Part One: Black Antifascists In the Spanish Civil War

Jordan from The Dugout teaches Margaret about the long history of Black antifascism that brought people to fight in the Spanish Civil War.

James Yates, Mississippi to Madrid
Salaria Kea, “Doing Christ’s Duty”
Canute Frankson’s letter from Spain (1937)
“The Good Fight” (Documentary)
Peter N. Carroll, The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
ALBA-Valb.org archives
Trussel.com, “The Peekskill Riots”
National Archives & Harlem Oral History Project
Kuykendall, Ronald A. "African Blood Brotherhood: Independent Marxism During the Harlem Renaissance." Western Journal of Black Studies 26 (Spring 2002): 
African Blood Brotherhood. The Principles of the African Blood Brotherhood. New York: African Blood Brotherhood, 
David Motadel, Islam and the European Empires (2014)

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media. Hello, and welcome to Cool People Did
Cool Stuff. You're a weekly reminder that when there's bad
things happening, there's good things happening too. I'm your host,
Margaret Kiljoy, and this week is different. Well, every week's different.
Every week is a completely different thing. That's the great
thing about having this podcast is that it's different every week.

(00:22):
But this week is even a different format because instead
of me being the podcast expert, I'm gonna be the
podcast idiot. Because the podcast expert this week who's gonna
explain some stuff to me is my friend Jordan from
the Dugout, a Black anarchist podcast. Hi Jordan, Hello, how's
your week? Everything's fine, right.

Speaker 2 (00:45):
Yeah, I mean it's been about the same. I think
I've been on this earth around twenty three years and
not honestly, not much has changed, you know, patriarch baby,
But you know, other than that, we're still out here.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
Yeah. The other voice you're hearing is Sophie producer. Hi Sophie.
He I'm Magpie. Hi Jordan, Sophie. I'm glad to have
you back.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Missed too.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
I think everyone else is too, And if they're not,
they can stop listening right now. As a podcast for
Sophie fans only. Don't, but don't because this is a
really good topic that's true, very important. So what happened
was I was like, there's this stuff I want to

(01:26):
know about, and Jordan was like, I've been reading an
awful lot about that stuff. And I was like, you
should tell me that's that's what happened. But Jordan, who
are you and what are you an expert that you're
going to explain to me?

Speaker 2 (01:41):
Uh? Yeah, I'm Jordan. I am a archivist and queer
organizer and a Midwest and yeah, I'm going to talk
today about black anti fascists in the Spanish Civil War.
This is something that I've been researching for honestly a
couple of years loose sleeve, but I've been really trying
to get the fire in my belly for it, and

(02:04):
having this conversation with you is able to actually help
my me and my ADHD brain sit down and actually
finish a book, which I possibly finished too many books
for this. But the love of the game.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Love of the game we were talking earlier about, like
Jordan was like, how do you stop with each topic?
And the answer is that time deadlines are the only
reason I stop each stop.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
Why do you think there's always like an entire context episode.

Speaker 1 (02:33):
Yeah, but before we talk about all of that, we
should talk about the fact that our audio engineer is
named Rory. Hi. Rory Hi Ri.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I've been waiting to do that for so long.

Speaker 1 (02:45):
I know. I'm excited that you get to and also,
dear listener, you get to say hi Rory wherever you are.
It's always fun to do that in public. And our
theme music was written forced by own woman. Okay, so
we're gonna talk about black anti fascists in the spanishivil War.

Speaker 2 (03:02):
Yeah. Absolutely, this is my takeover of cool people. I
finally get to be the person who tells you who's cool. Yeah.
I do a lot of researching a lot of black history,
a lot of black anarchists or black liberation history, and
in doing that, I have found that there's so much
like bottom up approaches to fighting against oppressive institutions that

(03:26):
don't get called anarchists throughout history, and I actually love it.
It's part of what drives me to my politic in
and of itself. And in doing a lot of research
for this episode, there's just a lot of like black
resistance that is so bold, very beautiful and brilliant, and
a lot of it gets erased, especially anti fascist history,

(03:48):
because fascism as we know it right now wasn't really
named until like nineteen twenty twentieth century. European fascism is
kind of where we get some of our understandings.

Speaker 1 (03:59):
Yeah, that's a europe problem, right, Like only Europe had fascism,
and therefore that only affected other Europeans. I think Europe
historically only affects Europe, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Yeah, they never left the continent. You know, every bloody,
terrible war was totally absolutely insular, which was great for
something we might call internal colonizing or I think there's
this one phrase I love that's like before Europe colonized
the world, they had to colonize themselves. And I think
it's a really then truer like exposing like oppressive, violent

(04:30):
institutions and in exposing like fascism or like othering and
having that sort of out group to define your terror
on and build fear around to kind of not sometimes
control a population, but more control what they think is

(04:52):
possible and what they think is a reason for certain
downturns in the economy or certain downturns in social life
and right.

