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Conference presentation
Building Tampa’s Golden Age: The tumult of the 1880s
Annual Family Heritage Festival, 2nd (John F Germany Public Library, Tampa, Florida, 10/22/2016–10/22/2016)
10/22/2016
Abstract
By 1880 Tampa was a community in decline. The population of the village on the bay had dropped from 885 in 1860 to just 720 in 1880. The closure of Fort Brooke ended the primary reason for Tampa to exist, and the lack of rail connections hampered the economy. The closest railhead was at Cedar Key, a 20-hour journey by steamship. Regular outbreaks of malaria, dengue, and yellow fever caused people to flee Tampa – there was little reason to court death by remaining in a backwater. Tampa’s decline was only halted by the discovery of phosphates nearby, the completion of rail lines to Kissimmee and Jacksonville, and the subsequent arrival of the cigar industry. These three developments transformed Tampa from a sleepy village on a shallow bay into a boom town with a mixed population of old Southern families, freed slaves and their descendants, and immigrants from Cuba, Spain, and Italy. The resulting mix meant that Tampa did not have the easy racial dichotomy of other Southern cities of the Jim Crow era. The space that Tampa’s unique cultural mix gave to women reformers and people of color attracted internationally-renowned activists, politicians, and artists to give Tampa a flair unmatched in the New South.
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Details
- Title
- Building Tampa’s Golden Age: The tumult of the 1880s
- Resource Type
- Conference presentation
- Conference
- Annual Family Heritage Festival, 2nd (John F Germany Public Library, Tampa, Florida, 10/22/2016–10/22/2016)
- Copyright
- Permission granted to the University of West Florida Libraries by the author to digitize and/or display this information for non-profit research and educational purposes. Any reuse of this item in excess of fair use or other copyright exemptions requires the permission of the copyright holder.
- Identifiers
- 99380099992406600
- Academic Unit
- Education Research Library; University of West Florida Libraries
- Language
- English