From Havana to Tallahassee: The hidden Cuban-American history of FAMU pharmacy

Three key takeaways

• 75 years of impact: FAMU’s pharmacy college celebrates a legacy of educating pharmacists, scientists and public health leaders.
• A hidden Cuban connection: After the Cuban Revolution, FAMU helped Cuban-trained pharmacists rebuild their careers in the United States.

• A Florida pharmacy pioneer: Long before Nova Southeastern, FAMU was a major pathway into pharmacy for Cuban Americans and was later recognized by the Florida Senate as a leading producer of Cuban-American pharmacists.

The history of FAMUs College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, Institute of Public Health, is largely told through its graduates — pharmacists, scientists and public health professionals who have carried their FAMU education into hospitals, laboratories, universities and communities across the country.

But as the college celebrates its 75th anniversary, another chapter of its history is coming into sharper focus: its connection to the Cuban-American pharmacy community in Florida.

It is a story that stretches from Tallahassee to Miami and back to an upheaval in Cuba that forced thousands of pharmacists to abandon their professions.

It is also a story that was never fully captured in the university's records.

FAMU's pharmacy college will celebrate its Diamond Jubilee, this week, under the theme “Excellence With Purpose: 75 Years of Transforming Lives.” The weeklong observance will honor generations of alumni, faculty members, students, donors, corporate partners and community supporters.

Founded in 1951, the college became a significant center of pharmacy education at a historically Black university. Over the decades, its reach expanded beyond Tallahassee, eventually connecting the institution to communities throughout Florida.

Among them was South Florida's growing Cuban-American community.

When Cuban pharmacists arrived in Florida 

The connection took shape after the Cuban Revolution.

When Fidel Castro came to power in 1959, the Cuban government nationalized the country's pharmaceutical industry, taking control of pharmacies, drug manufacturers and laboratories. The Pharmaceutical Association of Cuba was itself taken over by the government in 1961.

Thousands of Cuban pharmacists fled the island during the exodus that followed.

But leaving Cuba did not mean they could simply resume their careers in the United States. Their university degrees were not automatically recognized, and some arrived without the documents needed to establish their professional credentials.

When Cuban pharmacist faced closed doors, FAMU opened them

As a historically Black university, FAMU understood what it meant for qualified professionals to be shut out. For decades, the university had educated Black students who faced discrimination and exclusion from institutions that refused them admission. That history gave FAMU a particular understanding of what it meant to be denied an opportunity because of circumstances beyond one's control.

When Cuban pharmacists found themselves facing closed doors, FAMU opened one of its own, giving some an opportunity to rebuild their credentials, return to their profession and begin again in Florida.

The Cuban Pharmaceutical Association in Exile documented the problem in its history of the profession after the revolution. Rosa Trina Lagomasino, a former dean of the University of Havana's School of Pharmacy, issued affidavits to help pharmacists document their training and pursue further education.

Few returned to school. Those who did, the association reported, went to Gainesville, Tallahassee or Puerto Rico.

The reference to Tallahassee is significant.

FAMU had established its pharmacy program eight years earlier, in 1951, making it one of the institutions positioned to provide professional education to pharmacists whose careers had been interrupted by exile.

While FAMU's own historical record does not specifically identify every Cuban pharmacist who studied or retrained at FAMU. Former FAMU pharmacy deans and administrators, along with Cuban-American pharmacists and families in South Florida, have preserved accounts of the university's role in helping Cuban-trained pharmacists rebuild their careers.

Those recollections are particularly important because much of the story never made its way into formal university histories.

The gaps in FAMU's archival record makes it difficult to reconstruct the full scope of the university's involvement. But the absence of a complete paper trail does not erase the memories of those who experienced it.

In this case, the oral history helps illuminate what the institutional record leaves incomplete.

From Tallahassee to Miami

FAMU's relationship with South Florida eventually became more institutionalized. The college established a presence in Miami in the early 1970s and later expanded its pharmacy education and clinical training throughout South Florida when UF would not.  

By then, Miami had become the center of a rapidly growing Cuban-American population.

For Cuban pharmacists, the connection to FAMU represented more than access to a professional program. It offered a route back into a career that many had been forced to abandon.

Pharmacy was closely tied to the Cuban exile experience. Professionals who had spent years studying and practicing in Cuba suddenly found themselves rebuilding their lives in a new country, often while navigating unfamiliar licensing requirements and financial pressures.

FAMU was part of the network that helped make that transition possible.

It was also operating in South Florida before the region developed the extensive pharmacy-education infrastructure it has today.

FAMU was there long before, Nova Southeastern University, would eventually become a major pharmacy-education institution in the region.

FAMU helped shape the development of South Florida's pharmacy workforce, one shaped in part by immigration and the extraordinary professional disruption caused by the Cuban Revolution.

Finally a state acknowledgment

The university's contribution to Cuban-American pharmacy was later recognized by the Florida Legislature.

A Florida Senate resolution designated March 26, 2014, recognized the university's contributions to the state.

Among the accomplishments cited in the resolution was FAMU's distinction as a leading producer of Cuban-American pharmacists.

The acknowledgment is notable because it provides an official state reference to a part of FAMU's history that has received relatively little attention in the university's broader institutional narrative.

It also illustrates an unexpected convergence of two histories.

FAMU's pharmacy program was created during segregation, when Black students faced significant barriers to professional education. Within a decade, the program was situated in a state receiving thousands of Cuban exiles whose professional credentials had been disrupted by revolution and migration.

For different reasons, both groups were confronting barriers to entering or returning to the health professions.

FAMU became part of the answer.

A history worth recovering
The Cuban-American connection adds another dimension to the college's 75-year story.

It is a reminder that the history of a university is not always contained in its official records. Some of its most consequential chapters live in the recollections of former administrators, graduates and communities whose lives intersected with the institution.

The surviving record establishes that Cuban pharmacists seeking to rebuild their professional careers pursued education in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Puerto Rico. The accounts of former FAMU pharmacy leaders and Cuban-American pharmacists add another layer, pointing to a significant FAMU role that deserves further historical research and documentation.

That history is worth preserving now, while many of the people who lived it are still able to tell it.
For FAMU's College of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, the Diamond Jubilee is therefore not simply a celebration of 75 years.

It is an opportunity to recover the stories behind those years.

Some begin in Tallahassee. Others begin in Havana.

And some connect the two through pharmacists who lost one professional life to revolution and found a way to build another in Florida.

That may be one of the most revealing chapters in the 75-year history of FAMU pharmacy and one of the least fully documented.