Part Two: Black Antifascists In the Spanish Civil War
53:02 Share

Time is precious, and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24-7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments, and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne Tha God. And guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards. And it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Weezy. Okay, we got...

The R&B Money Podcast with Tank and J. Valentine. We got the Woman Evolved Podcast with Sarah J. Roberts. We got Good Moms, Bad Choices. Carrie Champion will be there with her Naked Sports Podcast. And the Trap Nerds Podcast with more to be announced. And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect Marketplace with Black-owned businesses. Plus...

the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us. All right, listen, you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at black effect.com flash podcast. Proudly sponsored by Nissan.

Hello, and welcome to Cool People Distract Themselves from the Apocalypse by Reading History, your podcast for reading history instead of thinking about the apocalypse. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy, and that's always what this show is called. And also, I have a guest, but the guest is sort of the host, and that guest is Jordan. Hi, Jordan. Hello.

How is this a totally different day? That bit's kind of old. Everyone knows that we record on the same day, and then I just find that amusing. I like the little peek behind the curtain. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad today I get to be the time traveler instead of being time traveled on. That's true. Yeah. And I don't have to wait until today in order to hear all these things. I get to hear them now. But the other person who is on the call is Sophie. Hi, Sophie. Hi.

Sophie's our producer. That's me. We also have an audio engineer named Rory. Hi, Rory. Hi, Rory. And our theme music was written for Spion Woman. And this is part two of a two-parter about the anti-fascist black history of going from resistance in the slave nightmare world of the United States over to...

I always hear people say the sands of Spain. I haven't spent a lot of time in Spain. Maybe there's a sands there. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know too much about the topography of Spain either, but I never really think sand. I know, but it's come up in a bunch of different things. So we're going to say the sands of Spain anyway, just out of because it sounds romantic. This is part two. And in part one, let's see, our heroes just crossed the Pyrenees.

from uh what was it from Mississippi originally and then up to Harlem yeah a lot of them are from Mississippi some from Midwest there's a lot of Ohio involvement in this story that I was not expecting um Ohio used to be based I know right I'm like when you did that episode on the I can't even remember about Oberlin and all that stuff it's like Oberlin talks a lot of game but no one here believes them but maybe we should yeah it used to be Ohio dude come bring it back

Bring back that energy. And now they are crossing the Pyrenees into Spain. What happens? Well, I kind of want to take it back again to talk about some of the commitments. Oh, you did a magpie to me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Not just yet. Not yet. Not yet.

So kind of the talk before is like there is a lot of history around like the racial politics of the Communist Party at this time and like ways that they were taking a lot of dubs, also a lot of L's. But one dub they did in this too is... I've inferred from context what a dub is. I am old, but I figured it out. It's short for W. Yes. It means win. Okay. Oh, magpie. You're so pure and good.

Every time you have a pop culture reference you don't get, I feel you on that because I don't either half the time. So I'm just like, okay, they're still solid here.

Yeah. Okay. So they've taken some wins and some losses. And one of their big wins was they did as a lot of communists do. As soon as they heard about the Republic needing people, they formed a committee. They formed a committee and they had a volunteer drive that was mainly through word of mouth and through ads. And what I find really interesting is this use of media and how they...

Basically, the way they got their ads into newspapers through kind of like this embargo on any American citizens having any involvement in Spanish Civil War...

was they put in ads into newspapers that were asking for workers for spain so they would say something along the lines of spain needs american workers and they would like ask for money to help send people across and they'd be like your contribution helps save spain from fascism hard-pressed by the fascist invaders the spanish people call on the american workers to take on

They would claim that they would take on like industrial or productive jobs in Spain so that each worker from America would free up a Spanish worker to join the military forces of his or her own country. Like that was like the logic they were using in the ads that would help them get through censorship, which I think is really beautiful. Yeah.

It kind of reminds me of the different ways that like through music and song, there was like literally pathways to freedom, like through the Underground Railroad and through so many other different things. It's like, if you know, you know, this may be a poem to you, but it's getting me northwest, south and east to the Ohio River. Yeah. OK. I also I think it's productive labor to shoot fascists in history.

Only in history. It would be morally and legally wrong now for some reason that I can't quite determine. But yeah, in getting to Spain, a lot of volunteers, and especially a lot of black volunteers, they had to lie heavy. They lied their ass off. They were saying we went to, we were tourists or students. Some of them like pretended to be archaeologists to the point that they were scared of the feds watching them or like international police, like,

So they would like pick up rocks outside of the train station and like look at it through each other and be like, Oh, isn't this an interesting rock?

And it was really a lot of heavy organizing happening with the Communist Party as well. And there's this one white communist, his name is Steve Nelson, and he was from Pennsylvania. And one of their motivators was they heard that the English were signing up and they were like, we can't let the English out organize us. So we have to send our own volunteers to Spain. Yeah.

Yeah, for the main focus of this episode, I just wanted to highlight a lot of the black anti-fascists that went over to Spain and really harp on the point that fighting fascism is not just about the combatant. And for every combatant, there's at least 10 to 20 other support roles or even just as important roles that are happening.

