Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hello, and welcome to cool People distract themselves from the
Speaker 2: apocalypse by reading history. Your podcast for reading history instead
Speaker 2: of thinking about the apocalypse. I'm your host, Margaret Kiljoy,
Speaker 2: and that's always what this show is called. And also
Speaker 2: I have a guest, but the guest is sort of
Speaker 2: the host, and that guest is Jordan.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 2: Jordan, Hello, how's this totally different day? This is that
Speaker 2: bit's kind of old. Everyone knows that we record on
Speaker 2: the same day, and then I just find that amusing.
Speaker 3: I like the little peak behind the curtain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I'm glad today I get to be
Speaker 4: the time traveler instead of being time traveled on that's true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I don't have to wait until today in
Speaker 2: order to hear all these things.
Speaker 3: I get to hear them now.
Speaker 2: But the other person who is on the call is
Speaker 2: Sophie Hi. Sophie Hi. Sophie's our producer. It's we also
Speaker 2: have an audio engineer named Rory.
Speaker 3: Rory him Rory, And.
Speaker 2: Our theme music was written forced by on Woman. And
Speaker 2: this is part two of a two parter about the
Speaker 2: anti fascist black history of the going from resistance in
Speaker 2: the slave nightmare world of the United States. Over to
Speaker 2: I always hear people say the sands of Spain. I
Speaker 2: haven't spent a lot of time in Spain. Maybe there's
Speaker 2: a sands there.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know too much about the topography of
Speaker 4: Spain either, but I never really think sand, you know what.
Speaker 2: It's come up in a bunch of different things. So
Speaker 2: we're gonna say the sands of Spain anyway, just out
Speaker 2: of because it sounds romantic. This is part two, and
Speaker 2: in part one, let's see, our heroes just crossed the
Speaker 2: Pyrenees from uh, what was it, from Mississippi originally up
Speaker 2: to harm.
Speaker 4: Yeah, a lot of them are from Mississippi, some from Midwest.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of Ohio involvement in this story that
Speaker 4: I was not expecting.
Speaker 3: Makes sense, I know, right.
Speaker 4: I'm like when you did that episode on the I
Speaker 4: can't even remember about Oberlin and all that stuff. It's
Speaker 4: like Oberlin's takes a lot of game, but no one
Speaker 4: here believes them, but maybe we should.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it used to be Ohio, dude, come bring it back,
Speaker 2: bring back that energy. And now they are crossing the
Speaker 2: Pyrenees into Spain. What happens?
Speaker 4: Well, I kind of want to take it back again
Speaker 4: to talk about some of the okay, yeah, yeah, not
Speaker 4: just yet, not yet. So kind of the talk before
Speaker 4: is like there is a lot of history around, like
Speaker 4: the racial politics of the Communist Party at this time,
Speaker 4: and like ways that they were taking a lot of dubs,
Speaker 4: also a lot of ls. But one dub they did
Speaker 4: in this too is I've inferred from context.
Speaker 2: When the dub is I'm old, but I figured it out,
Speaker 2: it's short for w yes, I mean to win.
Speaker 1: Okay, uh oh, magpie, So you're so pure, I'm good?
Speaker 4: Is there every time you have a pop culture reference
Speaker 4: you don't get I feel you on that because I
Speaker 4: don't either half the time.
Speaker 3: So I'm just like, okay, they're still solid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So they've they've taken some wins and some losses.
Speaker 4: And one of their big wins was they did as
Speaker 4: a lot of communists do. As soon as they heard
Speaker 4: about the Republic needing people, they formed a committee. They
Speaker 4: formed a committee and they had a volunteer drive that
Speaker 4: was mainly through word of mouth and through ads. And
Speaker 4: what I find really interesting is this use of media
Speaker 4: in how they basically the way they got their ads
Speaker 4: into newspapers through kind of like this embargo on any
Speaker 4: American citizens having any involvement in Spanish Civil War was
Speaker 4: they put in ads into newspapers that were asking for
Speaker 4: workers for Spain. So they would say something along the
Speaker 4: lines of Spain needs American workers, and they would like
Speaker 4: ask for money to help send people across, and they'd
Speaker 4: be like, your contribution help save Spain from fascism. Hard
Speaker 4: pressed by the fascist invaders, the Spanish people call on
Speaker 4: the American workers to take on They would claim that
Speaker 4: they would take on like industrial or productive jobs in
Speaker 4: Spain so that each worker from America would free up
Speaker 4: a Spanish worker to join the military forces of his
Speaker 4: own country. Like that was like the logic they were
Speaker 4: using in the ads that would help them get through censorship,
Speaker 4: which I think is really beautiful. It kind of reminds
Speaker 4: me of the different ways that like through music and
Speaker 4: song there was like literally pathways to freedom, like through
Speaker 4: the underground railroad and through so many other different things.
Speaker 4: It's like, if you know, you know, this may be
Speaker 4: a poem to you, but it's getting me northwest, south
Speaker 4: and east to the Ohio River.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. I also I think it's productive labor to
Speaker 2: shoot fascists in history. Only in history. It would be
Speaker 2: morally and legally wrong now for some reason that I
Speaker 2: can't quite determined.
Speaker 4: But yeah, in getting to Spain, a lot of volunteers,
Speaker 4: and especially a lot of black volunteers, they had to
Speaker 4: lie heavy. They lie their ass off. They were saying
Speaker 4: we went to we were tourists or students. Some of
Speaker 4: them like pretended to be archaeologists to the point that
Speaker 4: they were scared of the FEDS watching them, or like
Speaker 4: international police like talking. So they would like pick up
Speaker 4: rocks outside of the train station and like look at
Speaker 4: it to each other and be like, oh, isn't this
Speaker 4: an interesting rock? And it was really a lot of
Speaker 4: heavy organizing happening with the Communist Party as well. And
Speaker 4: there's this one white communist his name is Steve Nelson
Speaker 4: and he was from Pennsylvania. And one of their motivators
Speaker 4: was they heard that the English were signing up, and
Speaker 4: they were like, we can't let the English outorganize us,
Speaker 4: so we have to send our own volunteers to Spain.
Speaker 2: Uh huh.
Speaker 3: Yeah. For the main focus of this episode.
Speaker 4: I just wanted to highlight a lot of the black
Speaker 4: anti fat that went over to Spain and really harp
Speaker 4: on the point that fighting fascism is not just about
Speaker 4: the combatant, and for every combatant, there's at least ten
Speaker 4: to twenty other support roles or even just as important
Speaker 4: roles that are happening. So to start, I want to
Speaker 4: talk about Paul Robison born in Princeton, New Jersey. Robison
Speaker 4: was an internationally rerounded singer, actor, activist, and he became
Speaker 4: one of the most influential African American figures in the
Speaker 4: twentieth century. Active throughout the nineteen thirties, Robison used his
Speaker 4: celebrity and oratorical skills to champion the Republican cause in
Speaker 4: Spain during the Civil War. Although he wasn't a combatant,
Speaker 4: Robison's powerful speeches and writings, featured in outlets like The
Speaker 4: Negro Worker at the time, provided a moral and cultural
Speaker 4: impetus for anti fascist resistance, and it was a fight
Speaker 4: between freedom and oppression, a fight that connected directly to
Speaker 4: the struggles of black people in the United States and
Speaker 4: across the world. Robison has famously said, and I grab
Speaker 4: this quote from Martin Duberman's book Robson, which is a biography,
Speaker 4: and he said quote, the artists must elect to fight
Speaker 4: for freedom or slavery.