Speaker 1 (05:03):
So like they have to blame the other in order
to build the authoritarian state inside.

Speaker 2 (05:08):
Yeah, absolutely, and that kind of displacement of fear and
displacement of responsibility. Then to then put all of our
problems onto typically like strong man authoritarian type leadership to
be like, well, I will solve it. I will give
you quick and easy solutions, quote unquote quick and easy solutions,
which are typically just disappearances and the status quo governing

(05:30):
body going forward. And typically also like capitalists and the
old power structures, it could be it will see in
Spain feudal structures alongside capitalist structures that are vuying to continue,
like their sort of control over the economy, people's labor,
and the international relations. And in doing a lot of

(05:50):
this black anarchist research, I found a lot of anti
authoritarian and communist histories, many that have lived lives of
resistance without calling themselves. And something in my work is
that like, I'm not here to label any of these ancestors,
but drawing a lineage an anti authoritarian thought that reminds
us how and why folks have fought and why they've

(06:12):
fought in certain ways because anti fascism and fascism isn't
something abstract or academic. It's intensely real for a lot
of folks. And that violence comes through the history and
legacy of imperialism and colonialism of when Europe especially Europeans,
were like, well, let's go down to the continent of
Africa and take over norther theft or even just like

(06:34):
this whole history even back through the romans of taking
over in like colonizing other places, and eventually the through
line of what we see now is like these large
settler colony societies in which the whole purpose of it,
the whole foundation of their societies is based on the
violence of erasure and displacement and stolen labor and forced labor.

(06:58):
And to keep that sort of control going, one has
to not recognize it as a fault. And that's where
we are in America is we've never recognized any of
our faults or any of our contradictions and our foundations.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
Right, so it's like we can end up fascist in
part because we don't acknowledge the fact that we started.
Let's go with real bad fascism is obviously like a
unique political ideology, and we can't just apply it to
everything in the past, but obviously, like the horror mess
we're dealing with now with rise of fascism is obviously
like and I was like talking to my friend about this

(07:35):
the other day where I was like, well, it's like
we're dealing with something really, really horrible right now, it's
still better than eighteen fifty in America. Like, even though
what we have now we could call fascist, it you know,
derives from the fascist ideology, don't.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
And the fascist that we used to coin the name
like Hitler and Mussolini and Franco. These are people who
quoted the US, quoted and cited Jim Crow laws in
our use of gas chambers in their reasoning and using
it as like well, if the US did it, and

(08:11):
actually if you make people second class citizens, it's so
much easier to actually just erase them and do a
genocide that this is the model that then Germany tries
to use. And there's something that I talk about and
I was like, it does look kind of nineteen thirties
Germany and America, but it more looks like still eighteen
nineties America. It looks like a post reconstruction America more

(08:35):
than it does like we have like our Gilded Age
or oligarchies, and we have the people. We feel like
we're on the precipice of something and the ruling class
is coming in very very hard to maintain its power structure,
and they know how early they have to get on this.
This is the basis of like counterinsurgency work, as being
so preemptive that you end up just creating a police state,

(08:58):
which in America we've been kind of fine with that
for the most part.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Okay, when I derailed us, we'll talk about history part.
Sorry about that.

Speaker 2 (09:08):
No, you're good. It's a good little conversation. But yeah,
today I'm going to talk a lot about going into
the lives of black anti fascists, especially from America, who
volunteered to participate in the Spanish Civil War, and especially
those who joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, those that came
to see fascism as a threat to their lives, freedoms,
how they got suspain, and what they experienced there, kind

(09:32):
of what happened after the war, and including somehow some
of them went on to work to protect one of
the greatest culture icons of the twentieth century, Paula Robinson,
my opinion, love the man. But one thing to kind
of talk about before is like, for me, this episode
and other things is a context episode. I'm not really

(09:52):
going to start getting into the war until the second episode.

Speaker 1 (09:55):
And for folks who haven't heard more about this before,
we've done a fair number of pisodes on this, possibly
too many episodes about it. But why not always talk
about the Spanish Civil War because it's the war that
started World War Two in a way, you know, it's
the mini war before it. This was the first showdown
between fascist and you would say republican or leftist forces

(10:15):
that happened in the World War II era from nineteen
thirty six to nineteen thirty nine, and it started with
Franco a fascist, a Catholic fascist, attempting a coup, and
then that coup failed because people resisted it, and instead
it turned into the Spanish Civil War. All of the
other powers of the Western Powers, like sat aside while

(10:36):
the fascists basically Germany and Italy helped Franco win. And
it was a long, bloody, drawn out fight and also
one of the most fascinating periods and one of the
most utopian periods in some ways that has ever happened
with people experimenting with whole new ways of being, and
so there's a reason everyone's obsessed with it. And if

(10:57):
you want to know more about it, check out roughly
a quarter of our episodes. And I'm sorry about that,
but this one's good. I've been wanting to hear more
about this particular aspect of it for a long time.

