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A Pioneer in Caribbean History: Franklin Knight Reflects on Cuba
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2023
Extract
Lillian: Let's start with you telling a little about yourself.
Franklin: I was born in 1942 in Jamaica. I went to elementary school, of course, and took the mandatory “Eleven-Plus” general examination in 1953. I then left elementary school and for a year attended a small private high school with my two older brothers. The school system was a little different from the United States. I know that well, because when I came here and told a group of Wisconsin school kids that I had spent six years in high school, they said, “You must have been very dumb.” To which I replied that “that was not the opinion of my teachers.” I didn't realize then that in the United States students spend four years in high school. In Jamaica we spend six, combining middle and high school years. You get in at age 12 or 13 and graduate at 18 or 19.
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- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Academy of American Franciscan History
Footnotes
Lillian Guerra is Professor of Cuban and Caribbean History at the University of Florida. She is the author of five books of history, including one on Puerto Rican national identity in the age of Americanization and four books on Cuba that span the twentieth century. Her latest work, Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961–1981 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2023) examines how citizens experienced and internalized the Communist state's construction of life within the Cold War paradigm and defined national belonging as a zero-sum game. Guerra began researching in Cuba in 1995 and has made more than 50 visits to the island.