Speaker 3: I have made my choice.
Speaker 4: I have no alternative end quote, and Robison used his voice.
Speaker 4: He traveled to Spain in nineteen thirty eight at the
Speaker 4: height of the war, where he performed for the troops
Speaker 4: and especially finding joy and singing and speaking with the
Speaker 4: international volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. He sang songs
Speaker 4: in English Spanish, songs of hope, solidarity, resistance, and it
Speaker 4: wasn't just a show.
Speaker 3: Wait was that? Sorry?
Speaker 2: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the American volunteers, Yes, And.
Speaker 4: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the American volunteers. And specifically,
Speaker 4: each brigade had like their own name for their volunteers
Speaker 4: that were based on some progressive or radical person at
Speaker 4: the time. There was a lot other countries had a
Speaker 4: lot better names than the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. To be honest,
Speaker 4: because I just fact check, hate linking, terrible, terrible person.
Speaker 4: Right after that Emancipation Proclamation sixty four, li Cota is dead,
Speaker 4: So yeah, fuck Lincoln on this podcast, but no critical support.
Speaker 4: But Robertson was like, oh, the brigade, the brigades chill
Speaker 4: and he believed his art was a weapon, and his
Speaker 4: concerts were morale boosters for the exhausted soldiers risking everything
Speaker 4: against Franco's fascist He also raised funds for Spanish refugees,
Speaker 4: organized rallies back in the States, and worked to keep
Speaker 4: up the international attention on the Spanish people's fights. When
Speaker 4: he got home, he kept speaking out, drawing direct lines
Speaker 4: between the fascism abroad and all the racism at home,
Speaker 4: and he warned that if fascism succeeded in Spain, it
Speaker 4: would threaten people everywhere, especially black people fighting Jim Crow
Speaker 4: oppression in the US. The US and the FBI hated
Speaker 4: him for it. His activism in Spain would later be
Speaker 4: used against him during the McCarthy era when he was
Speaker 4: blacklisted and then eventually had his passport revoked, which I
Speaker 4: believe it wasn't until fifty eight I'll get into it later,
Speaker 4: but until he got it back, and that was a
Speaker 4: landmark case for a lot of American Spanish Civil War
Speaker 4: vets that came back to get their passports back to
Speaker 4: be able to have any sort of traveling. Another wonderful
Speaker 4: person that came out of Ohio, Well, they're from Georgia.
Speaker 4: But came out of Ohio. Was Salaria key. Actually, I
Speaker 4: guess now they're salari a key O'Reilly because she married
Speaker 4: an Irish dude born on July thirteenth, nineteen thirteen in Georgia,
Speaker 4: and her father was a hospital gardener who was killed
Speaker 4: by a patient when she was a baby, prompting the
Speaker 4: family to relocate to Akron, and she was raised by
Speaker 4: her older brothers fighting racist barriers in Ohio that had
Speaker 4: denied her access to nursing school. She then moved to
Speaker 4: New York in nineteen thirties, graduating from Harlem Hospital, a
Speaker 4: school of nursing, in thirty four. While she was still
Speaker 4: a student, she fought for racial justice, successfully helping desegregate
Speaker 4: the hospital staff, dining room, and improve working conditions for
Speaker 4: black nurses.
Speaker 2: So she's already doing good shit.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And she was the person who I mentioned at the
Speaker 4: beginning that during the Ethiopian invasion by Italy organized funding
Speaker 4: for a seventy five bed hospital in Ethiopia at the.
Speaker 3: Time, So I was doing a lot of that on
Speaker 3: the groundwork. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And after her graduation, she became one of the head
Speaker 4: nurses at Seaview Hospital and then became really politically activated.
Speaker 4: Some people claim she joined the party by the party,
Speaker 4: I mean the Communist Party of the USA, but she
Speaker 4: has formally denied any membership, really, claiming that her actions
Speaker 4: were more motivated by her deep Catholic faith, in anti
Speaker 4: racist convictions and in ideological alignment with the Republican Spain.
Speaker 4: And around this time, she was also denied access to
Speaker 4: work with the American Red Cross because of her race,
Speaker 4: being quote like contentious in the field. Like the supervisor
Speaker 4: was like, I'm not racist, but people on the ground
Speaker 4: are really racists, so you can't have the job.
Speaker 1: One.
Speaker 2: That's the only time that anything like that's ever happened.
Speaker 2: It's so obviously hypocritical. None would ever do that.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, and I mean that stopped after nineteen sixty five,
Speaker 4: so writes out, I mean nothing, j Jimcrow ended and yeah,
Speaker 4: actually we're kind of chilling America.
Speaker 3: We can end the podcast right here.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Key's political consciousness deepened after the Italian evasion in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty five, which became a catalyst for her and
Speaker 4: her anti fascist activism. She denied opportunities to serve in Ethiopia,
Speaker 4: but she also at that time was more dedicated of
Speaker 4: doing local work in her community and trying to then
Speaker 4: do solidarity work, which was the impetus for doing the
Speaker 4: stuff that she knew well, which was working as a
Speaker 4: medical worker and organizing folks around that to get support
Speaker 4: that was needed on the ground in Ethiopia. Later, she
Speaker 4: ended up vauling tearing for the Spanish Civil War through
Speaker 4: the American Medical Bureau, joining the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty seven around March and she became the only
Speaker 4: African American nurse in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, working at
Speaker 4: a field hospital near Madrid called via Paz, where she
Speaker 4: was appointed head surgical nurse. There she supervised white nurses,
Speaker 4: an unprecedented opportunity for a black woman in the Jim
Speaker 4: Crow era from the United States especially, and treated wounded
Speaker 4: soldiers from a variety of countries, experiences she later described
Speaker 4: as among the most fulfilling of her life. She was
Speaker 4: also captured at one point by Nationalist forces and imprisoned
Speaker 4: for six weeks before being freed. Also in the Spanish
Speaker 4: Civil War is where she met her husband, John O'Reilly,
Speaker 4: who was an injured Irish volunteer and I can only
Speaker 4: imagine what that love story was, Like, I want a
Speaker 4: movie on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: In thirty eight, she was also injured in a bombing raid,
Speaker 4: forcing her to return to the US. That same year,
Speaker 4: she published a pamphlet memoir called Salary a Key, a
Speaker 4: Negro nurse in Republic in Spain, offering more of a
Speaker 4: first hand account of her time in that war that
Speaker 4: I highly recommend for folks.
