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Saga of the Afro-American Members of the ALB
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The saga of the Afro-American members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade remains one of the brightest chapters in U.S. military history, though the truth of their role in the nation's history is basically an unwritten and ignored one.

This history begins with Crispus Attuck's death, the first colonial and Afro-American to fall in the 1776 war of independence. In every U.S. war, Afro-Americans fought and distinguished themselves, despite the continued denial of their full rights to citizenship at home.

It is within this historical context, the fight for full rights, that Afro-Americans volunteered as fighters to cross the ocean, climb the Pyrenees and enlist in the International Brigades. Together with the white Lincolns, they were U.S. citizens of a special kind. They came out of the struggles of the 30's; out of the deep crisis brought on by the Lords of Big Business.

Afro-Americans, the first fired, the last to be hired, the most hungry--and among the first to fight back, joined by the progressive white, working community, organized against Big Business' offensive. They were brutalized by vicious racial terror and legal attacks. But, aided by the Communist Party and the International Labor Defense (I.L.D.), as in the cases of Scottsboro and Angelo Herndon, they would emerge victorious.

These were the years when fascism and racism, finding champions in Hitler and Mussolini, were beginning to move their forces against humanity. The first assault was the bombing of Ethiopia. Enraged by this bombing, Afro-America rose up. To attack Africa was to attack itself. They also saw the stark parallels between fascism and racism. Therefore, the call to fight in Spain became a call to fight the bombers of Ethiopia and Hitler's Condor Legion, allied behind Franco.

And so, they answered the call.

[Narrator:] December 26, 1936. Christmas barely hours gone. The weather, cold. Winter just settling down to severe days laced in icy blasts of wind. Holiday ornaments still aglitter int he windows. The harbor, quiet; later a boat pulls away from its dock. A month barely passes; and a second boat leaves with passengers bound for the same destination. Small groups of passengers followed on boats week after week. The destination, Spain.

On each of these boats the faces of young men, bright, anxious,

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Black, brown and mostly white faces, gleam in the moonlight as they whisper to each other. Others stare off into dark distances, as if expecting to see what they can't see--their futures, and the land they're heading for, many for the first and last time. Many will never see the receding shores and loved ones again. Others will return, armless, blind, legless, or crippled. Still, each face embroiders the moonlight with youth, words and silent convictions.

Such were the first days of the 3500 Black, brown and white men and women, who joined the International Brigade's ranks, as the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, during the Spanish "civil" War. Of the total number, close to 100 are known to have been Afro-American.

Langston Hughes, poet emeritus of the oppressed, and the nation's literary conscience, captured best their convictions in his poem

HERO--INTERNATIONAL BRIGADE:*

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[Voice:]
Blood,
Or a flag,
Or a flame
Or life itself
Are they the same:
Our dream?
I came.
An ocean in-between
And half a continent.
Frontiers,
And mountains skyline tall,
And governments that told me NO,
YOU CANNOT GO!
I came.
On tomorrow's bright frontiers
I placed the strength and wisdom
Of my years.
Not much,
For I am young.
(Was young,
Perhaps it's better said-
For now I'm dead).

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But had I lived four score and ten
Life could not've had
A better end.
I've given what I wished
And what I had to give
That others live.
And when the bullets
Cut my heart away,
And the blood
Gushed to my throat
I wondered if it were blood
Gushing there.
Or a red flame?
Or just my death
Turned into life?
They're all the same
Our dream!
My death!
Your life!
Our blood!
One flame!
They're all the same!

*"Hero - International Brigade," Langston Hughes. From Good Morning Revolution