I found the Champs Elysees and couldn't believe that I, a poor fellow from Mississippi, was walking upon such a famous street. It was here that the black singer and dancer Josephine Baker sometimes strolled with her pet leopards, startling and exciting all of Paris. In contrast to the response I was accustomed to receiving from people in America, Parisians smiled and greeted me in the streets.
As I walked toward L'Arc de Triomphe, I paused before a terraced cafe. I wanted to stop for a cognac bud suddenly lost my nerve. Would they serve me? With its gleaming white tablecloths, the cafe looked so rich and prosperous that I hesitated to enter. Suddenly the white faces of the people at the tables looked again like the American faces I'd known all my life.
Dejected, I turned and walked away and I began to sweat. The painful memories of being constantly rejected in my own country didn't allow me to risk entering a French cafe for fear of being turned away. . . I was allowing American racism to govern my conduct over here. . . My country had prorammed me to accept the status of "nigger" and I just didn't know if I would ever be able to overcome it. . .
I came upon the Place de la Concorde and continued walking in uncertainty; passing the prestigious Hotel Crillon, I spotted a Black man. It was the Admiral [name: Admiral Kilpatrick]!
I stopped in surprise. He came out of the hotel and spoke to the uniformed doorman and then he went back in before I could call to him. I was astonished. . . If I hadn't seen the Admiral go in, without being thrown out, I'm sure I would have been too intimidated to enter the door.
My feet sank into the plush carpet and the chandeliers and mirrors were blinding. The air smelled of wealth and power. . .
The Admiral sat with his legs crossed in one of the forbidden-looking chairs. He had a newspaper before his dark face but apparently wasn't reading. His eyes popped wide open when he saw me. He jumped up and shook hands. Instantly his voice lowered itself to a whisper. "Don't tell me they put you up here?"
"No," I said. "Are you staying here?"
"No, no..." He hesitated. "Hell, I just stopped in to read the Herald Times." He looked around at people reflected in the mirrors. It was deadly quiet. "Let's get out of here."
Outisde, he told the doorman, "Well, if Mr. Brown gets here, tell him I been here and gone."
"Very well, monsieur."
A half block up the street he burst out laughing. "I told him I was waiting for Mr. Brown to arrive before I checked in. But you know something? I could have checked in if I had the money. Yesterday I saw a Chinese and an African come in. No trouble. Bellhop grabbed their bags just like they did for everyone else. Sure, I know France is a colonial country. But here in Paris they don't rush to tell you if you're Black, get back." . . .
We cracked up anew over the absurd effects of racism . . .
At the cafe we were seated with bows and "Oui, mounsier." We ordered our drinks, sat back and enjoyed watching the people.
We talked of the World War and of the Spanish War. Merkel [the "enormous German- American seaman"] told us that he had done underground work in Germany, and of the discontent among the German workers. . . We talked of conditions back home; of Roosevelt's popularity and liberalism, and of the reactionary opposition they were trying to whip up again; of its chances of success. "In the end," said Merkel, "you can't fool the workers. Takes 'em maybe a long time to wake up with the newspapers saying lies all the time, but you can't fool 'em.". . .
Merkel wanted to talk, but something drew me to a moving-picture; it would re-establish contact for me.
But even the picture, "Black Legion" (in French), seemed to confirm the decision that had brought me thus far, and it re-established contact, not only with my own country but with progressive forces that were at work around the world. Watching the typical American workingman, in the film, succumb to and accept ideals diametrically opposed to the very attributes that made him an American, you could feel again the power of evil that was at work. An evil power that would split man from man, brother from brother the world over - and you knew again the necessity to fight that power. For here was Fascism in its American manifestation, at work in terms of human beings, not in terms of words set down on paper. Here was the objectification of a conscious force that had as its aim the maintenance of human subjection - by force and violence. Here was something that could make you mad again, and the decent human being finds it difficult to harbor hatred in his heart for any considerable length of time.
Because of distinguished records of bravery and heroism, Negro members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain have been promoted to leading military positions in the Loyalist armies, Lieutenant, Negro Secretary of the English Division of the International Worker's Order declared after a three week tour of war-torn Spain.
"These Negro soldiers are not in the work battalions as was the case of the Negroes who fought in France during the World War. They occupy any miliary position for which they are qualified."
Do any of these Negro volunteers regret having gone to lay down their lives for Spain? Miss [Louise] Thompson answers by giving the exact words of Walter Garland, Negro volunteer from New York, who said, "You know, in a measure we Negroes who have been in Spain are a great deal luckier than those back in America. Here we have been able to strike back in a way that hits at those who for years have pushed us from pillar to post. I mean this - actually strike back at the counterparts of those who have been grinding us down back home."