Speaker 2: And I think it's interesting because we talk about all
Speaker 2: the time, like, oh, well they weren't you know, the
Speaker 2: nurses aren't the front line fighters, and like in a
Speaker 2: war like this, you are a frontline fighter. She was captured,
Speaker 2: she was bombed, Like she's a frontline fighter you have
Speaker 2: to go through, I know. And it's also like a
Speaker 2: nonsensical distinction anyway, but like, damn, I'm glad she survived.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And she's also mentioned in some documentaries
Speaker 4: out there that folks can watch, I think one called
Speaker 4: The Good Fight where she's interviewed in that directly. There's
Speaker 4: also another person, Canut Frankson, who was a Jamaican born
Speaker 4: auto mechanic and volunteer and one of the few black
Speaker 4: members of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as well which overall
Speaker 4: there was about ninety total black folks that went over
Speaker 4: from the US that we can like count. And he
Speaker 4: wrote a lot of letters. One quote from one is
Speaker 4: quote the Negro of the United States must not be fools.
Speaker 4: We must not forget the lynchings, the Scottsboro Boys, the
Speaker 4: injustice in Harlem and in the South. Franco was not
Speaker 4: only the enemy of the Spanish people, he is the
Speaker 4: enemy of the Negro people of the entire world.
Speaker 3: And that comes from a letter he.
Speaker 4: Was writing, I believe, to his lover at the time
Speaker 4: or friends back home in the States, when kind of
Speaker 4: justifying why he went and came, because he was already
Speaker 4: doing political work before. But like a lot of people,
Speaker 4: you don't tell everyone where you're going. When you're going
Speaker 4: to go fight in the anti fascist war halfway across
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 3: People might stop you. Your mom might be like no.
Speaker 4: But he came to the United States and around nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 4: initially settling around in Pennsylvania where he worked as a machinist,
Speaker 4: and he eventually then moved on to Detroit, Michigan, where
Speaker 4: he worked in the automobile industry and became deeply involved
Speaker 4: in the labor organizing and black radical politics of the area.
Speaker 4: He was a member of the United Automobile Workers of America,
Speaker 4: the National Negro Congress INAACP, and joined the Immunist Party
Speaker 4: USA in December nineteen thirty four, where he served as
Speaker 4: a section organizer. Driven by his anti fascist convictions and
Speaker 4: solidarity with oppressed people globally, he sailed over to Europe
Speaker 4: on the Queen Mary and April nineteen thirty seven, arriving
Speaker 4: in Spain and around May and he joined the International
Speaker 4: Brigades and was assigned to the International Auto Park in
Speaker 4: Albaset as a chief mechanic, a crucial position given the
Speaker 4: shortage of trained machinists in Spain at the time.
Speaker 2: So he actually kind of was doing what the ads said,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, like more directly in a
Speaker 2: military function. But yeah, that's cool because like Detroit is
Speaker 2: like the center of automobiles, at least in the States
Speaker 2: and probably on some level like one of the main
Speaker 2: ones in the world. So you're like, yeah, I'm fucking
Speaker 2: showing up from the fucking Detroit Union to come fix
Speaker 2: the anti fascist cars. That's like, that's kind of cool.
Speaker 4: And then immediately became the head mechanic, and also part
Speaker 4: of that was because he spoke fluent Spanish, which enabled
Speaker 4: him to teach engine repair to young Spaniards, and his
Speaker 4: off hours demanding a commitment to not just the war efforts,
Speaker 4: but education and solidarity, so he was keeping it running.
Speaker 4: He eventually got injured, as everyone in a war front
Speaker 4: has the possibility of doing no matter where you are,
Speaker 4: whether you have the gun in your hand or you
Speaker 4: have the wrench in your hand. Also, he was transferred
Speaker 4: around different hospitals, recommended for rest and reassignment to auxiliary services,
Speaker 4: and then eventually moved to Barcelona and thirty eight and
Speaker 4: requested repatriation for medical treatment, and then returned to the US.
Speaker 4: I believe he eventually left again the US because shit
Speaker 4: was hectic, But he is definitely a story of someone
Speaker 4: who survived the war and went on to go and
Speaker 4: still do so much more.
Speaker 3: And that's something.
Speaker 4: With all of these people, I am giving the loosest introductions.
Speaker 4: And then another black anti fascist I want to talk
Speaker 4: about is Edward Carter, who was born in nineteen sixteen
Speaker 4: Los Angeles, but he grew up all over the world, India, Shanghai,
Speaker 4: and the US. His parents were missionaries, and from early
Speaker 4: on he saw colonialism and racism firsthand. He spoke four
Speaker 4: different languages, Hindi, English, Mandarin, and German, and even as
Speaker 4: a teenager, he knew his life would be about fighting injustice.
Speaker 4: By the time he was a young man, he had
Speaker 4: already joined the fight against fascism, not in Europe but
Speaker 4: in Asia. He fought alongside Chinese forces resisting Japanese invasion
Speaker 4: during the nineteen thirties. But Carter wasn't done. When fascism
Speaker 4: rose in Europe. He knew he had to do more.
Speaker 4: He was strong, smart, and seasoned in battle, and Spain
Speaker 4: wasn't just another war for him. There was a global
Speaker 4: fight in the fight for freedom and for black people,
Speaker 4: working people, and oppressed people everywhere. He also ended up
Speaker 4: going past Spain into World War Two, and despite his
Speaker 4: experience in fighting against the Japanese and fighting in Spanish
Speaker 4: Civil War, the US military tried to keep Carter out
Speaker 4: because of one racism and two he had fought in Spain,
Speaker 4: which was an issue for a lot of Spanish anti
Speaker 4: fascist who then went to go fight in World War
Speaker 4: Two was that they were seen as too radical.
Speaker 2: Wait, have you have you heard the word that they
Speaker 2: got called. No, they're called premature anti fascists, like you
Speaker 2: were anti fascist too early, you can't be trusted.
Speaker 4: And it's it's so weird to me that that was
Speaker 4: actually used as a pejorative, and it's yeah, it's yeah,
Speaker 4: not as weird to me because I'm like, the US
Speaker 4: was never really anti fascist, even when we joined World
Speaker 4: War Two. It's because our territory got bombed and then
Speaker 4: we decided to recognize Hawaii as a state, Like then afterwards.
Speaker 3: It became more of a big thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: He ended up going into the World War Two, though
Speaker 4: still in a segregated unit, the twelfth Armored Division, and
Speaker 4: fighting in Europe, and he became a legend. During the
Speaker 4: battle in Germany, Carter crossed open ground under heavy enemy
Speaker 4: fire and he was hit five times but kept moving.
Speaker 4: He killed six German soldiers and captured two more. Were
Speaker 4: almost single handedly. Always got to have solidarity, and his
Speaker 4: commanders knew that he deserved the Medal of Honor, the
Speaker 4: highest US military award, but because he was black, he
Speaker 4: was denied. Instead, they gave him the Distinguished Service Cross
Speaker 4: and pushed him out of the army after the war.
Speaker 2: Oh my god.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he died sixty three and was never recognizing this
Speaker 4: time by the military.
Speaker 3: Or any institution.
Speaker 4: But decades later, you know, first black President Bill Clinton
Speaker 4: had to come up and be like ward him the
Speaker 4: Medal of Honor and the America's highest military award, and
Speaker 4: like made him the first black soldier, like I think
Speaker 4: technically to receive it, but one of the first, which yeah,
Speaker 4: it's one of those those crazy, crazy things.