So to start, I want to talk about Paula Robeson. Born in Princeton, New Jersey, Robeson was an internationally renowned singer, actor, activist, and he became one of the most influential African-American figures in the 20th century.

Active throughout the 1930s, Robeson used his celebrity and oratorical skills to champion the Republican cause in Spain during the Civil War. Although he wasn't a combatant, Robeson's powerful speeches and writings, featured in outlets like The Negro Worker at the time, provided a moral and cultural impetus for anti-fascist resistance, and it was a fight between freedom and oppression. A fight that connected directly to the struggles of Black people in the United States and across the world.

Robeson has famously said, and I grabbed this quote from Martin Duberman's book, Robeson, which is a biography. And he said, quote, the artist must elect to fight for freedom or slavery. I have made my choice. I have no alternative, end quote. And Robeson used his voice. He traveled to Spain in 1938 at the height of the war where he performed for the troops and especially finding joy in singing and speaking with the international volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

He sang songs in English, Spanish, songs of hope, solidarity, resistance, and it wasn't just a show. Wait, was that, sorry, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the American Volunteers? Yes, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the American Volunteers, and specifically, each brigade had their own name for their volunteers that were based on some progressive or radical person at the time. There was a lot, other countries had a lot better names than the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, to be honest, because I hate.

Just fact check, hate Lincoln. Terrible, terrible person. Right after that Emancipation Proclamation, 64 Lakotas dead. So yeah, fuck Lincoln on this podcast, but no critical support. But Robinson was like, oh, the brigade, the brigade's chill. And he believed his art was a weapon and his concerts were morale boosters for the exhausted soldiers risking everything against Franco's fascists. He also raised funds for Spanish refugees who,

organized rallies back in the States, and worked to keep up the international attention on the Spanish people's fights. When he got home, he kept speaking out, drawing direct lines between the fascism abroad and all the racism at home. And he warned that if fascism succeeded in Spain, it would threaten people everywhere, especially black people fighting Jim Crow oppression in the U.S. And the U.S. and the FBI hated him for it.

His activism in Spain would later be used against him during the McCarthy era when he was blacklisted and eventually had his passport revoked, which I believe it wasn't until 58. I'll get into it later, but until he got it back. And that was a landmark case for a lot of American Spanish Civil War vets that came back to get their passports back to be able to have any sort of traveling.

Another wonderful person that came out of Ohio, well, they're from Georgia, but came out of Ohio was Salaria Key. Actually, I guess now they're Salaria Key O'Reilly because she married an Irish dude. Born on July 13th, 1913 in Georgia. And her father was a hospital gardener who was killed in a car accident.

killed by a patient when she was a baby, prompting the family to relocate to Akron. And she was raised by her older brothers, fighting racist barriers in Ohio that had denied her access to nursing school. She then moved to New York in 1930s, graduating from Harlem Hospital School of Nursing in 34. While she was still a student, she fought for racial justice, successfully helping desegregate the hospital staff dining room and improve working conditions for black nurses.

So she's already doing good shit. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And she was the person who I mentioned at the beginning that during the Ethiopian invasion by Italy organized funding for a 75 bed hospital in Ethiopia at the time. So he's doing a lot of that on the ground work. Yeah. And after her graduation, she became one of the head nurses at Seaview Hospital and then became really politically activated. Yeah.

Some people claim she joined the party. By the party, I mean the Communist Party of the USA. But she has formally denied any membership, really claiming that her actions were more motivated by her deep Catholic faith and anti-racist convictions and an ideological alignment with the Republic in Spain.

And around this time, she was also denied access to work with the American Red Cross because of her race being, quote, like contentious in the fields. Like the supervisor was like, I'm not racist, but people on the ground are really racist. So you can't have the job.

I'm sure that's the only time anything like that's ever happened. It's so obviously hypocritical. No one would ever do that. Yeah, no. And I mean, that stopped after 1965. So right. So I mean, nothing great. Jim Crow ended. And yeah, actually, we're kind of chill in America. We can end the podcast right here. Yeah.

She denied opportunities to serve in Ethiopia, but she also at that time was more dedicated of doing local work in her community and trying to then do solidarity work, which was the impetus for doing the stuff that she knew well, which was working as a medical worker and organizing folks around that to get support that was needed on the ground in Ethiopia. Yeah.

Later, she ended up volunteering for the Spanish Civil War through the American Medical Bureau, joining the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in 1937 around March, and she became the only African American nurse in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, working at a field hospital near Madrid called Villapaz, where she was appointed head surgical nurse.

There she supervised white nurses, an unprecedented opportunity for a black woman in the Jim Crow era, from the United States especially, and treated wounded soldiers from a variety of countries. Experiences she later described as among the most fulfilling of her life. She was also captured at one point by nationalist forces and imprisoned for six weeks before being freed.

Also in the Spanish Civil War is where she met her husband, John O'Reilly, who was an injured Irish volunteer. And I can only imagine what that love story was like. I want a movie on that. Yeah. In 38, she was also injured in a bombing raid, forcing her to return to the U.S. That same year, she published a pamphlet memoir called Salaria Key, a Negro nurse in Republican Spain, offering more of a firsthand account of her time in that war that I highly recommend for folks.