Speaker 2 (11:07):
Yeah, this I think is a very beautiful time in
history for anti authoritarians, especially now. But any folks that
are organizing against fascism, against authoritarianism, against patriarchal violence, and
are understanding their relationship to violence, their relationship to what
different roles in organizing against authoritarian structures look like. I

(11:29):
feel like this little time capsule in history lets folks
know that there are ways to move through, even like
military discipline. Like there's a lot of really good essays
and articles about how anarchists in the time period experimented
with different levels of military discipline and what that meant
for them and how that was up versus a lot

(11:51):
of the machismo that comes with anti fascism in the
day and age. And one thing I think is also
very interesting about the time period is I think it
was only the USSR in Mexico that were supporting the republic.
There are Republican sides at the time, and Mexico even
allowed near the end of the war folks to repatriate
to the area. So a lot of Spanish ANDCI fascists

(12:13):
went to Mexico, and a lot of people in the
Internationalist forces as well went to Mexico after the war.

Speaker 1 (12:19):
Yeah, and when we talk about internationalist forces again, for
folks who were listening while the governments besides Mexico and
USSR sat aside and didn't help the left in the
Spanish Civil War, a lot of individuals from the United States,
from France, from England, from other places Italy went to
Spain and fought. And that's what we're going to be

(12:40):
talking about.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Yeah, I believe there were fifty two different nationalities and
countries represented in the Internationalists brigades. And it really shows
like people showed up the attack started happening. And I
get into this a little bit more, but there were
very interesting ways in which they used newspapers and media
to call for people to come and support their struggle.

(13:01):
But people came. But before there was Spain, there was Ethiopia.
There was the violence in Harlem in the Deep South,
and it was a long battle for black dignity and survival.
And this is about people who refuse to just wait
for justice, people who saw anti fascism as not just
a political stance, but a moral one, a spiritual one,

(13:24):
and a very very personal one. Hell yeah, yeah. The
paths to Spain didn't start in nineteen thirty six. To me,
it kind of starts with World War One and how
we understand some of the concepts and how black veterans
came home after this quote war to end all wars
and were still met with extreme racism, poverty, vigilante terror.

(13:46):
There was in nineteen nineteen the Red Summer, which was
a blood soaked welcome that sparked something deeper into a
lot of folks. So when you say the Red Summer
of nineteen nineteen, what's that about? Is that the like
like the bombing of Black Wall Street and stuff like that, Like,
what's the what's the red Summer? You know, I actually

(14:08):
can't remember if the Tulsa thing happened in the Red Summer,
but it was a bunch of white supremacists terror and
race riots that happened, and dozens of cities across the
US and some rural counties as well. There was a
lot of civil rights activists that coined the term, and
they had organized a lot of peaceful protests against racial

(14:31):
violence in that summer, and they were attacked by racial
terror by folks who were in their communities and did
not want to stand for that sort of racial equity.
In that kind of talk, there was a lot of
white on black violence. There was a lot of race
riots in Chicago, Washington, d c. And then it was

(14:52):
kind of related to the demobilization of folks coming back
from World War One and kind of the economic downturn
that the US was kind of starting to ben and
folks were still coming through too on and there was
a lot of labor unrest happening in that time and
a lot of labor organizing that, especially in America, still

(15:12):
had a lot of racial undertones. So there was a
lot of folks that came back from the war. They
came back, they tried to get different jobs. Some of
them started organizing, but black folks weren't let into the unions,
they weren't let on shop floors. There was organizing against
that with the long shore Men's and in the IWW.

Speaker 1 (15:29):
When you're saying that, when you're saying organizing against that,
you mean not organizing against black people joining, but rather
organizing against the racism that was preventing black people from joining.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Yeah. Absolutely, absolutely cool. And this is sort of one
of the motivators for what was called like the Great Migration,
which has went around like half a million African Americans
left the southern United States and started going north and west.
And this is also a time like to recognize that
like the South wasn't I don't know if it still is.

(15:58):
I don't think it is is a majority blo space,
and especially was in the twentieth and eighteenth century, which
is one reason when I look when fascist dictators, look
at how the US appropriated violence against black citizen injury,
a majority citizen injury to have a white rule, a
white minority rule, it's very influential to the foundations of

(16:22):
a lot of internal fascist violence or internal violence. Okay,
but yeah, the black anti fascism is in my opinion
also it goes back to colonialism. It goes this black
anti authoritarian urge, goes back to indigenous Africans being stolen, propertied,

(16:42):
sold into slavery and their descendants and those who immigrated
here fighting back against that colonial violence and against that
repatiation is older than the country itself, with the first
slaver volts, maroon societies, insurrections happening since we landed here. Yeah,
kind of one of the first things I want to
give some examples of that is in the Palmarras area

(17:05):
of Brazil and around sixteen oh four, a republic of
mainly free Africans and indigenous societies made villages, war camps,
formed republics to fight off Portugal armies for decades, raiding plantations,
maintaining agriculture using the forests and like guerrilla tactics and
knowledge of the land to survive and grow and oper

(17:26):
in like indirect opposition to colonial slavery.

