The Curious Case of the Cuban Club

Yackety Yak, 1908
Yackety Yack 1908

In the 1908 Yackety Yack, among the pages for “county clubs” (clubs for students from the same county or high school in North Carolina) a new club appeared – the Cuban Club.

A club for Cuban students at the university, the Cuban Club was short lived (1908 to 1910) and represented a brief surge in the enrollment of Cuban students at the university. While the club never had more than 11 members, that was a significant number – the total enrollment of the University was then 778, with only 55 out-of-state students.

Most of the students from Cuba were studying engineering, medicine, and pharmacy and the last of the group graduated in 1911. Issues of the Daily Tar Heel from around the time suggest that in the years that followed the university had no more than one Cuban student enrolled each year. We aren’t sure what drew this group of Cuban students to UNC between 1908 and 1911, or why the enrollment of Cuban students dropped in the following years.

Yackety Yack 1909 and 1910

 Update (4/19/2016): See this post for additional information.

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