Richard Wright, "American Negroes in Key Posts of Spain's Loyalist Forces", NYC Daily Worker, September 20, 1937
And now we view fascism on a world scale: Hitler in Germany with the abolition of labor unions, his tyranny over the Jews, and the sterilization of the Negro children of Cologne; Mussolini in Italy with his banning of negroes on the theatrical stages, and his expeditions of slaughter in Ethiopia; the Military Party in Japan with their little maps of how they'll conquer the whole world, and their savage treatment of the Koreans and Chinese; Batista and Vincent, the little American-made tyrants of Cuba and Haiti; and now Spain, and Franco with his absurd cry of "Viva Espana" in the hands of Italians, Moors, and Germans invited to help him achieve "Spanish unity." Absurd, but true!
We Negroes of America are tired of a world divided superficially of the basis of race and color - but in reality on the basis of poverty and power - the rich over the poor, no matter what their color. We Negroes of America are tired of a world in which it is possible for any one group of people to say to another, "you have no right to happiness, or freedom, or the joy of life." We are tired of a world were forever we work for someone else and the profits are not ours. We are tired of a world where, when we raise our voices against oppression, we are immediately jailed, intimidated, beaten, sometimes lynched. . .
I say we darker peoples of the earth are tired of a world in which things like that can happen. And we see in the tragedy of Spain how far the world-oppressors will go to retain their power. To them, now, the murder of women and children is nothing. Those who have already practiced bombing the little villages of Ethiopia, now bomb Guernica and Madrid. . .
Just as in America, they tell the whites that Negroes are dangerous brutes and rapists, so in Germany they lie about the Jews and in Italy they cast their verbal spit upon the Ethiopians. And the old myths of race are kept alive to hurt and impede the rising power of the working class. . .
The fascists know that we long to be rid of hatred and terror and oppression, to be rid of conquering and of being conquered, to be rid of all the ugliness of poverty and imperialism that eats away the heart of civilization today. We represent the end of race. And the fascists know that when there is no more race, there will be no more capitalism, and no more war, and no more money for the munitions makers - because the workers of the world will have triumphed.
"I never been hit. But a bullet can't be worse," Comrade Williams was breathing more regularly now. "Back home," he continued, "I never buddied around with white people. But when we got to the mountains and they paired us up in deuces for that long walk, they didn't pick us by matching color. I guess I would a got to know white people back home. But it happened quick here in Spain." . . .
Jay remembered. "I wish you were with me my last night in Barcelona. Met one of our people from home. A big big shot. Come to see what it's all about. We had quite a session about colored matters. He asked me how many of our folks were over here in the Republican army. I gave him a number. . . 'Well, tell me two things, young man,'" Jay was unconsciously imitating the ministerial manners of the man. "'First, how many of you went or tried to go to Ethipia; second, what would have happened if Ethiopia had had some of this help and enthusiasm?'"
"What did you tell that skull?"
"Well, you know, man, he was a guest. But I tried to straighten him out. I told him the invasion of Ethiopia hit me harder than the news in July '36 from Madrid. Hell, I didn't have enough 'jack' to hide in my mouth. . . We had a protest parade out South. The cops broke it up and put some fine people in the hospital."
Jay had hit something in the memory of the sick man. "Ethiopia," he said. "I wanted to go to Ethiopia and fight Mussolini. Couldn't get there. . . I got to Spain. This ain't Ethiopia, but it'll do."
"I know what you mean. Well, I told him Spain was the only way I could answer for Addis Ababa! I tried to tell what it meant to us Negroes in the original Lincolns. Being part of the first mixed American Battalion of black and white men to go into battle together. . . 'But tell me, don't you think,' his big comfortable face broke into a slick smile, 'aside from the little you can contribute, that you have found personal salvation, not a universal one?' Whatever the hell that means. He said our people were still suffering at home and will be when we get back. Said that most of our people didn't even know we were here. Said our place, if we had ability, was back there."
"Man," Willie said, "he's talking Jim Crow. And he'll go right back there and eat crow. If nothing else happened to the American Negro, for once some of us learned to be men in a place where there ain't a speck of Jim Crow. . . If you look at my papers you see they say, William Williams. Country: North America. Nationality: North American. That's the last time, and I could say the first time, a piece of paper called me anything but 'colored,' 'black,' 'Negro,' or just plain mean: 'nigger.' If I find my deep six here, could I do better? When you get back and somebody asks about me, Willie Willie? Buried some place where white and black march, eat, sleep, fight and love, side by side. . . My deep six will be dug here, " said Williams, "but you and others will go back some day. You and the white comrades will take all you learned and give those crackers hell." . . .
"No, daddy, when that train starts up the north road to Port Bou it'll be taking you home first."
"You say the road north, huh? I took a road north once. I was in a big hurry, too, just like some of the comrades here in S'Agaro. A different reason, of course, I was trying to get the hell out of Georgia before some cracker shot the hell out of me. I was running but when I got north, I found those crackers waiting for me."