Speaker 2: And I'm just like, okay, but do you know what
Speaker 2: he didn't get where she probably was inundated by ads,
Speaker 2: you know what he did get much like you, we
Speaker 2: have something in common with that man. We too have
Speaker 2: a chance to have a little taste of American freedom
Speaker 2: by getting our choice of well, we actually don't have
Speaker 2: our choice.
Speaker 3: In our ads. I don't know.
Speaker 2: There's some ads gonna come now and they're going to
Speaker 2: be there.
Speaker 3: And we're back.
Speaker 4: Hello, Yay, we're back, and we're still in Spain.
Speaker 3: Back to Spain.
Speaker 4: And then there was James Yeates, who I used heavily
Speaker 4: to quote and put a lot of context and emotional
Speaker 4: context for this piece here. He came in and immediately
Speaker 4: joined the Motor Corps. He transported food and medicine to
Speaker 4: the front lines under fire. What was interesting about him
Speaker 4: is he started doing food delivery under the Thalman Brigade,
Speaker 4: which was the German Brigade at the time, and.
Speaker 2: The German Anti fascist Internationalist Brigade.
Speaker 4: Yeah, German anti fascist Brigade, and he was kind of
Speaker 4: salty about it at first. He was like, I wanted
Speaker 4: to be with Americans, mainly because I can't speak German
Speaker 4: and this is really stressful in a war situation wherever
Speaker 4: like go here, do this, and I'm like uh. But
Speaker 4: then eventually he ended up also serving as a ambulance driver,
Speaker 4: which was so vital, like they would drive into war
Speaker 4: torn places as things were happening, get folks in and
Speaker 4: bring them back to the medical station while bullets were
Speaker 4: still flying around and all that stuff. Yates ended up
Speaker 4: being injured in one of these runs when aerial bombing
Speaker 4: and offenses were going on, and that led to them
Speaker 4: going back to the US kind of near the end
Speaker 4: of the Spanish Civil War. And then there was doctor
Speaker 4: Arnold Donahah, which I could write his own introduction, but
Speaker 4: I just think this little context from Yates' books introducing
Speaker 4: him and about some of the doctor's experience on what
Speaker 4: doing medicine in the Spanish Civil War was like is
Speaker 4: great context for folks to keep in mind, so from
Speaker 4: Mississippi to Madrid. James Yates writes about doctor Arnold Donohah
Speaker 4: as such, quote a well known dental surgeon from Harlem
Speaker 4: and a graduate of Howard University. He was one of
Speaker 4: one hundred doctors, nurses and ambulance drivers from the American
Speaker 4: Medical Bureau. Doctor Donihah left Albacet for a grilling period
Speaker 4: of work at the front, and after that he was
Speaker 4: given charge of the jaw surgery department at Valkyrae. Later,
Speaker 4: doctor Donihah was to talk about some of the conditions
Speaker 4: in Spain during the war. Quote we suffered above all
Speaker 4: from a lack of instruments and supplies needed for adequate surgery.
Speaker 4: Frequently we didn't have enough gauze and bandage to dress
Speaker 4: the wounds of men. There was such a great scarcity
Speaker 4: of the elementary medical supplies that we had to unwind
Speaker 4: the bandage of one man had used, have it washed
Speaker 4: and boiled, and then rewind it and use it again
Speaker 4: on another patient. Sometimes it was hard to get the
Speaker 4: old bloodstains entirely out, but we managed to sterilize the
Speaker 4: old bandages and make it fit for use. We did
Speaker 4: not have a dry of novacaine in the hospital, and
Speaker 4: I thought we might be able to get some with
Speaker 4: the move and I did, but not enough, only a
Speaker 4: thousand amples. This, as well as many other indispensable drugs,
Speaker 4: were almost unobtainable in Spain in those final days. There
Speaker 4: were so many items things we had taken for granted
Speaker 4: back at home, we lacked in Spain. To reduce jaw fractures,
Speaker 4: for example, we need a special kind of very thin
Speaker 4: stainless steel wire. If I had just a pound of it,
Speaker 4: we could have relieved the crisis at a hospital for months.
Speaker 4: But we didn't have it, nor do we have any
Speaker 4: X ray films. We had to work by touch to
Speaker 4: determine the number of fractures. End quote.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 2: Imagine getting your You're like wounded. I mean, I guess
Speaker 2: you have bigger I guess if you're in a war.
Speaker 2: Everything is bad. But imagine being like, ah, I'm wounded,
Speaker 2: I'm going to the hospital. I'm finally at the hospital.
Speaker 2: That bandage that has been wrapped around me is currently bloody,
Speaker 2: like it's an old stain right, But there's.
Speaker 4: No peace of mind, no point of service of like
Speaker 4: a piece of mine at all. According to James Yates,
Speaker 4: after the war, he had returned to his dental practice
Speaker 4: in Harlem and had donated his time to returning veterans
Speaker 4: of the Spanish Civil War because it was also very hard.
Speaker 4: I mean, we all know healthcare in America, imagine one
Speaker 4: hundred years ago, imagine being black. So it was one
Speaker 4: of those things that he still organized with and around
Speaker 4: while he was back home. And in nineteen forty five
Speaker 4: he was elected the president of the North Harlem Dental
Speaker 4: Association and advocated for socialized medicine that would guarantee medical
Speaker 4: protection for all Americans.
Speaker 2: Which is ahead of its time and still not happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly.
Speaker 4: And there were people that came in to do so
Speaker 4: many different roles in the Spanish Civil War, Like there
Speaker 4: was a lot more labor than just picking up a
Speaker 4: gun for Spain. Pat Roosevelt was a pilot who joined
Speaker 4: the brigade after being barred from flying in the US
Speaker 4: due to racism, and he simply went over just because
Speaker 4: he said, cool, I went to Spain because I want
Speaker 4: to fly. And that's from a conversation they had in
Speaker 4: Mississippi to Madrid with James Yeates.
Speaker 3: Hell yeah, and even cooking like.
Speaker 4: Is extremely revolutionary, and like sustaining ourselves and having that
Speaker 4: sort of ability to have an energy source just on
Speaker 4: a basic material level, let alone breaking bread with people
Speaker 4: is powerful in and of itself. But there was James
Speaker 4: Robertson who was a black cook from the South in
Speaker 4: the United States, and he would feed hundreds with not
Speaker 4: only the rations that were provided by the war efforts,
Speaker 4: but also by foraging whenever he could and teaching other
Speaker 4: folks how to forage. And it was said that he
Speaker 4: quote made the best olive pie and all of Spain.
Speaker 4: So that's something right there. It is like they even
Speaker 4: had dessert.
Speaker 2: I don't know if olive pie is dessert. I bet
Speaker 2: it's a savory pie. I've never had olive pie. Maybe
Speaker 2: I'm wrong.
Speaker 4: You know what, You're probably not wrong, because I make
Speaker 4: an olive bread at work. It's pretty savory.
Speaker 2: I guess you're actually the cook here anyway.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but yeah, there were many different experiences that different
Speaker 4: soldiers had to come through. And two and there was
Speaker 4: Walter Cobbs who was a black driver in the Spanish
Speaker 4: Civil War, and he was almost shot by Republican forces
Speaker 4: because he had captured a fascist truck and tried to
Speaker 4: drive it right up to the lines of the anti fascists,
Speaker 4: and at first they thought he was a Moroccan soldier.
