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The African-Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War

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  • 85 African-Americans traveled to Spain to fight alongside the Republican side in the civil war.
  • Their motivation was the defense of civil rights and the fight against the rise of fascism.
  • They were part of the Lincoln Brigade, made up of 2,800 Americans.

 

Alfonso Domingo, co-director of the documentary “Invisible Heroes: African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War”, explains the unknown work of the men who defended the rights denied to them in their own country.

James Yates was an African-American who decided to travel to Spain in 1936 to fight with the republican side against fascism. The documentary "Invisible Heroes: African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War" tells the story of the Lincoln Brigade, composed of 2,800 Americans, including 85 African-Americans. These men were part of an unknown chapter of history between Spain and the United States.

Like thousands of people of the southern United States, James Yates was working in the cotton fields in Mississippi. Due to poverty and the lack of freedom, he decided to emigrate to New York, where he took several precarious jobs in factories and businesses. He arrived at a bad time: the crash of 1929 meant he was living through the years of the Great Depression.

"At that time, Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia, which was an outrage for the African-American collective, since they considered Ethiopia as the only independent black country," says the co-director of the documentary, Alfonso Domingo. It was a remote land for the Americans and many did not get the visa to go to the Italo-Ethiopian war. However, they already developed a strong conscience against fascism.

By the time the Communist International called for volunteers to fight with the republican side, many Americans wanted to participate; African-Americans were specifically motivated to fight against racism. In total, some 50,000 volunteers from 54 countries came to that call. African Americans were not the only ones: More than 1,200 Cubans and Caribbeans stood alongside the republicans, according to the writer Alejo Carpentier.

This is how the Lincoln Brigade was formed, which was the first integrated unit in the military history of the United States. "Moreover, the only military unit that was commanded by an African-American before the Second World War", Domingo says. blacks, whites, Latinos and Jews fought together; there was no segregation.

"The first time in my life that I felt free was in Spain" Yates recounted in his memoirs, From Mississippi to Madrid. In Spain, he could go to any restaurant or talk with all of his neighbours. It was a great contrast to what he found once back in New York, where he was denied entry to a hotel for being black. "There I realised that I was back in America," he said.

Yates drove trucks and on one occasion he had to transport the famous writer Ernest Hemingway, with whom he exchanged a few words. However, the American writer did not consider Yates’ story. After all, for him, he was a black man driving a truck, as explained in the documentary.

At the end of the war, the brigade members were evacuated and returned to the United States. When they arrived in the port of New York, they were received by a crowd of supporters who were aware of the cause. But from there, the difficulties began. "They were persecuted by the FBI and by the entire weight of the US administration that saw them as dangerous communists," says Domingo.

In the case of Yates, he was automatically fired from every job he had, which forced him to work for himself. He set up a shop where he fixed televisions and never left the social struggle: he gave talks about the Lincoln Brigade, defended civil rights and wrote his memoirs, which he edited with great difficulty. Yates returned to Spain several times and wrote a second book about the city of New York that never got published. He died in New York and was buried in a military cemetery.

Domingo says that this story was set by the people who continue to fight for freedom and justice even if they lose the battles: "The war of equality will win all over the world, sooner or later.”

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