African Americans in the Spanish Civil War

On the day after Christmas in 1936, the first contingent of American volunteers intent on fighting the fascist forces threatening democracy in Spain left New York Harbor aboard the SS Normandie. Among these 95 were two African Americans, Alonzo Watson and Edward White. Watson would also be among the first to die on the Spanish battlefield. Nearly 3,000 Americans eventually joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and traveled to Spain to take up what has come to be called "the good fight". Among their number were about 90 African Americans.

This book tells the little-known story of their role in what may be the least understood military conflict of the twentieth century. African-American participation in the Spanish Civil War marks a turning point in American military history. Two decades before the official end of segregation in the U.S. armed forces, black volunteers in Spain fought side by side with white compatriots in the first fully integrated American fighting unit. Oliver Law, a native of Chicago's South-side who was to be killed in battle, served as the first black officer to command a primarily white battalion. In joining "the good fight," the black brigadists also added an important chapter to the tradition of bravery and heroism that characterizes African Americans' long-lived struggle for freedom.

Many saw the fight against fascism in Spain as a symbol of the unsung battles against racism and classism taking place in America and elsewhere. As one black soldier put it, in Spain "we have been able to strike back...at the counterparts of those who have been grinding us down back home." Of particular significance to the African-American volunteers was the opportunity to avenge the Italian fascist invasion of Ethiopia in 1935. Then the only independent African nation, Ethiopia held great historical, religious, and cultural value for black communities worldwide. Mussolini's attack outraged African Americans, but efforts to recruit soldiers to the Ethiopian cause were discouraged by the U.S. government and, consequently, by Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie. In Spain, where Francisco Franco's fascist army was supported by 50,000 Italian troops, black Americans could symbolically fulfill the moral obligation they had felt to defend Ethiopia. Spain wasn't Ethiopia, but it would do.

African Americans in the Spanish Civil War draws from the multitude of sources housed at the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts, to chronicle the experiences of the black American men who served in Spain. A roll of veterans provides biographical sketches and describes the nature of each veteran's service. Reports from the war years by Langston Hughes, Richard Wright, and others depict life at the battlefront. And oral testimonies by several veterans illuminate the personal reasons these men had for engaging in a war so far from home and the ways in which this experience influenced their lives. An introductory essay places African-American interest in the war in historical perspective.

The African Americans who fought in Spain were idealists. They saw in the struggle for Spanish democracy the opportunity to remake a part of the world and believed victory there would improve the chances for justice and equality at home. Their story is one of sacrifice, solidarity, and commitment. This volume represents a beginning in the recovery of that story.