The place scared her. In the world of her childhood, everything about it was a forbidden mystery. Casellas-Allen is Cuban, but she's also black, and the all-white club was off limits to her for most of her life.

``Even walking past the building with my grandmother, she would pull me hard and say, `Don't even look,' '' Casellas-Allen remembers. ``All I knew is I couldn't go in that place.''

Now she wants that place to come to her. Casellas-Allen, 50, who works as an assistant to Hillsborough County Commissioner Tom Scott, has spent the past seven years trying to join the historically white Cuban Club, or El Circulo Cubano, with the historically Afro-Cuban Sociedad La Union Marti-Maceo.

It wouldn't be a full merger. They would still be separate organizations with individual identities, but they would share in some activities and support each other's events.

Two thoughts motivate Casellas-Allen. The clubs started as one and never should have been separated, she says. And with aging memberships and modern challenges, it's in the best interests of both to find common ground.

You've got to reconcile your past to look to the future, she says.

The idea is backed strongly by Paul Dosal, the white Circulo Cubano's past president.

He's also Casellas-Allen's cousin, although they met for the first time just seven years ago.

Dosal, a 44-year-old University of South Florida history professor, sees tremendous symbolism in the concept.

``It's such a strong statement,'' Dosal says. ``It says you cannot have these arbitrary rules - split people because of the color of their skin.''

Forcing Separation

Tampa's first Cuban social club welcomed both light- and dark-skinned members but after just a few years split along racial lines at the turn of the 20th century. It served immigrants who came to work in Tampa's cigar factories. Many, white and black, fought together in Cuba's war for independence a few years earlier.

Nobody's sure what caused the division. Some say it was a feud, or maybe a fading of the unity the war brought.

Others say it was an extension of Jim Crowism, the widely held notion that whites and blacks shouldn't go to the same schools or belong to the same clubs.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1896 ``separate but equal'' ruling in Plessy v. Ferguson also might have been an influence. It spawned new segregation laws and triggered an increase in racial violence, USF anthropologist Susan Greenbaum wrote in a research paper.

``It would have been illegal to stay together,'' Dosal says. Like most clubs of that era, the Cuban group had schools and other programs where integration was prohibited.

The two groups remained cordial for decades.

But the post-World War II economic boom of the 1950s drove a wedge between them. It created new educational and economic opportunities for whites, including white Cubans, but left Afro-Cubans and black Americans behind, Greenbaum wrote in a 2002 book ``More Than Black, Afro- Cubans in Tampa.''

Resentment deepened when Marti-Maceo's historic building fell to the bulldozers of an urban renewal project in 1965. It was the only ethnic club razed, Greenbaum says, and none of the others rallied to save it.

``The walls of the patio buckled,'' she writes, ``the dance floor splintered apart, sunny scenes of Cuba collapsed into rubble and dust. All they could do was watch.''

Marti-Maceo bought a new building on Seventh Avenue. Although smaller and less attractive, it's more than what Circulo Cubano owns today. Although the famed Cuban Club has been renovated into an Ybor City showcase, a financial crisis 15 years ago put that structure's ownership into the hands of a private foundation.

Marti-Maceo's members have since balked at two efforts to reunite it with Circulo Cubano, fearing in part that these were merely attempts to grab their building.

``They still haven't forgotten the separation from years ago,'' Casellas-Allen says. ``What I've tried to explain to them [is] it wasn't us. What you dealt with or what your parents dealt with years ago was because of the people before us and the Jim Crow laws put in place at that time.''

Dosal thinks that misses the point.

``We would have been embracing the past'' by coming together, Dosal says, ``acknowledging what happened and saying it was a mistake. We would have corrected the mistake. That would have resounded in Havana and New York.

``The reality is we never should have been forced apart.''

This forced separation did more than divide clubs. In some cases, it divided families.

Passing As White

Reminiscing about relatives, Dosal and Casellas-Allen point out the ones who ``passed.'' That's not as in ``passed away.'' It's ``passed'' as in ``passed as white.''

That was a choice that faced Dosal's grandparents.

``My family couldn't straddle the fence,'' Dosal says. ``They had to be white or black, and they chose white.'' His grandmother used to caution him about getting too much sun. It wasn't his health she worried about.

Conversely, Casellas-Allen's family was seen as black. She and Dosal shared great-grandparents, but an artificial racial difference led to them growing up strangers in the same town.

Even as a child, she and her friends were sensitive to racial differences. They used to drop small amounts of bleach into their baths, hoping it might lighten them.

``It really wasn't something we'd tell our parents,'' she says.

But it may have been something young Afro-Cuban girls felt compelled to do to fit in. White kids saw them as black. Black kids saw them as Latin. Casellas-Allen grew up among a small group of friends and relatives at school.

``I was always caught in the middle,'' she says. ``Always.''

Things were a bit different in Ybor City's close-knit neighborhoods. There was still discrimination, but it wasn't as severe as the discrimination black Americans endured. Casellas-Allen's best friend was a white girl who lived a few houses away.

``I was always over there,'' she remembers.

Still, there were lines she knew not to cross, especially when she ventured out in public. Her friend's aunt worked at the Kress store on Seventh Avenue.

``We would go in, get what we needed - because we were always followed around - and leave. They had one checkout line for coloreds, and she was the cashier at that time. We would have to pretend we didn't even know this lady.''

And if they didn't?

``She could have lost her job,'' Casellas-Allen says. ``I could have found my father hanging off a tree someday. The house could have burned. You never know.''

Neither she nor Dosal feel any part of Tampa is off limits today. If anything, the issue is preserving their heritage in the face of assimilation. Not long ago, Casellas-Allen's son applied for a Hispanic scholarship at USF. The adviser asked to see him - not believing he is Hispanic.

Rebuilding Relationships

Circulo Cubano is open now to anyone interested in preserving Tampa's Latin heritage, regardless of race or ethnicity, and doing well. But it came close to vanishing for want of members during the 1990s.

Then Dosal and some friends came up with an idea, the Krewe of Mambi, to honor peasant rebels who fought in Cuba's war of independence.

``Some of Our Founding Members Paid with Their Lives ... The Cost to You will be Considerably Less,'' the group's Web site proclaims.

Wearing historically accurate replica uniforms, the krewe marches in the Gasparilla parade and hosts a number of parties and even an annual Mother's Day picnic. People interested in joining the krewe have to join Circulo Cubano first. The club's membership has increased nearly tenfold, to almost 200, in the six years since.

Even the old-school Marti- Maceo is now led by an Anglo. Ross Bannister, a spokesman for Tampa Electric Co., became president last year. Maintaining the club is a form of historic preservation, he says.

``I told them if they wouldn't mind an Anglo from Texas stepping in for a while, it would be an honor,'' Bannister says. ``Organizations like the Marti-Maceo and the Cuban Club must change to survive. ... There's not a lot the club can offer new members except a chance to be associated with one of Tampa's great community legacies.''

Marti-Maceo struggles, though. Membership is flat, hovering around 70 paid members. But only about a dozen or so are active.

Dosal, meanwhile, says that despite Circulo Cubano's recent growth, he hasn't given up the idea that a rapprochement with Marti-Maceo remains in the best interests of both.

``It takes some courage, I think, and some measure of forgiveness,'' he says. ``Belinda and I have shown that to each other, and we've shown that publicly.''

They marvel at how close they've grown considering how recently they met, and they are confident their communities can find the same warmth.

``What happened in the past happened between them,'' Casellas-Allen says of the older generations. ``We've lost too many years.''

Michael Fechter