For Sarah McNamara, Ybor City history is family history.
She’s a Tampa native whose Ybor roots stretch back to the arrival of the first family member from Cuba in the early 1900s. McNamara’s also a historian, an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M, whose first book, “Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South,” explores a little-known but significant part of Ybor City history that she first discovered from her grandmother.
The book and an accompanying historical marker and mural spotlight the 1937 antifascist women’s march from Ybor to Tampa City Hall and, more broadly, how immigrant and U.S.-born Latinas in Ybor with leftist, pro-labor political views fought for social and economic justice and against fascism in the era of Jim Crow laws, the Great Depression and, internationally, the Spanish Civil War.
Between the unveiling of the mural and historical marker at Tampa’s Ybor City Community Redevelopment Agency office on East Seventh Avenue, and the publication of the book, McNamara has been a frequent flier back home for special events. She gave a talk and led a tour during Tampa’s recent Archives Awareness Week. She’ll return in mid-September for a trio of events. A talk at Cafe con Tampa at Porticos in Tampa and an author discussion at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg are both on September 15th. A Florida Conversations talk at the Tampa Bay History Center follows on September 20th.
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