Speaker 4: He had said, quote, if I didn't speak Spanish, I
Speaker 4: would have been shot by my own side. It's something
Speaker 4: in quote. It is something he told James Yats as well.
Speaker 4: And this is kind of the moment that I have
Speaker 4: to mention Rocan.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact that there's like black people fighting on
Speaker 2: the fascist side as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which kind of begs the point of like what
Speaker 4: were Moroccans doing on the fascist side of the Civil
Speaker 4: War that they were able to be confused with the
Speaker 4: black folks from the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, which, if folks
Speaker 4: didn't know, Franco needed had some serious help early on
Speaker 4: in this war. I mean, he had support from Mussolini's Italy,
Speaker 4: Hitler's Germany, and he had just practiced down in Ethiopia.
Speaker 4: But what's less talked about is that Franco also brought
Speaker 4: in thousands of Moroccan soldiers from Spain's colony in northern
Speaker 4: Morocco called the Spanish Protectorate, and they had fought in
Speaker 4: colonial wars before, and Franco had trusted them a bit
Speaker 4: more than some of his own Spanish soldiers at the time,
Speaker 4: because like they were colonial troops under Spanish war means
Speaker 4: they pretty much couldn't say no if they wanted to.
Speaker 2: But right, and since they're not like Spaniards, they're like
Speaker 2: it's less likely that they're going to switch and fight
Speaker 2: for the republic or whatever because they're like more literally
Speaker 2: invading another place because where they live was invaded.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Franco himself was a general that was like
Speaker 4: I think believe had a lot more influence over this
Speaker 4: side of Spanish uh like military political realm and uh
Speaker 4: say at the time. So I mean they operated a
Speaker 4: lot as shock troops for the nationalists. They were colonial subjects,
Speaker 4: so orders were orders disobeying mient prison, death, or even
Speaker 4: punishment for their families back at home. And it's the
Speaker 4: colonial and imperialist outposts that like modern policing as well
Speaker 4: as like here and in the Philippines, with the US specifically,
Speaker 4: is like a place where we a lot of our
Speaker 4: like policing tactics come from and like the way to
Speaker 4: do policing as well as like terroristic social control was
Speaker 4: experimented with by colonizers. Leveraging economic desperation also played a
Speaker 4: big role, because being a soldier was one of the
Speaker 4: few ways that you can make a steady living, no
Speaker 4: matter kind of where you are in the world. At
Speaker 4: least allegedly, that's why a lot of soldiers revolt because
Speaker 4: they don't get paid, and even if it meant fighting
Speaker 4: a war that wasn't really theirs. As well as like
Speaker 4: that faith solidarity that I talked into earlier, like faith
Speaker 4: leaders that already had power within the set society were
Speaker 4: more likely to support Franco because they also hated secularism,
Speaker 4: or how they viewed secularism of the Spanish Republicans, and
Speaker 4: many faith based groups around the world saw the Nationalists
Speaker 4: as more respectful of faith and tradition, and after the
Speaker 4: Spanish Civil War kind of came to its end in
Speaker 4: thirty nine. In nineteen thirty nine, Franco's victory didn't kill
Speaker 4: the spirit of a lot of these volunteers. It just
Speaker 4: scattered them into new fights back into their home. Even
Speaker 4: more hardened for many Black vets, the internationalism they had
Speaker 4: just forged in the war, being able to have and
Speaker 4: be an integrated units, being able to lead units for
Speaker 4: the first time, like Oliver Law was a black anti
Speaker 4: fascist who became one of the head commanders of the
Speaker 4: Abraham Lincoln Brigade, but died very shortly into that. But
Speaker 4: it is thought to be one of the first Black
Speaker 4: Americans to lead as either segregated or mostly white unit.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I find that fascinating, Like a into what you're saying
Speaker 2: about the pilot too, right, is that like, well, we
Speaker 2: don't have to fight and segregated units in Spain or
Speaker 2: I'm allowed to fly a plane in Spain, and so, yeah,
Speaker 2: it doesn't surprise me that the first black person to
Speaker 2: lead like white soldiers, white American soldiers wasn't in the
Speaker 2: US Army. It was Americans fighting and you know, a
Speaker 2: Republican army.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and a lot of them. They came back with
Speaker 4: like this new understanding of solidarity, maybe not even new,
Speaker 4: but like a very material understanding of this of this
Speaker 4: different racial context, and then came right back into Jim
Speaker 4: Crow America.
Speaker 3: It was still in.
Speaker 4: Full legal effects until the mid nineteen sixties and then
Speaker 4: de facto social until well everything's fixed now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we didn't have a whole uprising about it in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty. I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean get ready for the next when.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because they came home into the like full extreme
Speaker 4: nationalism of white supremacists, country, state and local dictatorships due
Speaker 4: to the lack of voting restrictions, racial labor exploitation and
Speaker 4: lynching as social control and sport. So when veterans like
Speaker 4: Yates came home, literally because of the US isolationalism, the
Speaker 4: FBI was waiting for them. They would get off the
Speaker 4: plane and the agents would Yeates said that the agents
Speaker 4: looked like they would have been more comfortable with the
Speaker 4: fascists that they were fighting if they had came home,
Speaker 4: and probably true if you know how like were appened
Speaker 4: after the World War Two. We're more than happy to
Speaker 4: welcome in Nazis into our institutions of power. But they
Speaker 4: took his pat support and lots of veterans of the
Speaker 4: Abraham Lincoln Brigades passports because it was against the US
Speaker 4: foreign policy to go to Spain at the time. So
Speaker 4: once they were found out, they were restricted and it
Speaker 4: wasn't restored until Kent v. Dulles in nineteen fifty eight
Speaker 4: that ruled that the US government could not deny a
Speaker 4: citacent of passport just because of their beliefs or affiliations
Speaker 4: without process, which due process.
Speaker 3: In America is a whole other conversation of itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everything's fine. That one's history podcast.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And then most of the veterans themselves, of all races,
Speaker 4: they struggled to find work the FBI, and eventually the
Speaker 4: House of Unamerican Committees made sure of that. The FBI
Speaker 4: would literally do like think of like some of the
Speaker 4: co Intel pro type of psychological terror. They would do,
Speaker 4: like you try to go get a job, you go
Speaker 4: to the interview, you think it's all nice, You go home.
Speaker 4: Your prospective future boss also just got to visit an
Speaker 4: interview from the FBI directly about you. And it was
Speaker 4: a big deterrent as well, especially in Jim Crow America,
Speaker 4: where there was already so many deterrents.
Speaker 3: A lot of folks stayed politically active.
