrant, multiethnic city.

Hewitt emphasizes the process by which women forged and reformulated their activist identities from Reconstruction through the U.S. declaration of war against Spain in April 1898, the industrywide cigar strike of 1901, and the emergence of progressive reform and labor militancy. She also recasts our understanding of southern history by demonstrating how Tampa's triracial networks alternately challenged and re-inscribed the South's biracial social and political order.

Nancy A. Hewitt is an emerita professor of history and women's studies at Rutgers University. She is the author of Women's Activism and Social Change: Rochester, New York, 1822-1872 and coeditor of Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism.

Acknowledgments   ix
Introduction   1
Part 1: The Making of a Multiracial City, 1880-1901
1. Creating the Cigar City   21
2. An Activist Mosaic   38
3. Solidarity and Segregation   67
4. Race Conflicts and Class Currents   98

Part 2: Kaleidoscopic Connections, 1902-29
5. African American Women Confront Jim Crow   142
6. Anglo Women in the Era of Institution Building   170
7. Latin Women from Exiles to Immigrants   200
8. New Women   222
9. Recasting Activist Identities   248

Epilogue   271
Notes   277
Index   335
Illustrations follow page 136