Speaker 1 (17:30):
Yeah, they like literally had their own basically country going on, right.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah. Absolutely, it was like the name itself for the
I think it's Colombos. Colombos it means like I think
it means like war camp and village. And so they
were like a bunch of federated war camps and villages
that were there as both defensive outposts to like very
purposely maintain the society outside of colonial violence, and also

(17:59):
I would love to do more research into the race relations.
But they were very much against the sort of the
sort of racial hierarchy and cast hierarchy that Portugal and
the Dutch were trying to implement in that region, though
they still at some points worked with the Dutch to
fight off Portugal advancements. But that's what alliances are for. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (18:19):
No, it's like some of that stuff is so interesting
because even some of the Maroon societies, like I don't
know about specifically about the Columbos, but some of them
even like had slavery within them, but they were still
like they were They're just separate societies that were on
I don't know, they're fascinating. I always want to know
more about them, you know.

Speaker 2 (18:39):
I know that's one of those things I found right before,
like a couple of days ago, and was like this,
I wanted to put more information on in here. And
then those Palmara's societies lasted about ninety years, and even
after that, there was the Haitian Revolution in the late
eighteenth century that I think some people forget, like I

(19:02):
think they had like over one hundred and forty revolts
before they finally had a revolution, and that in and
of itself, the consistent strikes and then the eventual overthrow
struck the heart of enslavers across the Western hemisphere.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Yeah, it'scared the shit out of them. It was so good.

Speaker 2 (19:20):
Yeah, they were terrified. They were terrified for so many reasons,
and so many good reasons because it also they were
scared of it inspiring folks in like the American South
and and I believe also in around Brazil because it's
one of the still like the second largest slave society
outside of the US at the time, and it did

(19:43):
it kept the flame of freedom strong and the heart
for rebels for generations to come. It is a struggle
that I still really would love for people to study
more of because it has so much, so much history
and nuances and how things played out and how different
relationships were built through. But it inspired folks like Gabrielle Prosser,

(20:04):
who was in enslaved literate blacksmiths from the plantations near Richmond, Virginia,
and they organized a massive, massive slavery vault with one
hundreds of enslaved folks and their goal was to seize
control of Richmond and to take the governor hostage, negotiate
the end of slavery, create a more egalitarian society, whole

(20:25):
nine yards. And they were very influenced, interestingly by American
revolutionary libertarian language and equality, and they were like, well,
why can't this be true? And one thing they wouldn't
be inspired.

Speaker 1 (20:38):
By, Ah, you did it before I got to do it.
This is a takeover. You took away that my only
joy in life of now go ahead. What is inspired
by these things? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Well, Gabriel was inspired by the American Revolution. And you
know who else was inspired by the American Revolution? Probably
our advertisers.

Speaker 1 (20:58):
That's right, all of them. Sorry, I just got really
excited at the producer.

Speaker 2 (21:08):
Now. For the past two years, I'm trying to think
of things to say to get that kind of reaction
out of all if an effort. I am on the.

Speaker 1 (21:13):
Show, and you did it, Andrew back, I got to say,
Andrew back.

Speaker 2 (21:29):
So there was also so many more rebellions that were
directly influenced by the Haitian Revolution itself, like Denmark Vessi,
after buying his freedom after winning a lottery he plotted
one of the most sophisticated and well organized slaver vaults
in the US history. In Charleston, South Carolina. He mobilized
thousands of black people, including both enslaved and free, to

(21:51):
seize weapons, kill slave holders, and burn Charleston to the
ground and set sale to Haiti for freedom. Deeply deeply religious,
Vessi saw slavery as a sin against God, and Haiti's
successful Black Revolutionaris heavily influenced this thinking, especially a lot
of the voodoo that was going on at the time
that it was like faith respects faith.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:12):
The sad part about it though, is that some of
the co conspirators I believe they got rained out on
the day of their action, and two people snitched and
told their slave masters, and Vessi and I believe at
least over thirty other people were executed.

Speaker 1 (22:28):
You know what I think about this sometimes is one,
it's really sad how many of these got shut down
by snitches, right, But also how many more we never
heard about because like, in some ways we hear about
them almost because they got caught, you know. I mean,
obviously if they've been super successful and burned down all
of Charleston, we would have heard of it. But it's
like so many people ploted these things and probably were

(22:49):
even kind of punished, but in like a low key way.