And I think it's interesting because we talk about it all the time. Like, oh, well, they weren't, you know, the nurses aren't the frontline fighters. And like, in a war like this, you are a frontline fighter. She was captured. She was bombed. Like, she's a frontline fighter. What else do you have to go through? I know. And it's also like a nonsensical distinction anyway. But like, damn.

I'm glad she survived. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And she's also mentioned in some documentaries out there that folks can watch. I think one called The Good Fight where she's interviewed in that directly. Cool. There's also another person, Knute Frankson, who was a Jamaican-born auto mechanic and volunteer and one of the few black members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as well, which overall there was about 90 total black folks that went over from the U.S. that we can count. Yeah.

And he wrote a lot of letters. One quote from one is, quote, And that comes from a letter he was writing, I believe, in the mid-1900s.

To his lover at the time. Or friends back home in the states. When kind of justifying. Why he went and came. Because he was already doing political work before. But like a lot of people. You don't tell everyone where you're going. When you're going to go fight in the anti-fascist war. Halfway across the world. People might want to stop you. Your mom might be like no. But he came to the United States. In around 1917. Initially settling around in Pennsylvania. Where he worked as a machinist.

And he eventually then moved on to Detroit, Michigan, where he worked in the automobile industry and became deeply involved in the labor organizing and black radical politics of the area. He was a member of the United Automobile Workers of America, the National Negro Congress, NAACP, and joined the Communist Party USA in December 1934, where he served as a section organizer.

Driven by his anti-fascist convictions in solidarity with oppressed people globally, he sailed over to Europe on the Queen Mary in April 1937, arriving in Spain in around May, and he joined the international brigades and was assigned to the International Auto Park in Albicet as a chief mechanic, a crucial position given the shortage of trained machinists in Spain at the time. So he actually kind of was doing what the ad said. You know what he was doing?

I mean, like more directly in a military function, but yeah. That's cool. Cause like Detroit is like the center of automobiles, at least in the States and probably on some level, like one of the main ones in the world. So you're like, yeah, I'm fucking showing up from the fucking Detroit union to come fix the anti-fascist cars. That's like,

that's kind of cool and then immediately became the head mechanic and also part of that was because he spoke fluent spanish which enabled him to teach engine repair to young spaniards in his off hours demanding a commitment to not just the war efforts but education and solidarity so he was keeping it running he eventually got injured as everyone in a war front has the possibility of doing no matter where you are whether you have the gun in your hand or you have the wrench in your hand

Also, he was transferred around different hospitals, recommended for rest and reassignment to auxiliary services, and then eventually moved to Barcelona in 38 and requested repatriation for medical treatment and then returned to the U.S. I believe he eventually...

Left again the US cuz shit was hectic But it's definitely a story of someone who survived the war and went on to go and still do so much more And that's something with all of these people. I am giving the loosest introductions And then another black anti-fascist I want to talk about is Edward Carter who was born in 1916 Los Angeles, but he grew up all over the world and

India, Shanghai, and the US, his parents were missionaries, and from early on, he saw colonialism and racism firsthand. He spoke four different languages, Hindi, English, Mandarin, and German, and even as a teenager, he knew his life would be about fighting injustice. By the time he was a young man, he had already joined the fight against fascism, not in Europe, but in Asia. He fought alongside Chinese forces resisting Japanese invasion during the 1930s.

But Carter wasn't done. When fascism rose in Europe, he knew he had to do more. He was strong, smart, and seasoned in battle. And Spain wasn't just another war for him. It was a global fight in the fight for freedom. And for black people, working people, and oppressed people everywhere. He also ended up going past Spain into World War II. And despite his experience in fighting against the Japanese and fighting in the Spanish Civil War, he

The U.S. military tried to keep Carter out because of, one, racism, and two, he had fought in Spain, which was an issue for a lot of Spanish anti-fascists who then went to go fight in World War II. They were seen as too radical. Wait, have you heard the word that they got called? No. They're called premature anti-fascists.

Like you are anti-fascist too early. You can't be trusted. And it's so weird to me that that was actually used as a pejorative. And it's not as weird to me because I'm like the U.S. was never really anti-fascist even when we joined World War II. It's because our territory got bombed and then we decided to recognize Hawaii as a state. Like then afterwards became more of a big thing. Yeah.

Yeah, he ended up going into the World War II, though, still in a segregated unit, the 12th Armored Division, and fighting in Europe, and he became a legend. During the battle in Germany, Carter crossed open ground under heavy enemy fire, and he was hit five times but kept moving. He killed six German soldiers and captured two more, almost single-handedly. Always gotta have solidarity, right?

And his commanders knew that he deserved the Medal of Honor, the highest U.S. military award, but because he was black, he was denied. Instead, they gave him the Distinguished Service Cross and pushed him out of the Army after the war. Oh my God. Yeah. He died in 63 and was never recognized in his time by the military or any institution. But decades later, you know, first black president Bill Clinton had to come up and be like,

award him the medal of honor and the america's highest military award and like made him the first black soldier like i think technically to receive it but one of the first which yeah it's one of those those crazy crazy things i'm just like okay but do you know what he didn't get uh where she probably was inundated by ads um you know what he did get

Much like you. We have something in common with that, man. We too have a chance to have a little taste of American freedom by getting our choice of, well, we actually don't have our choice in our ads. I don't know. There's some ads going to come now and they're going to be there.

