La Unión Martí-Maceo in Tampa, Florida

La Unión Martí-Maceo, formally the Sociedad La Unión Martí-Maceo, is the Afro-Cuban mutual aid society of Ybor City, founded by cigar makers in 1900 and still based in a clubhouse on Seventh Avenue.

The society takes its name from two heroes of Cuban independence, José Martí and General Antonio Maceo. Its own About page describes it as a social and recreational society for members of Tampa's Afro-Cuban community of cigar workers, and gives its address as 1226 E. 7th Avenue, Tampa, FL 33605, with the phone 813-442-5680. The state historical marker placed there in 1998 lists the same location, 1226 7th Avenue (Florida Division of Historical Resources marker).

The National Park Service counts the society among the leading Ybor City institutions. Its Ybor City Historic District page names the Centro Asturiano, Circulo Cubano, El Centro Español and La Union Marti-Maceo as the largest Hispanic clubs in Tampa between 1890 and 1920, and lists the Marti-Maceo Club with L'Unione Italiana and El Centro Español as the three historic social clubs among the significant buildings on 7th Avenue. Ybor City residents formed such clubs, the park service says, to give members cooperative medical plans and charitable services.

Afro-Cuban cigar makers formed their own society because racial segregation forced them out of El Club Nacional Cubano, an Ybor City organization of Black and White Cubans involved in Cuban independence.

The state marker says the founders had been members of El Club Nacional Cubano and that Afro-Cubans were forced to withdraw in response to racial segregation. USF Libraries, writing about the society's records in its Tampa Special Collections, says the effects of Jim Crow segregation law forced the club to divide into two separate clubs, Los Pensadores Martí-Maceo and El Círculo Cubano, just weeks after its establishment. The society's own history tells the same story, saying an era of segregation forced the group to split into the Círculo Cubano and Los Libres Pensadores Martí-Maceo.

Accounts differ on how long the integrated club lasted. Writing in Anthropology News in 2022, anthropologists Susan Greenbaum and Kenya Dworkin y Méndez say the Club Nacional Cubano was formed in Ybor City in 1899 and lasted only one year before its Black members were ejected, while the USF Libraries account says the division came within weeks.

The society was founded in 1900, and its first official meeting, as Los Libres Pensadores or the Freethinkers, took place on October 26, 1900 at the Ybor City home of Ruperto and Paulina Pedroso.

That date comes from both the society and USF Libraries, which places the meeting at the Pedrosos' boarding house on Eighth Avenue and Thirteenth Street and says their home had been a gathering spot for José Martí's visits to Tampa. The state historical marker records that Ruperto Pedroso, a well-known Afro-Cuban patriot, was among the 23 original founders, and that meetings began in the parlor of his boardinghouse at 13th Street and 8th Avenue, the present site of Martí Park.

The society reached its present form through a merger with La Unión, an Afro-Cuban club in West Tampa. Sources differ on the year: the state marker says medical benefits were added in 1904 when the club merged with La Unión, producing the name La Union Marti-Maceo, while USF Libraries, citing a manuscript written by members, dates the merger to 1905. The table below sets the dates side by side.

Sources: Florida Division of Historical Resources and USF Libraries.

Membership in La Unión Martí-Maceo worked as insurance for Tampa's Afro-Cuban cigar workers, with full medical benefits, a stipend for sick members, and social, cultural and educational activities.

The state marker describes those benefits at a time when average membership was about 300. USF Libraries says that after the merger with La Unión the society could offer more benefits for 50 cents a week in membership dues, and that it began hosting festivals and events to raise money for a clubhouse of its own.

The dues and events paid for a building. USF Libraries reports that in 1908 the society built a two-story building on Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street with a theater, a social hall and several club rooms, while the marker says members completed a two-story club house at 11th Street and 6th Avenue in 1909. The National Park Service notes that Ybor City clubs of this kind offered their members cooperative medical plans and charitable services (NPS Ybor City Historic District).

The original Martí-Maceo clubhouse at Sixth Avenue and Eleventh Street was demolished under urban renewal in 1965, and members moved to the present building at 7th Avenue and 13th Street.

The society had already shrunk by then. USF Libraries says the strict immigration laws of 1923 left the club taking in very few new members, so that membership dwindled to below 100, and the state marker says many Afro-Cubans left Tampa during the hard years of the 1930s, when membership declined and benefits were reduced but the club kept operating. USF adds that the Pedroso house was demolished in the 1960s under the same urban renewal initiative as the clubhouse.

By the late 1960s, the marker says, there were few members left and it appeared the organization would soon cease to exist. In the early 1970s, however, a large number of people who had left Ybor City as children in the 1930s returned as retirees, and the size increased to over 100 members, reviving the organization. A 2004 City of Tampa Ybor City 2 redevelopment plan described the Union de Marti-Maceo as an active historic social club in Ybor City, although not in its original building, and USF Libraries wrote in February 2024 that the society is still active in Tampa.

The records of La Unión Martí-Maceo are held by the University of South Florida Libraries' Tampa Special Collections, where they arrived in 1983 and are partly digitized.

USF Libraries describes the Sociedad la Union Marti-Maceo collection as a popular and heavily used collection since its arrival in 1983. In February 2024 the library said the first round of digitization was available in its Tampa Digital Collections, with another round planned for correspondence, meeting minutes, beneficiary records, photographs and ephemera related to the Tampa club.

Ybor City's centennial in 1986 produced a pictorial history of the society. USF Digital Commons hosts Afro-Cubans in Ybor City: A Centennial History, 1986, by anthropologist Susan Greenbaum, which it describes as a pictorial history of the Afro Cuban community in Tampa focused on the Martí-Maceo records housed at USF. The digital copy is dated 2023 and the print copy is in the library's Floridiana Collection.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the Florida Division of Historical Resources marker for the society, the National Park Service Ybor City Historic District page, the 2004 City of Tampa Ybor City 2 redevelopment plan, the society's About page, the USF Libraries collection article and the USF Digital Commons record.