Speaker 2 (22:52):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (22:52):
It's just like the more I read about this history,
the more I'm like, there's so many were never gonna
learn about, and there's still so many that we can
learn about, and they're all so fucking cool.

Speaker 2 (23:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That makes me think about like my whole
history of like Roanoke, and it was a lost city,
lost people when it was like, okay, actually folks just
left the colony, like the historians now are just like okay, yeah, no,
But then there's still so many different things that we
can just enjoy and learn from so deeply. Even more

(23:24):
rebellions from black anti authoritarians is like Robert Smalls during
the Civil War in like eighteen sixty two, hijacked a
Confederate ship, the Planter, and disguised himself as the captain,
picked up his family and other enslave folks along their way,
and then surrendered the ship to Union forces. After the
Civil War, Smalls built a small public education like he

(23:47):
built and worked around public education, protecting black rights and
resisting the reimposition of white supremacy during Reconstruction. I believe
he was elected to office at least five times during
that like reconstruction period in which that was allowed in
the early nineteenth century in America.

Speaker 1 (24:04):
He was fucking cool. We covered him a little bit
on the Civil Civil War war, maybe like the second
episode we ever did of.

Speaker 2 (24:11):
This show, Okay, because I knew I had heard that
story before when I had found am And there was
like even more organized efforts to fight against the sort
of racialized violence that was happening in the States, with
Marcus Garvey being a big inspiration for Pan Africanism, the
Back to Africa movement and establishing the UNIA, the Universal

(24:33):
Negro Improvement Association. There was also this a little lesser
known communist group called the African Blood Brotherhood founded by
Cyril Briggs, a black journalist around lasted around nineteen nineteen
to twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (24:47):
Five, which is a sick name. I'm just gonna Zeril Briggs. No, No,
well that too, but no, the Blood Brotherhood, what was it.

Speaker 2 (24:57):
Yeah, the African Blood Brotherhood. They were inspired by a
lot of like traditional African Blood Brotherhood rituals that are
kind of like a coming of age sort of thing.
And then also they were heavily inspired by the Irish
Republican Brotherhood at the time. Cyral Briggs was a Black
journalist and socialists from the Caribbean islands around like the Nevies,

(25:19):
and they were like a semi secret, super hierarchical but
semi secret radical organization promoting black self determination, armed self defense,
anti racism, and anti capitalism. They were heavily inspired by
the Russian Revolution that had just happened in nineteen seventeen
and the failures of American democracy to deliver any sort
of racial justice. They advocated for self defense, organized self

(25:43):
defense classes against racial violence, especially after that Red Summer
of nineteen nineteen when a bunch of white mobs attacked
Black communities and they urged for the overthrow of white
supremacist capitalism, solidarity with revolutionary movements globally like they were
really big into like early Black internationalism outside of just
doing like a Pan African kind of scheme, and they

(26:05):
leaned a lot of their roots in media and published
the Crusader Magazine. They can be quoted in their pamphlets
saying in like their Principles of the African Blood Brotherhood
that was published in the Crusader Magazine saying quote we
must offend ourselves with arms in hand whenever the lynchers
or mobs invade our homes or threatens our life, with
their founders going on to continue saying, quote without arms,

(26:29):
there can be no power. Without power, there can be
no freedom. The African Blood Brotherhood stands for the organized
might of the Negro worker end quote, which Briggs wrote.
Kind of he did a lot of like the editorial
and writing for The Crusader, and was like the point
person for it, which is why folks like tend to
look back on it as super hierarchical. But they were
like an explicit workers association trying to organize unions for

(26:52):
people that would be normally excluded, which for them was
also people who were not considered white at the time,
and trying to build that bridge the gap between class
conscious white people and Irish folks and people who were
like newly immigrated and black folks, especially during the one
of the Great migrations when folks were going north. So
they advocated a lot of alliances with communist movements and

(27:14):
with the Party itself eventually dissolving into the party.

Speaker 1 (27:17):
And I think one of the things that's so fascinating
to me about this. I hadn't heard as much about this,
and that's I'm really excited about it is that I
think we get presented this idea that like Black American
radical history and then like the labor movement and you know,
sort of named ideological positions are just completely separate things,

(27:39):
and it like ignores this incredible amount of overlap between
you know, leftism and black politics in America. I mean,
obviously in the by the end of the twentieth century,
we that's less seen as the case. But when people
talk about the sort of early legacy of fighting against racism,
I feel like the like class consciousness part of it

(27:59):
is left out.