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne Tha God, and guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards, and it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B, and Weezy, okay? We got...

We'll be right back.

the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us, all right? Listen, you don't want to miss this. Tap in and grab your tickets now at blackeffect.com slash podcast. There's a lot in life that feels like it should be guaranteed that just isn't. Fortunately, AT&T guarantees connectivity you can depend on or they'll make it right. AT&T, connecting changes everything. Terms and conditions apply. Visit att.com slash guarantee to learn more. And we're back. Hello. Hello.

Yay, we're back. And we're still in Spain. Back to Spain. And then there was James Yates, who I used heavily to quote and put a lot of context and emotional context for this piece here. He came in and immediately joined the motor corps. He transported food and medicine to the front lines under fire and

What's interesting about him is he started doing food delivery under the Thalmann Brigade, which was the German Brigade at the time. The German Anti-Fascist Internationalist Brigade. Yeah, German Anti-Fascist Brigade. And he was kind of salty about it at first. He was like, I wanted to be with Americans, mainly because I can't speak German and this is really stressful in a war situation. Where they're like, go here, do this. And I'm like, uh...

But then eventually he ended up also serving as a ambulance driver, which was so vital. Like they would drive into war-torn places as things were happening, get folks in and bring them back to the medical station while bullets were still flying around and all that stuff.

Yates ended up being injured in one of these runs when aerial bombing and offenses were going on, and that led to them going back to the U.S. kind of near the end of the Spanish Civil War.

And then there was Dr. Arnold Donowa, which I could write his own introduction, but I just think this little context from Yates' books introducing him and about some of the doctor's experience on what doing medicine in the Spanish Civil War was like is great context for folks to keep in mind. So from Mississippi to Madrid, James Yates writes about Dr. Arnold Donowa as such, quote,

A well-known dental surgeon from Harlem and a graduate of Howard University, he was one of 100 doctors, nurses, and ambulance drivers from the American Medical Bureau. Dr. Donawa left Albicet for a grueling period of work at the front, and after that, he was given charge of the jaw surgery department at Valkyrie.

Later, Dr. Donnerall was to talk about some of the conditions in Spain during the war. Quote,

Sometimes, it was hard to get the old bloodstains entirely out, but we managed to sterilize the old bandages and make it fit for use. We did not have a drop of Novocaine in the hospital, and I thought we might be able to get some with the move, and I did, but not enough. Only a thousand amples. This, as well as many other indispensable drugs, were almost unobtainable in Spain in those final days. There were so many items, things we had taken for granted back at home, we lacked in Spain, but we could not get them back.

Damn.

Imagine getting your, you're like wounded. I mean, I guess you have bigger, I guess if you're in a war, everything is bad, but imagine being like, ah, I'm wounded. I'm going to the hospital. I'm finally at the hospital. That bandage that has been wrapped around me is currently bloody. Like it's an old stain, right? But there's no peace of mind, no point of service, like a peace of mind at all.

according to James Yates after the war he had returned to his dental practice in Harlem and had donated his time to returning veterans of the Spanish Civil War because it was also very hard I mean we all know health care in America imagine a hundred years ago imagine being black

So there was one of those things that he still organized with and around while he was back home. And in 1945, he was elected the president of the North Harlem Dental Association and advocated for socialized medicine that would guarantee medical protection for all Americans.

Which is ahead of its time and still not happened. Yeah, honestly. And there were people that came in to do so many different roles in the Spanish Civil War. Like there was a lot more labor than just picking up a gun for Spain. Pat Roosevelt was a pilot who joined the brigade after being barred from flying in the U.S. due to racism. And he simply went over it just because he said, quote, I went to Spain because I want to fly. And that's from a conversation they had in Mississippi to Madrid with James Yates.

Hell yeah. And even cooking like is extremely revolutionary and like sustaining ourselves and having that sort of ability to have an energy source just on a basic material level, let alone breaking bread with people is powerful in and of itself.

But there was James Robertson, who was a black cook from the South in the United States, and he would feed hundreds with not only the rations that were provided by the war efforts, but also by foraging whenever he could and teaching other folks how to forage. And it was said that he, quote, made the best olive pie in all of Spain. So that's something right there. It's like they even had dessert. Yeah.

I don't know if olive pie is dessert. I bet it's a savory pie. I've never had olive pie. Maybe I'm wrong. You know what? You're probably not wrong because I make an olive bread at work. It's pretty savory. I guess you're actually the cook here. Anyway, yeah. But yeah, there were many different experiences that different soldiers had to come through and to, and there was...

Walter Cobbs, who was a black driver in the Spanish Civil War, and he was almost shot by Republican forces because he had captured a fascist truck and tried to drive it right up to the lines of the anti-fascists. And at first they thought he was a Moroccan soldier. He had said, quote, if I didn't speak Spanish, I would have been shot by my own side. It's something, end quote, it's something he told James Yates as well. And

This is kind of the moment that I have to mention Moroccan. Yeah, the fact that there's black people fighting on the fascist side as well. Yeah. Yeah.