Speaker 4: A few, like those who had been aligned with the
Speaker 4: Communist organizers and Communist Party, had felt betrayed during the
Speaker 4: McCarthy era, and others built solidarity networks that endured where
Speaker 4: where some of them were like the veterans of the
Speaker 4: Abraham Lincoln Brigade itself decided to create its own support group,
Speaker 4: and some of them, like some folks were able to
Speaker 4: find gigs through the Communist Party, like there was a
Speaker 4: like section, organizer things and anything that the party could do,
Speaker 4: but it wasn't really enough for all the veterans that
Speaker 4: went to really be able to help them. But yeah,
Speaker 4: support groups like Friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade raised
Speaker 4: money to support those coming home those int detention due
Speaker 4: to breaking the non intervention policy and something totally not
Speaker 4: related to now. Some of them were not being full
Speaker 4: citizens or not having like the right paperwork because they
Speaker 4: were born in the South, or they were born in
Speaker 4: different places that didn't have like a lot of civil
Speaker 4: registries up until that point. So when they came back
Speaker 4: and their paperwork didn't look too nice, they got held
Speaker 4: in immigration stuff and some of them even deported.
Speaker 2: God, imagine being born in this country, going and fighting
Speaker 2: for or what this country ostensibly stands for, a democratic republic,
Speaker 2: and then coming back and just being like, oh, no,
Speaker 2: you don't uh, things don't line up, Get the fuck
Speaker 2: out of here.
Speaker 3: Do you even exist?
Speaker 4: Not? Yeah, and a lot of folks came back feeling
Speaker 4: like they had lost the war.
Speaker 2: Like, well, they kind of did.
Speaker 3: Well, they did, but they came back with them.
Speaker 4: They were also in radical spaces and they felt too
Speaker 4: revered by the people around them, Like people were like, oh,
Speaker 4: you're so cool, you did that, and that actually pushed
Speaker 4: a lot of people out of like more politically active spaces,
Speaker 4: and they were like, y'all are going too hard around me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like like no, this was a we fucking don't
Speaker 2: call me a hero. I just suffered incredible loss.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we have no good way to talk about war.
Speaker 4: Definitely not in the nineteen twenty, like.
Speaker 3: That's for sure.
Speaker 2: But do you know what we do have a good
Speaker 2: way to talk about?
Speaker 3: Is it ads?
Speaker 2: We do. We have a lot of We've both done
Speaker 2: a lot of work writing about the impacts of advertisements
Speaker 2: and how we can use them to learn about goods
Speaker 2: and services with which to enrich our lives.
Speaker 3: Here's that and we're back. Welcome, Welcome.
Speaker 4: So to kind of get into some of the life
Speaker 4: of folks after the war, a lot of folks were
Speaker 4: very stringent, especially because of all the political reverence. They
Speaker 4: got to keep their class ties even though they're like
Speaker 4: there were even like lots of wealthy sympathizers that offered
Speaker 4: to free them from the debt that they were in
Speaker 4: and pay their way through schooling and enter like the
Speaker 4: more professionalized class. And there was some folks who still
Speaker 4: like denied that because they they saw it as like
Speaker 4: class tradering, which I don't know, if someone's willing to
Speaker 4: pay for my schooling, I'm like, please do it.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, politics has moved on, but yeah, very great. I
Speaker 2: see where they're coming from. But yeah, I would not
Speaker 2: be mad at anyone who did that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So there was another one of the support groups,
Speaker 4: the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Like by the
Speaker 4: end or like nearer the fifties, there was a decline
Speaker 4: in how many veterans were actually still active in it,
Speaker 4: and most folks still stayed friends because of like the
Speaker 4: political and social commitments from war combined with the public
Speaker 4: sentiment against communists and against them at the time being
Speaker 4: viewed as communists, and a lot of them were. And
Speaker 4: one thing that I find interesting series like they also
Speaker 4: still built a lot of solidarity through a lot of
Speaker 4: the legal battles that they had to continue to go
Speaker 4: through because they were getting wrapped up in the red
Speaker 4: Scare and the McCarthy era stuff as the scary communists
Speaker 4: that actually picked up a gun to go do something
Speaker 4: being premature anti fascist. Yeah, and a lot of them
Speaker 4: were still doing like labor organizing or like they were
Speaker 4: like the one veteran of the alb would get picked
Speaker 4: up in Detroit or Arkansas and be detained for days,
Speaker 4: and that would bring a network together to pull up
Speaker 4: for each other. So there was still that consistent solidarity
Speaker 4: even if folks weren't day to day members in the
Speaker 4: support group as much.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. Also, they founded that whole city in
Speaker 2: New York that's named after the alb Albany. I timed
Speaker 2: this just as Jordan was drinking out of a glass
Speaker 2: on purpose. This is my best joke of the episode.
Speaker 2: I hope you all enjoyed it. It was the worst
Speaker 2: joke anyway.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 4: There's a city near me called New Albany that's definitely
Speaker 4: was made by a fascist. So it's just like really
Speaker 4: funny to me to think about the co optation of
Speaker 4: anti fascism by fascist.
Speaker 2: In this hypothetical world where Albany is named after the
Speaker 2: Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Speaker 3: Uh oh, that's my head canon. I don't even know
Speaker 3: who Albany is. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4: One thing I find interesting too is that after the
Speaker 4: war they had this they were like X Party members.
Speaker 4: They were anti Communist vets that didn't want to associate
Speaker 4: with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade afterwards, especially when they came home.
Speaker 3: A lot of them just to keep their head down.
Speaker 3: But there was.
Speaker 4: This very specific line around deserters and whether or not
Speaker 4: when you came home to America you could be a
Speaker 4: part of the veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade if
Speaker 4: you deserted when you were on the ground in Spain.
Speaker 4: And they really just had one line, which was like
Speaker 4: they were allowed to participate if they had admitted honestly
Speaker 4: to their regrets and shortcomings on the battlefield, and as
Speaker 4: long as they didn't disavow the Republic, the Brigade or
Speaker 4: the Communist Party. That was like their line within the
Speaker 4: alb Yeah. And then yeah, one thing that kind of
Speaker 4: end on is like years years later, James Yates himself
Speaker 4: ended up going back to Spain. It's past nineteen fifty eight.
Speaker 4: They're able to get their passport back now, and they're like,
Speaker 4: I'm a free man where should I go. Obviously, I
Speaker 4: should go to Spain. They wanted to travel Europe more broadly,
Speaker 4: but they were like, I can't go to Europe and
Speaker 4: not go to Spain, like I spent so much of
Speaker 4: my formative years there. Even if it is just a couple,
Speaker 4: I think they were only there for maybe a year
Speaker 4: or two. But a year or two of war is
Speaker 4: a lifetime, and it's, yeah, the end of life for
Speaker 4: a lot of people. So to survive and to be
Speaker 4: able to go back is a really beautiful experience.
Speaker 3: But they were terrified. Yeah, it's still Franco town.
Speaker 4: Franco still was in power till I believe the late
Speaker 4: mid seventies.
Speaker 2: I can never remember the year that Franco died. This
Speaker 2: has come up because I live a very normal life.
Speaker 2: It has come up in conversation like four or five
Speaker 2: times in the past month that I can't remember when
Speaker 2: Franco died. But fortunately whoever I'm talking to also can't remember.
Speaker 1: November twentieth, nineteen seventy five.
Speaker 3: Hell, yeah, Sophie knows, yep.
Speaker 2: I know, because I googled it.