Speaker 2 (28:01):
Yeah, I've always loved telling people that Lucy Persons was
a part of founding the IWW here in America. Like
this has been something very integral to black autonomous politics
and scenes for a really long time, and something we
see a lot in Black communities is like this, some
of the stuff for like the sense of safety is

(28:21):
still kept insular. Your politics is kept insular. You will
tell your family, your kid, like people at the cookout.
We know what to talk about and how to talk
about it. But when it comes to being out in
a very above ground organization. There's so many risks that
come with that that, yeah, and also so many different variations.
This is also how like after the nineteen sixties, they

(28:43):
stopped killing black leaders because folks started keeping their really
radical politics insular. Again, can also shift to like the
sort of black excellence that's like black without others, so
like blackness but no solidarity, which still having some sort
of principles there that don't really reach towards liberation in

(29:04):
my humble opinion. And that's also something that the African
Blood Brotherhood kind of had in their mode of organizing
as well, because they had a big distaste for Garvy,
especially at the time because he won. Actually I don't
know if they had the issue with his misogyny. I do,
but they had an issue and I have an issue

(29:24):
with this too, is because he I believe it was
him that said Franco can't be a fascist. I coined
the word fascism and quite literally worked with the KKK
and would have meetings with people like legal Clerk of
the Ku Klux Klan. Because it's kind of this mentality
of all right, separate but equal, How do we really
stay separate? What does that mean? How do you want

(29:46):
us over here, Fine, we want us over there. Y'all
got to stay over there.

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Then, Yeah, nationalism is a thing.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Yeah, it's one hell of a drug. And the beef
got so heated that Garvy and their meetings. Actually this
instructed p to disrupt the African Blood Brotherhood meetings and activities.
But then like by like the mid nineteen twenties, many
of the African Blood Brotherhood were already members of the
Communist Party. And I want to look more into this history,

(30:14):
but it's kind of like seems like like the Central
Committee inside of the Communist Party absorbed and it was
like y'all got to shut down. The ABB just become
like an auxiliary council inside of us.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Which there was a lot of that going on with
the American Communist Party around that time. They tried to
do it to a bunch of unions and stuff too.
I'm sure they succeeded with some.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
Yeah, and then kind of to put a chef's kiss
on the history of black resistance and oppressive institutions and
like the violent societies that they inhibit. I want to
read Claude Mackay's poem If I Must Die, which has
been reprinted an uncountable amount of times, and through doing
this research, I have seen mentioned and cited like by
almost every person that that I've read through, either whether

(30:57):
they talk about Claude Mackay themselves as an anti fashion
or antiasis writer, or people like James Yates and Salary
a key that we'll talk about now or later on
adoring and using as a kind of mantra. So quote,
if we must die, let it not be like dogs
hunted and penned in an inglorious spot while round us

(31:21):
bark the mad and hungry dogs making their mock at
our accursed lot. If we must die, Oh, let us
nobly die, so that our precious blood may not be
shed in vain. Then even the monsters we defy shall
be constrained to honor us through dead. Oh, kensman, we
must meet the common foe, though far outnumbered, let us

(31:42):
show us brave and further thousand blows, deal one death blow.
What though before us lies the open grave like men
will face the murderous, cowardly pack, pressed to the wall,
dying but fighting back. End quote.

Speaker 1 (31:59):
That's fucking metal, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:00):
It really really is. I'm like, Oh, I could put
that through a little diy punk songe real quick yeah yeah,
and many people, many of the people we will talk
about in the future, know the levels of fascism and
what resisting sort of violent colonial and racial violence and
terror means. James Yeates, who I will be hooting heavily

(32:20):
in this episode, describes kind of the conditions of Mississippi
during his upbringing. Quote. There was a mass lynching near
the town of Shibudah where the highway and railroad across
the Chickasaio River. Some parts of the incident were written
up in northern newspapers. No one ever is charged with
the crime, although the local members of the klu Klux

(32:41):
Klan were well known. Five men and four women were
hung their feet dangling just inches above the river's muddy waters.
Such was Mississippi in those times. The only thing a
black man or woman had to do to get lynched
was not move off the side work for miss Ann
or mister Charlie. A black must never be caught drinking
from a white only fountain, or making the mistake of

(33:02):
using the front door instead of the back door. Stealing
a chicken or a pig was very dangerous. Being caught
at this could get you twenty years on the chain gang.
If you were black in Mississippi, lightning would surely strike
home sooner or later. Here's an example of how it
struck equipment. Around nineteen eighteen. My uncle Willy, while working
in the sawmill one day, accidentally hit a white man
with a piece of lumber he was carrying. He managed

(33:24):
to make it home before being chased away from the mill.
The news spread like wildfire all throughout town, passing word
lynching tonight. I can remember Grandma Lizzie pacing the floor
all throughout the afternoon. Aunt Bell, my uncle's wife, was
almost speechless. He would die fighting rather than be hung
by the clusters. The only problem now was a supply