Which kind of begs the point of like, what were Moroccans doing on the fascist side of the Civil War that they were able to be confused with the black folks from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade? Which, if folks didn't know, Franco needed some serious help early on in this war. I mean, he had support from Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and he had just practiced down in Ethiopia, etc.

But what's less talked about is that Franco also brought in thousands of Moroccan soldiers from Spain's colony in northern Morocco called the Spanish Protectorate. And they had fought in colonial wars before. And Franco had trusted them a bit more than some of his own Spanish soldiers at the time because, like, they were colonial troops under Spanish war. I mean, they pretty much couldn't say no if they wanted to. Right. Right.

And since they're not like Spaniards, they're like, it's less likely that they're going to switch and fight for the Republic or whatever, because they're like more...

literally invading another place because where they live was invaded. Yeah. And Franco himself was a general that was like, I think they had a lot more influence over this side of Spanish, uh, like military political realm and, uh, say at the time. Um, yeah. So, I mean, they operated a lot as shock troops for the nationalists. They were colonial subjects. So orders were orders, disobeying meant prison death, or even punishment for their families back at home. Um,

And it's the colonial and imperialist outposts that like modern policing as well as like here and in the Philippines with the US specifically is like a place where we a lot of our like policing tactics come from. And like the way to do policing as well as like terroristic social control was experimented with by colonizers.

Leveraging economic desperation also played a big role because being a soldier was one of the few ways that you can make a steady living no matter kind of where you are in the world. At least allegedly, that's why a lot of soldiers revolt because they don't get paid. And even if it meant fighting a war that wasn't really theirs, as well as like that faith solidarity that I talked into earlier, like.

Faith leaders that already had power within a set society were more likely to support Franco because they also hated secularism or how they viewed secularism of the Spanish Republicans. Yeah. And many faith-based groups around the world saw the nationalists as more respectful of faith and tradition and

And after the Spanish Civil War kind of came to its end in 1939, Franco's victory didn't kill the spirit of a lot of these volunteers. It just scattered them into new fights back into their home, even more hardened.

For many black vets, the internationalism they had just forged in the war, being able to have and be an integrated unit, being able to lead units for the first time, like Oliver Law was a black anti-fascist who became one of the head commanders of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but died very shortly into that, but is thought to be one of the first black Americans to lead as either segregated or mostly white unit.

Yeah, I find that fascinating. Like it ties into what you're saying about the pilot too, right? Is that like, well, we don't have to fight in segregated units in Spain or I'm allowed to fly a plane in Spain. And so, yeah, it doesn't surprise me that the first black person to lead like white soldiers, white American soldiers, right?

Wasn't in the U.S. Army. It was Americans fighting in a Republican army. Yeah, and a lot of them, they came back with this new understanding of solidarity. Maybe not even new, but a very material understanding of this different racial context and then came right back into Jim Crow America. It was still in full legal effect until...

the mid-1960s and then de facto social until, well... Everything's fixed now. Yeah. We didn't have a whole uprising about it in 2020. I don't know what you're talking about. Yeah, I mean, get ready for the next. When...

Yeah, because they came home into like full extreme nationalism of white supremacists, country, state and local dictatorships due to the lack of voting restrictions, racial labor exploitation and lynching as social control and sport. So when veterans like Yates came home, literally because of the U.S. isolationism,

The FBI was waiting for them. They would get off the plane and the agents would... Yates said that the agents looked like they would have been more comfortable with the fascists that they were fighting if they had came home. And probably true. If you know how it happened after the World War II, we're more than happy to welcome in Nazis into our institutions of power. Yeah.

But they took his passport and lots of veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's passports because it was against the U.S. foreign policy to go to Spain at the time. So once they were found out, they were restricted. And it wasn't restored until Kent v. Dulles in 1958 that ruled that the U.S. government could not deny a citizen a passport just because of their beliefs or affiliations without due process, which...

Due process in America is a whole nother conversation in and of itself. Yeah. Everything's fine. I don't know what it's a history podcast. Yeah. And then most of the veterans themselves of all races, they struggled to find work. The FBI and eventually the house of un-American committees made sure of that and

The FBI would literally do like think of like some of the COINTELPRO type of psychological terror they would do. Like you try to go get a job, you go to the interview, you think it's all nice, you go home. Your prospective future boss also just got to visit an interview from the FBI directly about you. And it was a big deterrent as well, especially in Jim Crow America, where there's already so many deterrents.

A lot of folks stayed politically active. A few, like those who had been aligned with the communist organizers and communist party, had felt betrayed during the McCarthy era. And others built solidarity networks that endured, which were some of them were like the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade itself decided to create its own support group.

And some of them, like some folks were able to find gigs through the Communist Party. Like there was a section organizer things and anything that the party could do, but it wasn't really enough for all the veterans that went to really be able to help them. But support groups like Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade raised money to support those coming home, those in detention due to breaking the non-intervention policy and...