"700 Calender Days" by O.H.Hunter
As we drove along, K.[accompanying soldier] got talking and told us the story of Oliver Law. It seems he was a Negro - about 33 - who was a former Army man from Chicago. He had risen to be a corporal in the U.S. Army. Quiet, dark brown, dignified, strongly built. All the men liked him. He began here as a corporal, soon rose to sergeant, lieutenant, captain and finally was commander of the Battalion - the Lincoln-Washington Battalion. K. said warmly that many officers and men here in Spain considered him the best battalion commander in Spain. The men all liked him, trusted him, respected him and served him with confidence and willingly.
K. tells of an incident when the battalion was visited by an old Colonel, Southern, of the U.S. Army. He said to Law - "Er, I see you are in a Captain's uniform?" Law replied with dignity, "Yes, I am, because I am a Captain. In America, in your army, I could only rise as high as corporal, but here people feel differently about race and I can rise according to my worth, not according to my color!" Whereupon the Colonel hemmed and hawed and finally came out with: "I'm sure your people must be proud of you, my boy." "Yes," said Law. "I'm sure they are!"
K. says that Law rose from rank to rank on sheer merit. He kept up the morale of his men. He always had a big smile when they won their objectives and an encouraging smile when they lost. He never said very much.
Law led his men in charge after charge at Brunete, and was finally wounded seriously by a sniper. K. brought him in from the field and loaded him onto a stretcher when he found how seriously wounded he was. K. and another soldier were carrying him up the hill to the first aid camp.
On the way up the hill another sniper shot Law, on the stretcher; the sniper's bullet landed in his groin and he began to lose blood rapidly. The did what they could to stop the blood, hurriedly putting down the stretcher. But in a few minutes the loss of blood was so great that Law died.
"Journey Into Spain" Eslanda Goode Robeson, January 31, 1938
What have Negroes to do with Spain? What has Spain for us? What about Ethiopia? Why should Negro men be fighting in Spain? What do they expect out of it? These are the questions Negroes are constantly asking. It is their immediate response to any appeal for Spain. Quite apart from the broad question of humanitarianism the answers are simple.
Fascist Italy invaded and overpowered Ethiopia. This was a terrible blow to Negroes throughout the world. Ethiopia represented the last outpost of Negro authority, of Negro self-government. Hundres of Negroes in this country attempted to join the Ethiopian forces. But Ethiopia at that time was so remote that few succeeded. I say "at that time" advisedly. Since then the rapid move of world events has brought Europe and the Orient much closer to local thinking and knowledge.
Italy moved on from the invasion of Ethiopia. She advanced her troops into Spain. Here was a second small nation, feudal and undeveloped. Bitter resentment against Italy still rankled. The hundreds of Negro boys who had been prevented from going to Ethiopia understood the issues more clearly now. To them Spain was now the battlefield on which Italian fascism might be defeated. And perhaps Italy defeated in Spain would be forced to withdraw from Ethiopia. Ethipia's only hope for recovery lies in Italy's defeat. The place to defeat Italy just now is in Spain.
The lynching of Negroes in America, discrimination in education and on jobs, lack of hospital facilities for Negroes in most cities and very poor ones in others, all this appeared to them as part of the picture of fascism: of a dominant group impoverishing and degrading a less powerful group. The open pronouncements of Germany and Italy against all non-Aryans is convincing evidence. Thinking thus, hundreds of Negro men went to Spain. Here in the International Brigade of Volunteers they found other Negroes. From Djibouti, Emperor Haile Selassie's chief mechanic came "to strike a blow for a free Ethiopia." From South Africa, from Cuba, from French Senegal, from Haiti, from the Cameroons, Negroes came, stayed and fought.
Yes, there are American Negro boys in Spain, fighting with the Loyalist troops. All honor to those boys! They are making history. Among them are some of the greatest heroes of the war. . .
There is no color question in Spain. People are just people. One of the tests for that: the Spanish girls and women who are interested in any colored man, do not sneak, as they often do in the United States, but they go along openly, naturally, and apparently without even any consciousness of being out of any conventions. . .
"It's not like the States here," said Joe Tayler, "for here I get some breaks perhaps just because I am colored." When I met Joe, it was first through his voice: going through the Mataro Hospital, which is located in a monastery, I heard singing before I came to the door of one ward, group singing, - Negro singing. "There must be the Negro boys, " I thought, and felt that it was odd to find them segregated in Spain. But when we opened the ward door, there was but one Negro, Joe Taylor, and there were all the white patients and the nurses, and they were all singing, Negro songs under Joe's leadership. "Come on, mule!" was the refrain of the song which I had heard. Spanish and French, and American and German and Italian, - all were singing this song.