Speaker 3: I don't know at the top of my head.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, in my mind, you know that you
Speaker 2: celebrate every year. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean it would be really fucking base if I
Speaker 1: knew all the dictator's deaths by memory.
Speaker 3: But yeah, no, he's kept coming up on fifty years dead.
Speaker 2: Didn't this year? We should have a party, Oh my god.
Speaker 4: We should be a good, good thing to do in November.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But they were terrified to go back, and they first
Speaker 4: stopped in France. They were chilaxing. Then they went to
Speaker 4: like a border town, so they were like, I'm still
Speaker 4: gonna go. I'm still gonna go. They got off the
Speaker 4: train right before the border and was able to talk
Speaker 4: to like some Spanish refugees and French locals, and as
Speaker 4: soon as he like decided it was safe to let
Speaker 4: them know he was a veteran of the Civil War,
Speaker 4: so many Polks flocked to him. He was like a
Speaker 4: person he was talking to was like, really, where's salary
Speaker 4: a key, where's Milton Wolf? Where's like how are people doing?
Speaker 4: Have you heard of them? And he was just like whoa,
Speaker 4: whoa Is it safe to go to Spain right now?
Speaker 4: And they're like, if you keep your head down you
Speaker 4: can get through it. Probably, Yeah, So he decided to
Speaker 4: continue his journey in and the differences he felt were
Speaker 4: immediate in Stark as soon as he entered the country
Speaker 4: on the train. It was the same train he had
Speaker 4: left that at the time was bombed out and had
Speaker 4: no windows, so it was a cold train ride out,
Speaker 4: a warmer traine ride in. There was no gunboats, no
Speaker 4: Italian gunboats waiting to Sheldon the train. At this point
Speaker 4: in his hotel he heard the sounds of torture that
Speaker 4: it was the point that he had to leave hotels.
Speaker 3: Wait.
Speaker 2: So he went back and he heard people being tortured
Speaker 2: while he was there, because it was still a fascist
Speaker 2: regimes that we're.
Speaker 3: Saying yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: And then it was even in his head was like
Speaker 4: I should leave this hotel and go to the next one.
Speaker 4: But he's like, this is probably happening at the next
Speaker 4: hotel too, so I should just stay.
Speaker 2: Because otherwise you're like, well, you know, once the fascist
Speaker 2: is in charge, hey, at least at least there's no
Speaker 2: Italian gunboats.
Speaker 3: It really everything's fine now.
Speaker 2: And then you're like you get to the hotel and
Speaker 2: you're like, oh no, this is a torture land. I'm
Speaker 2: in hell land.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And he one thing he loved about Spain at
Speaker 4: the beginning was the public life, the communal life of Spain.
Speaker 4: People in the plaza, it was gone. People on the
Speaker 4: street weren't willing to talk to her, and people weren't
Speaker 4: outside communing with each other. He tried to have a
Speaker 4: conversation with somebody at a park and no, no, no, no, that's.
Speaker 2: An important thing to think about about the day to
Speaker 2: day life under a long term fascist regime instead of
Speaker 2: like Germany in nineteen thirty seven, but like Spain in
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifty is no more public life. That's heavy, okay, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And then something happened.
Speaker 4: At the time, he was working with the NAACP in
Speaker 4: the US and he was working on some stuff to
Speaker 4: free Angela Davis, and he had requested packages to be
Speaker 4: sent to France with a bunch of buttons to like
Speaker 4: free Angela Davis. They had accidentally landed in Spain, where
Speaker 4: he specifically requested them not to come, but still forwarded. Nonetheless,
Speaker 4: he was a bit terrified about that, but he had
Speaker 4: a plan. I'm gonna read from his book what he
Speaker 4: did about that quote. My first thought was, oh lord,
Speaker 4: what is this. I'm here in fascist Spain with Angela
Speaker 4: Davis buttons. What if this gets reported to the authorities.
Speaker 4: All the while walking back to the hotel, I wondered
Speaker 4: what to do with the buttons. Then I pulled myself together.
Speaker 4: I had faced Franco before the Civil War forty years ago.
Speaker 4: I had spent the rest of my days sitting on
Speaker 4: many benches and somehow leaving a button behind at each one.
Speaker 4: By sundown, all the buttons were gone. End quote.
Speaker 3: And he just did a little bit of distribution.
Speaker 4: Like I love that story because I'm like, this is
Speaker 4: the beauty of internationalism, media distribution, Like how many pigs
Speaker 4: found those Like how many hardened or new radicals found
Speaker 4: hope by being like what is this? And this like
Speaker 4: just act of self preservation but also resistance.
Speaker 3: That's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And then I guess just kind of like a
Speaker 4: lasting point about this is that something that I love
Speaker 4: about reading about the Spanish Civil War is that they
Speaker 4: remind us that fighting fascism isn't about the esthetics. It's
Speaker 4: not about the flags slogans. Most of the times it's
Speaker 4: the food delivery truck field hospital, the nurse that won't
Speaker 4: be moved, the mechanic who teaches solidarity, and a garage
Speaker 4: its community defense even decades later even at home. And
Speaker 4: this history matters not to romanticize a war, but to
Speaker 4: remember what was possible when ordinary people chose to risk everything,
Speaker 4: not for nationalism, profit, but for dignity. Like affinity, groups, cadres, families,
Speaker 4: and couples came into this fight together, sometimes staggered months
Speaker 4: at a time, and some would have really sweet reunions
Speaker 4: on the battlefields and in the real camps and in
Speaker 4: the hospitals. Some came through that treacherous mountain range to
Speaker 4: receive a heartbreak in finding their best friends murdered. Of
Speaker 4: those that came in together, some left more alone than
Speaker 4: ever and with a more diverse set of wounds. Many
Speaker 4: came to join the resistance as people willing to do
Speaker 4: anything to fight fascism, and in that people came out
Speaker 4: commanders like Oliver Law, most likely the first Black American
Speaker 4: man to lead a white or integrated unit. People united
Speaker 4: in many, many forms of labor. The combatant wouldn't survive
Speaker 4: and sustain aggression without their nurses and doctors. The medical
Speaker 4: workers wouldn't get their patients if not for the wartime
Speaker 4: ambulance drivers. The drivers go nowhere without their mechanics, and
Speaker 4: no one was fighting without the cooks, and the world
Speaker 4: wouldn't have our archives without our artists. Langston Hughes was
Speaker 4: another artist that came alongside Ernest Hemingway to engage in
Speaker 4: journalists in the region and with Robinson to uplift the
Speaker 4: spirits and harden their own understanding by sharing their expression
Speaker 4: with the soldiers in the International Brigades. This is one
Speaker 4: thing I have as a call to action, is to
Speaker 4: honor them by studying their choices, their losses, and their resilience,
Speaker 4: telling the full story not just of the battlefield, but
Speaker 4: of camaraderie, the protection, the cookouts, the poems, the organizing.
Speaker 4: And then I just have one last quote from Yates
Speaker 4: that I think really encapsulates the spirit, which is quote,
Speaker 4: simply put, one's own life is, in reality, but an
Speaker 4: unfolding paranorama of mutually developing relationships in a time and
Speaker 4: place beyond an original personal choice.