Something totally not related to now, some of them were not being full citizens or not having like the right paperwork because they were born in the South or they were born in different places that didn't have like a lot of civil registries up until that point. So when they came back and their paperwork didn't look too nice, they got held in immigration stuff and some of them even deported.

God, imagine being born in this country, going and fighting for what this country ostensibly stands for of a democratic republic, and then coming back and just being like, oh, no, you don't, uh, things don't line up. Uh, get the fuck out of here. Do you even exist? Uh, not here. And a lot of folks came back feeling like they had lost the war.

Well, they kind of did. Well, they did, but they came back, but then they were also in radical spaces, and they felt too revered by the people around them. People were like, oh, you're so cool. You did that, and that actually pushed a lot of people out of more politically active spaces. They were like, y'all are going too hard around me.

Yeah, like no, this was a, we fucking don't call me a hero. I just suffered incredible loss. Yeah, we have no good way to talk about war. Definitely not in the 1920s. Like that's for sure. But do you know what we do have a good way to talk about? Is it ads?

We do. We have a lot of, people have done a lot of work writing about the impacts of advertisements and how we can use them to learn about goods and services with which to enrich our lives. Here's Ed's.

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24-7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne Tha God. And guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards. And it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Wheezy. OK, we got the R&B Money Podcast with Tank and Jay Valentine. We got the Woman of All Podcast with Sarah J. Roberts.

We got good moms, bad choices. Carrie Champion will be there with her Naked Sports podcast and the Trap Nerds podcast with more to be announced. And of course, it's bigger than podcasts. We're bringing the Black Effect marketplace with Black-owned businesses plus the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us, all right? Listen, you don't want to miss

And we're back. Welcome, welcome.

So to kind of get into some of the life of folks after the war, a lot of folks were very stringent, especially because of all the political reverence that they got to keep their class ties. Even though there were even lots of wealthy sympathizers that offered to free them from the debt that they were in and pay their way through schooling and enter the more professionalized class. And there was some folks who still denied that because they're

they saw it as like class traitoring, which I don't know if someone's willing to pay for my schooling. I'm like, please do it. Yeah. Politics has moved on. Yeah. Very great. I see where they're coming from, but yeah, I would be not be mad at anyone who did that. Yeah. Um,

So there was another one of the support groups, the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln brigade, like by the end or like near the fifties, there was a decline in how many veterans were actually still active in it. And most folks still stayed friends because of like the political and social commitments from war combined with the public sentiment against communists and against them at the time being viewed as communists. And a lot of them were, and, and,

One thing that I find interesting too is like they also still built a lot of solidarity through a lot of the legal battles that they had to continue to go through because they were getting wrapped up in the Red Scare and the McCarthy era stuff.

as the scary communists that actually picked up a gun to go do something being premature anti-fascist yeah and a lot of them were still doing like labor organizing or like they were like the one veteran of the alb would get picked up in detroit or in arkansas and be detained for days and that would bring a network together to pull up for each other so there was still that consistent solidarity even if folks weren't day-to-day members in the support group as much that makes sense

Also, they founded that whole city in New York that's named after the ALB, Albany. I timed this just as Jordan was drinking out of a glass on purpose. This is going to be my best joke of the episode. I hope you all enjoyed it.

It was the worst joke. Anyway. Uh-huh. Okay. There's a city near me called New Albany that definitely was made by a fascist. So it's just like really funny to me to think about the co-optation of anti-fascism by fascists in this New Albany. Yeah, in this hypothetical world where Albany is named after the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Uh-huh. Oh, that's my headcanon. I don't even know who Albany is. Yeah.

Yeah, one thing I find interesting, too, is that after the war, they had this... There were, like, ex-party members. There were anti-communist vets that didn't want to associate with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade afterwards, especially when they came home. A lot of them just to keep their head down. But there was this very specific line around deserters and whether or not when you came home to America, you could be a part of the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

If you deserted when you were on the ground in Spain and they really just had one line, which was like they were allowed to participate if they had admitted honestly to their regrets and shortcomings on the battlefield. And as long as they didn't disavow the Republic, the brigade or the Communist Party, that was like their line within the VALB. Yeah.

And then, yeah, one thing to kind of end on is like years, years later, James Yates himself end up going back to Spain. It's past 1958. They're able to get their passport back now. And they're like, I'm a free man. Where should I go? Obviously I should go to Spain. They wanted to travel Europe more broadly, but they were like, I can't go to Europe and not go to Spain. Like I spent so much of my formative time

years there even if it is just a couple I think they were only there for maybe a year or two but a year or two of war is a lifetime and it's yeah the end of life for a lot of people so to survive and to be able to go back is a really beautiful experience but they were terrified yeah it's still Franco town Franco still was in power till I believe the late mid 70s

I can never remember the year that Franco died. This has come up because I live a very normal life. It has come up in conversation like four or five times in the past month that I can't remember when Franco died. But fortunately, whoever I'm talking to also can't remember. Um,