(33:44):
of ammunition. That day, the town merchants had stopped selling
shells to black folks. Living almost next door to my
uncle Willy was a white family, the Linens, a husband,
a wife, and three daughters. We call the man mister gus.
He had an unusual way of speak, teaking English, I
could only catch one or two words out of ten.
Mister gus knew more about lumber than anybody in the

(34:05):
sawmill equipment. Still, he was an outcast, quote white trash
to most white people. It was said he came from
up north, but I still often heard him talk about Ireland,
a place I had never heard about before. Mister Guss
was a small in structure but big in heart. He'd
heard the news about the klu klutz Klan was coming
to lynch my uncle. That night, Uncle Willy heard a voice,

(34:26):
Willie Willie. Mister Guss wanted to make sure my uncle
wouldn't start shouting. Mister Guss asked, my uncle, what can
I do to help you? Uncle Willy told him about
how the white merchants even refused to sell rabbit shot
to blacks. Mister Gus walked away without even saying a word.
He made his way to equipment and bought ammunition and
then returned to my uncle's house with it. Here he said,

(34:48):
defend yourself. And then he went back to town and
told the whites, some of y'all are going to get
killed by those niggers if you try to lynch that
Willie end quote. And this is like a kind of
like really long part of the text that I pull
a lot from James Yate's memoir Mississippi to Madrid, which
I highly recommend folks check out. It's really beautiful and
hits a lot of the points that I really wanted
to hit in this piece.

Speaker 1 (35:09):
But okay, so this person who's quote this is from
is one of the people who later went and fought
in Spain. Yes, absolutely, yeah, fuck yeah, okay.

Speaker 2 (35:16):
And this is kind of his kind of understanding of
like this is what racial terror and what living in
Mississippi kind of was at the time. And to me,
one of the big lessons around this is like, you
never know who your neighbor may be, or those like
those with conviction around you will let themselves be known.
And the answer isn't always to react immediately, but always

(35:39):
to prepare as soon as possible. And one thing I
read from this text was like one like the intricacies
of race even in Mississippi itself, with like this obviously
outcast Irish man being like what can I do to
help you? As well as like folks their relationship being

(35:59):
base on the shop floor in the lumber yard, and
how they're also your neighbor, and like these are the
spaces of organizing against racial terror, against patriarchal violence that
organizers all around the world do a lot of brilliant
work in that I wanted to highlight as well that
there's a lot of life saving work that happens just
on your shop floor and in your neighborhood that we

(36:21):
could be extending and organizing so that we are more
prepared for the levels of increasing violence that Americans face.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
No, that makes sense. It's like like just literally finding
ways to make sure that well we have class solidarity
with each other, you know, like realizing like, all right,
we're all dealing with a bunch of different shit, but
like at the end of the day, here we are
on the like fucking shop floor. No that that's cool. Yeah,
but you know what else is on the shop floor?
I'm coming in before Jordan has a chance to do it.

(36:48):
But now I'm messing it up because it's not the
best transition I've ever done.

Speaker 2 (36:51):
I was gonna say, you know what's not on the
shop floor? Solidaire Wait, solidari is actually I don't remember.

Speaker 1 (36:57):
I was gonna say, well, this usually adds on that
because it listen to the radio while you're working and stuff.
Maybe you're listening to this while working right now. And
if so, well, even if you're not working, here's ads
I don't know here they are.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
And we're back. You can stop it skipping unless you're
a cool Zone Premium member or whatever that means. I
don't know if that's still a thing.

Speaker 1 (37:25):
Cooler Zone Media, Cooler Zone Media, then you didn't have
to listen to ads.

Speaker 2 (37:29):
Is that available and Android yet? Nope? Yeah, I'm gonna
say I wouldn't know. I'm purely an Android user.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, fair, I have no excuse. I'm on an iPhone
and I still end them out. I don't even know.
I haven't even signed up for it, and all I
listened to is school Zone Media. That's why haven't I
done it. It makes no sense I should do it anyway.

Speaker 2 (37:52):
Yeah, for the past five years, I think Cool Zone
Medias have been in my top five podcasts every year.

Speaker 1 (37:57):
So yeah, we make good stuff, cool.

Speaker 2 (38:01):
Stuff even.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
We're all right.

