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Race and Racism in the Scottsboro Era (1930's) In Los Angeles Otto Reeves fought for the Nine defendants and then went for Spain "to prove to myself that I was capable of risking my life for something I thought was correct." Angelo Herndon's brother, Milton Herndon knew from his brother's struggle he had to go to Spain. Commander of a machine-gun company, he was killed crawling across a battlefield to rescue a wounded comrade. Vaughn Love, a leader of Harlem's Scottsboro committee, was three times wounded in Spain. He later wrote: The Black volunteers were where they belonged Other Scottsboro supporters arrived in Spain to lift morale. Though not yet forty but a star of concert halls, stage and screen, Paul Robeson and his wife Eslanda spent a month in Spain singing at hospitals and to troops at the front. [Robeson, 1958 P. 52-53.] James Ford visited the front and was photographed with Black and white fighters, and Jack Sharai, a Japanese member of the Lincoln Brigade. Louise Thompson, a leading Harlem intellectual and agitator on behalf the Scottsboro defendants, came to Spain with Langston Hughes, who arrived representing the Afro-American press. Jim Yates drove Hughes to the front and answered all his questions about the Black heroes and their role in the Brigade. Hughes wrote news articles and poems about the Lincoln's Black and other fighters, including this verse for those who died: Life could not've had These brave men and women who first fought to free the Scottsboro defendants, then for a free Spain and to stop fascist aggression before it brought on World War II, and then in World War II to finally defeat Nazi racism — they are the Greatest Generation. Half a century after I met Joe Taylor I wrote my book on the "black and white unite and fight" Lincoln Brigade and their long effort to end racism, Hitlerism and create a better world. Scottsboro taught important lessons about race and protest. During Hitler's aggressions and racist southern governments, American Communists, led by atheistic, middle class whites, encountered and learned from an emerging Black liberation movement. As Communists of the 1930s plodded ahead seeking to unify their march toward a socialist revolution and a society free from racial animosity, from Alabama to Harlem they organized a "Popular Front" of disparate forces to free the Scottsboro defendants — years before Moscow adopted the “Popular Front” as its global anti-fascist policy. (Lewis, 2000, passim.) Contact with the unique cultural aspects of urban and rural African American life, including its congregations and ministers, persuaded American Communists of both races that their hope for a proletarian revolution had best attach itself like a sidecar to the motorcycle of African American liberation. The Black community -- Garveyite nationalists, Communists, and the millions in-between — learned from Scottsboro that there were whites willing to risk life and limb for equal justice. [Naison, 1983, pp. 57-94 et passim.) Scottsboro offered significant lessons for the future. The legal battles fought by the NAACP for democracy would prove more effective if under girded by massive confrontations and civil disobedience, nonviolent and otherwise. (Lewis, 2000, pp. 261-263) Scottsboro forged a new foundation of unity across racial lines that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would mobilize to defeat segregation and snarling police dogs. Then during the Viet Nam war, he would build a Poor People's front for a more just a America, and advocate an anti-imperialist agenda. Scottsboro taught protest movements to recognize that their struggle in the United States was part of a global battle against fascism, racism and imperialism, and therefore to carry their message overseas from Alabama, Georgia and New York, and to link arms with allies throughout the world. These were no small contributions to emerge for a frame-up in rural Alabama bigots had planned to guide along a glum and brutal course. REFERENCES |
Essays | African American History