November 20th, 1975. Hell yeah. Sophie knows. Yup. I know because I Googled it. I don't know at the top of my head. No, no, no. In my mind, you know that you celebrate every year. Yeah. I mean, it would be really fucking base if I knew all the dictator's deaths by memory. But... Yeah. No. He's coming up on 50 years dead this year. We should have a party. Oh my God. We should. It'd be a good thing to do in November. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, but they were terrified to go back. And they first stopped in France. They were chillaxing. Then they went to like a border town. They were like, I'm still going to go. I'm still going to go. They got off the train right before the border and was able to talk to like some Spanish refugees and French locals. And as soon as he like decided it was safe to let them know he was a veteran of the Civil War,

So many pokes flocked to him. He was like, the person he was talking to was like, really? Where's Salaria Key? Where's Milton Wolfe? Where's, like, how are people doing? Have you heard of them? And he was just like, whoa, whoa. Is it safe to go to Spain right now? And they're like, if you keep your head down, you can get through it probably. Yeah. Yeah.

So he decided to continue his journey in, and the differences he felt were immediate and stark. As soon as he entered the country on the train, it was the same train he had left, which at the time was bombed out and had no windows. So it was a cold train ride out, a warmer train ride in. There was no gunboats, no Italian gunboats waiting to shell the train at this point. In his hotel, he heard the sounds of torture. It was the point that he had to leave hotels immediately.

Wait, so he went back and he heard people being tortured while he was there because it was still a fascist regime. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, yeah. And then even in his head was like, I should leave this hotel and go to a next one. But he's like, this is probably happening at the next hotel too. So I should just stay.

Because otherwise you're like, well, you know, once the fascist is in charge, hey, at least there's no Italian gunboats. Really, everything's fine now. And then you're like, you get to the hotel and you're like, oh, no, this is torture land. I'm in hell land. Yeah. And one thing he loved about Spain in the beginning was the public life, the communal life of Spain. People in the plaza, it was gone.

People on the street weren't willing to talk to him. People weren't outside communing with each other. He tried to have a conversation with somebody at a park and no, no, no, no. That's an important thing to like think about, about the day to day life under a long term fascist regime instead of like Germany in 1937. But like Spain in the 1950s, no more public life. That's heavy. OK, yeah. Yeah.

And then something happened. At the time, he was working with the NAACP in the US, and he was working on some stuff to free Angela Davis. And he had requested packages to be sent to France with a bunch of buttons to free Angela Davis. They had accidentally landed in Spain, where he specifically requested them not to come, but still forwarded nonetheless.

He was a bit terrified about that, but he had a plan. I'm going to read from his book what he did about that. Quote,

End quote.

And he just did a little bit of distribution. Like, I love that story because I'm like, this is the beauty of internationalism, media distribution. Like, how many pigs found those? Like, how many hardened or new radicals found hope by being like, what is this? And this, like, just act of self-preservation, but also resistance. That's cool. Yeah. And then I guess just kind of like a lasting point about this is that

Something that I love about reading about the Spanish Civil War is that they remind us that fighting fascism isn't about the aesthetics. It's not about the flags, the slogans most of the times. It's the food delivery truck, the field hospital, the nurse that won't be moved, the mechanic who teaches solidarity in a garage. It's community defense even decades later, even at home.

And this history matters not to romanticize a war, but to remember what was possible when ordinary people chose to risk everything, not for nationalism, profit, but for dignity. Like affinity groups, cadres, families, and couples came into this fight together, sometimes staggered months at a time. And some would have really sweet reunions on the battlefields and in the rear camps and in the hospitals.

Some came through that treacherous mountain range to receive a heartbreak in finding their best friends murdered. Of those that came in together, some left more alone than ever and with a more diverse set of wounds. Many came to join the resistance as people willing to do anything to fight fascism, and in that, people came out commanders, like Oliver Law, most likely the first black American man to lead a white or integrated unit.

People united in many, many forms of labor. The combatant wouldn't survive and sustain aggression without their nurses and doctors. The medical workers wouldn't get their patients if not for the wartime ambulance drivers.

The drivers go nowhere without their mechanics, and no one was fighting without the cooks, and the world wouldn't have our archives without our artists. Langston Hughes was another artist that came alongside Ernest Hemingway to engage in journalists in the region, and with Robinson to uplift the spirits and harden their own understanding by sharing their expression with the soldiers in the international brigades.

This one thing I have as a call to action is to honor them by studying their choices, their losses, and their resilience. Telling the full story, not just of the battlefield, but of camaraderie, the protection, the cookouts, the poems, the organizing. And then I just have one last quote from Yeats that I think really encapsulates the spirit, which is, quote,

Simply put, one's own life is in reality but an unfolding panorama of mutually developing relationships in a time and place beyond an original personal choice."

And yeah, if any of this moved you, I really encourage you to read James Yates' Mississippi to Madrid, look up Salaria Key's writings, and learn about what the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade did after Spain, because there's so much more. There's so much more research about anti-authoritarian militant action, and not all of them share the same identifiers. But it takes a lot to do that research and in drawing a line to the revolt and the passion that anti-fascism isn't over, and neither is our capacity for solidarity.