Speaker 3: End quote.
Speaker 4: And Yeah, if any of this moved you, I really
Speaker 4: encourage you to read James Yates Mississippi to Madrid, look
Speaker 4: up Celaria Keys' writings, and learn about what the veterans
Speaker 4: of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade did after Spain. Because there's
Speaker 4: so much more. There's so much more research about anti
Speaker 4: authoritarian militant action, and not all of them share the
Speaker 4: same identifiers, but it takes a lot to do that research,
Speaker 4: and in drawing a line to the revolt in the
Speaker 4: passion that anti fascism isn't over and neither is our
Speaker 4: capacity for solidarity. They did their part, and now it's
Speaker 4: our turn. We were not handed a finished revolution.
Speaker 2: Hell yeah, okay, but you mentioned all the cooks and
Speaker 2: the everyone, but you forgot to bring back the most
Speaker 2: important character, the one who just wanted to fly a plane.
Speaker 2: I find him fascinating because it's like, oh, America's so
Speaker 2: racist that if he wants to be a pilot, he
Speaker 2: has to go into a war in a foreign country.
Speaker 2: Like and I okay, not to just keep going on
Speaker 2: about the pilot, but one of the things I like
Speaker 2: about the too Right is you're talking about all these
Speaker 2: people who have a gradient of level of like political
Speaker 2: understanding or how central politics is to who they are,
Speaker 2: you know. And you have the people who are like, look,
Speaker 2: I believe in this stuff, and I gotta If I
Speaker 2: say I believe it, I gotta do it. And then
Speaker 2: you have people who are like, well, people are getting
Speaker 2: shot and I'm a medic, and so I'm going and
Speaker 2: you have people who are like, I want to fly
Speaker 2: a plane.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, maybe he was like the most politic of all
Speaker 2: of them, but like, I love this version of him
Speaker 2: where it's just like Noah, I just I really want
Speaker 2: to fly a plane.
Speaker 4: Fly so much we're to say about Garlands too. I
Speaker 4: mean he ended up joining Langston Hughes and Harry Hayward
Speaker 4: and Radio Broadcast when he got back to the United
Speaker 4: States from Madrid. He did work with the American Medical
Speaker 4: Bureau and other organizations to really like lobby because one
Speaker 4: thing about the people who got sent back early, especially
Speaker 4: for being injured, was they were there to test the
Speaker 4: political climate of the United States to see what would
Speaker 4: happen when the war ended, to see what they were
Speaker 4: other folks were sending, like what the Spanish battalions and
Speaker 4: brigades were sending their volunteers back to Oh wow.
Speaker 2: So it was even like kind of an additional danger
Speaker 2: they were taking for their comrades was to be the
Speaker 2: one to go back first to figure out and test
Speaker 2: the waters.
Speaker 3: Damn.
Speaker 2: I had a I had a friend whose grandfather, like
Speaker 2: it was just like it was one of my friends,
Speaker 2: like in a kind of like goth scene, wasn't particularly
Speaker 2: political person. I was like, oh, yeah, my grandfather fought
Speaker 2: in the Spanish Civil War, I think, and didn't know
Speaker 2: like the first thing about it. And I'm like, that
Speaker 2: means your grandfather was a hardcore leftist, Like we should
Speaker 2: talk about that. Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think that's also something that like, especially
Speaker 4: redoing these archives around war and history is so important
Speaker 4: because especially in America, we don't talk about what happened
Speaker 4: during the wars a lot unless it's over glorifying it
Speaker 4: or any of this. Milton Wolf talked heavily after when
Speaker 4: they came back, who was another a white volunteer in
Speaker 4: the Communist Party, about how no one told me what
Speaker 4: it was going to be like in the Foxtrot. Nobody
Speaker 4: told me what it was going to be like in
Speaker 4: No Man's Land. Nobody's going to tell me what it
Speaker 4: was like to see bodies dead but still moving, terrifying.
Speaker 3: Lord.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a terribly on uplifting note to end on.
Speaker 2: But the note that you chose to end on in
Speaker 2: your script it was really good, which is that it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: like We look at this history because we care about
Speaker 2: the present, we care about the future, and this history
Speaker 2: has been very much buried and I love getting to
Speaker 2: see it. So thank you for telling me all this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Well, is there anything you wanna you have a podcast?
Speaker 2: Tell me about your podcast or anything else you'd like
Speaker 2: to plug?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, okay, yeah, I mean one.
Speaker 4: Definitely go check out the dug Out, especially if you're
Speaker 4: interested in black folks in the doing anti fascism and
Speaker 4: in the Spanish Civil War. Because I did so much research,
Speaker 4: I'm gonna have so much content for the Dugout over
Speaker 4: the next couple of months.
Speaker 3: H cool.
Speaker 4: But alongside that, I think it's really important for folks
Speaker 4: to be tapped into the current abolitionist movement that is
Speaker 4: going on in the United States. And one way that
Speaker 4: media and media folks have tapped in and played that
Speaker 4: role is through a couple of projects that I'm involved
Speaker 4: with called In the Belly and In the Mix. And
Speaker 4: In the Belly is an abolitionist magazine that is buy
Speaker 4: and four currently incarcerated individuals. Our editorial steam and all
Speaker 4: of our authors are currently incarcerated folks. With the support
Speaker 4: of formally incarcerated folks on the outside and just getting
Speaker 4: articles from people on the inside to other folks on
Speaker 4: the inside. And then there's in the Mix, which is
Speaker 4: a podcast with the same format hosted by folks that
Speaker 4: are inside, questioning and interviewing sometimes academics or theorists or
Speaker 4: even just other folks that are on the inside, if
Speaker 4: when that's possible. So checking out those two projects I
Speaker 4: feel like are real big hell yeah.
Speaker 2: And if you want to check out anything that I do,
Speaker 2: you could listen to this show. You can also listen
Speaker 2: to Love Like the World's Dying, an individual and community
Speaker 2: preparedness podcast. And I write a newsletter on substack, and
Speaker 2: I probably do other things, but that's enough things.
Speaker 3: Oh, just randomly.
Speaker 4: We also have if you go to patreon dot com
Speaker 4: forward Slash Dugout Pod, we have a free newsletter that
Speaker 4: comes out monthly about folks who want to stay up
Speaker 4: day on some of the more contemporary stuff that's going
Speaker 4: on and hitting our woes, but in a more tempered
Speaker 4: and staggered format than the daily news cycle.
Speaker 3: Check us out over there.
Speaker 1: So for you guy thing, if I want to plug
Speaker 1: one specific thing, I guess listen to Hood Politics with
Speaker 1: the prop. He's been putting out some bangers lately and
Speaker 1: I love that guy.
Speaker 2: They are good.
Speaker 3: Big props to listeners.
Speaker 2: Have heard me say this before, but it continues to
Speaker 2: be true, so you should listen to that, and you
Speaker 2: should listen to us next week when we have more
Speaker 2: Cool People Who this is we always exit end this way,
Speaker 2: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff.
Speaker 1: Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production of
Speaker 1: cool Zone Media. A more podcasts and cool Zone Media,
Speaker 1: visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out
Speaker 1: on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 1: your podcasts.