They did their part, and now it's our turn. We were not handed a finished revolution. Hell yeah. Okay, but you mentioned all the cooks and everyone, but you forgot to bring back the most important character, the one who just wanted to fly a plane. I find him fascinating because it's like, oh, America's so racist that if he wants to be a pilot, he has to go into a war in a foreign country. Like,

And I, okay, not to just keep going on about the pilot, but one of the things I like about the two, right, is you're talking about all these people who have a gradient of level of like political understanding or how central politics is to who they are, you know? And you have the people who are like, look, I believe in this stuff and I gotta, if I say I believe it, I gotta do it. And then you have people who are like, well, people are getting shot and I'm a medic. And so I'm going. And you have people who are like, I won't fly a plane.

you know? Yeah. Like maybe he was like the most political of all of them, but like, I love this version of him where he's just like, nah, I just really want to fly a plane. I mean, fucking fly. There's so much to say about Garland too. I mean, he ended up joining Langston Hughes and Harry Hayward and radio broadcast when he got back to the United States from Madrid. He,

He did work with the American Medical Bureau and other organizations to really like lobby. Because one thing about the people who got sent back early, especially for being injured, was they were there to test the political climate of the United States to see what would happen when the war ended. To see what they were, other folks were sending, like what the Spanish battalions and brigades were sending their volunteers back to.

Oh, wow. So it was even like kind of a additional danger they were taking for their comrades was to be the one to go back first to figure out and test the waters. Damn. I had a friend whose grandfather, like he was one of my friends like in kind of the goth scene, wasn't particularly a political person. I was like, oh yeah, my grandfather fought in the Spanish Civil War, I think. And didn't know like the first thing about it. And I'm like, that means your grandfather was a hardcore leftist. Like...

We should talk about that. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. And I think that's also something that like, especially redoing these archives around war and history is so important because especially in America, we don't talk about what happened during the wars a lot, unless it's over glorifying it or any of this. Milton Wolf talked heavily after when they came back, who was another white volunteer in the communist party about how,

No one told me what it was going to be like in the Foxtrot. Nobody told me what it was going to be like in No Man's Land. Nobody was going to tell me what it was like to see bodies dead, but still moving. Terrifying. Lord. Well, that's a terribly unuplifting note to end on. But the note that you chose to end on in your script was really good, which is that it's like, okay, like we look at this history and

Because we care about the present, we care about the future. And this history has been very much buried and I love getting to see it. So thank you for telling me all this. Yeah, thank you for having me.

Well, is there anything you want to... You have a podcast. Tell me about your podcast or anything else you'd like to plug. Yeah, I mean, okay, yeah. One, definitely go check out The Dugout, especially if you're interested in black folks doing anti-fascism and in the Spanish Civil War because I did so much research. I'm going to have so much content for The Dugout over the next couple of months. Cool.

But alongside that, I think it's really important for folks to be tapped into the current abolitionist movement that is going on in the United States. And one way that media and media folks have tapped in and played that role is through a couple of projects that I'm involved with called In the Belly and In the Mix. And In the Belly is an abolitionist magazine that is by and for currently incarcerated individuals. Our editorial team and all of our authors are

are currently incarcerated folks with the support of formerly incarcerated folks on the outside. And it's just getting articles from people on the inside to other folks on the inside. And then there's In The Mix, which is a podcast with the same format, hosted by folks that are inside questioning and interviewing sometimes academics or theorists or even just other folks that are on the inside when that's possible. So checking out those two projects, I feel like are real big.

Hell yeah. And if you want to check out anything that I do, you can listen to this show. You can also listen to Live Like the World's Dying, an individual and community preparedness podcast. And I write a newsletter on Substack. And I probably do other things, but that's enough things.

Oh, just randomly. We also have, if you go to patreon.com forward slash dugout pod, we have a free newsletter that comes out monthly about folks who want to stay up to date on some of the more contemporary stuff that's going on and hitting our woes, but in a more tempered and staggered format than the daily news cycle. Check us out over there. Sophie, you got anything? If I want to plug one specific thing, I guess let's send a hood politics with prop. He's been putting out some bangers lately and I love that guy.

They are good. Big props to Prop. Listeners have heard me say this before, but it continues to be true. So you should listen to that.

And you should listen to us next week when we have more cool people. We always end this way. Cool people who did cool stuff. Cool people who did cool stuff is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com. Or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Time is precious and so are our pets. So time with our pets is extra precious. That's why we started Dutch. Dutch provides 24/7 access to licensed vets with unlimited virtual visits and follow-ups for up to five pets. You can message a vet at any time and schedule a video visit the same day. Our vets can even prescribe medication for many ailments and shipping is always free. With Dutch, you'll get more time with your pets and year-round peace of mind when it comes to their vet care.

Peace to the planet. I go by the name of Charlemagne Tha God. And guess what? I can't wait to see y'all at the third annual Black Effect Podcast Festival. That's right. We're coming back to Atlanta, Georgia, Saturday, April 26th at Pullman Yards. And it's hosted by none other than Decisions Decisions, Mandy B and Wheezy. Okay, we got...

We'll be right back.

the food truck court to keep you fed while you visit us all right listen you don't want to miss this tap in and grab your tickets now at black effect.com flash podcast festival proudly sponsored by nissan