Speaker 2 (38:07):
So in this time in America around like nineteen ten,
nineteen twenties, even with the Great Migration happening and before then,
especially during like James Yates' upbringing, it's important for me
to remind folks that the South was a majority black
and that the apartheid progressiveness of American liberty was in
full force towards its black residence, with both secret and

(38:30):
open organizing collectives for land, economic stability, and education forming
in many communities. It's where like a lot of where
snit comes from, Like when we think about like a
lot of revolutionary stuff that came out of like the
sixties and thirties. Ella Baker like these anti authoritarian traditions
as well, and that black anti fascist urge to drive

(38:50):
for communal institutions in which participants were valued and relied
upon was not just the tools that they used, but
it was like the motives for how they viewed leadership
and of itself.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
That makes sense to me, I haven't. I've read a
lot about like black cooperative stuff and especially like, uh,
there's a lot of like black cooperative farming that came
out of the South and stuff that that that's cool,
that tracks that, that's interesting to me.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
Yeah, Ellen Baker, who came up during this period and
in this area down South, was very much a They
were big on doing leadership training so that everybody could
see leadership, call out terrible leadership and be able to
take it upon themselves, to have the reins, to feel
their own power to make decisions and have those decisions

(39:37):
be valued, and to see bad decisions and authoritarian leadership
and cut that shit off. Hell yeah yeah, And so
by around like the nineteen thirties, the Great Depression had
deepened economic disparities. Black activists were organizing, and the beatings
that they took for protesting unemployment, both in the South
and the north, helped them see repression at home as

(40:00):
part of a global authoritarian surge. Groups like the Unemployment
Councils and the League of Struggle for Negro Rights began
tying local conditions to international fascism. The state's brutal crackdowns
mirrored what was happening both at home and abroad. And
then there was the invasion of Ethiopia by Mussolini in
nineteen thirty five that really lit a fire under a

(40:22):
lot of black activists and under a lot of internationalists
as well. From about nineteen thirty five, the invasion of
Ethiopia began, ending in February of thirty six. There was
still a lot more going on there, but italiand forces
invaded with over two hundred thousand soldiers, utilizing tanks, firearms,
aerial offenses including poison gas, mustard gas, and bombing civilian

(40:45):
and military positions, both to deter resistance and also to
just destroy and be able to use the land as
they needed. They were also, as they even claimed, practicing
what they wanted to do, which is like this extension
of this colonial imperial violence being the this for how
they would do what we see now as colonialism.

Speaker 1 (41:04):
Oh okay, so we're going to go practice on these
people who don't have any kind of munitions to fight
us back as equals or whatever.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Yeah, I mean, And they also just like something we
see now in Gaza as well, like international medical units
were bombed, killed discriminately, even though there was no way
to not know they were medical units, but they didn't
really care. That was kind of their point. Yeah, because
for many black folks at the time, Ethiopia represented hope,
pride in resisting all sort of colonial advances. It's still

(41:32):
kind of known as this place in the black community
as like Ethiopia was never colonized. It's like a really
big phrasing. Whether that's what people consider true or not
is a different thing in my head. But like there
is a history and really long resistance because this is
not the first time Italy had advances in the region
at all, especially if you know about the history of Rome.

Speaker 1 (41:54):
Well, okay, so this is really fascinating to me because
I hadn't. This means that those are like literally the
first anti fascists, the first people fighting a war against fascism.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't think Italy invaded
anyone prior to that, right, I mean you have, you
have anti fascists in terms of people fighting within Italy
and within Germany. But the first like war against fascism

(42:18):
is in Ethiopia.

Speaker 2 (42:18):
Then, uh yeah, like the by the fascists who want
to name themselves absolutely, yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Shit, So like black folks are literally the original anti fascists.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
In this context, and that's cool. We do it good,
we do it best. Well best we do it first.
I don't know if we do it best.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Oh whatever, yeah, you fuck it.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
But it was very much like Ethiopia, especially at the time,
was seen as a place for European domination was not
taking its rain on the afternitt continent, and with the
rising authoritarianism after a bunch of tumultuous years of the
First World War led a lot of world leaders and
especially America into like their isolationalists kind of vibe at all.

(43:00):
So with the rising authoritarianism led for like these strong
man type leadership narratives to be built by people who
were already had access to material into things that moved
the political scenes. So they relied on like rising nationalism
and like the same collapse of economic conditions that social

(43:23):
justice advocates and revolutionaries built communal campaigns of economic emancipation on.
Authoritarians then went around and built nationalism through alleged quick
and easy solutions just founded in fears, enophobia and terror
and violence through.

Speaker 1 (43:38):
Okay, so the same shit that nothing changes, that's what you're.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Yeah, no, no, yeah no. And then they used technological
advances that become very accessible at the period, like radio
and film to kind of bolsterrough this imagery of strong
leadership and of their imagination being worked through. And it's
kind of like the saying that we're living in somebody
else is dream. It's just our nightmare, so we should

(44:02):
be able to build our dream reality right now as well.
And like somebody dreamed of this system that we're living
in and they think it's hunky dory and it's actually not.
But yeah, there were groups in different formations of communists, anarchists,
and social reformers alike, that we're organizing to unite the
working class away from capitalist based solutions and to look

(44:22):
towards each other for even just figuring out new solutions.

Speaker 1 (44:26):
What are you talking about now, you just talk about
globally or is this really.

Speaker 2 (44:29):
Oh yeah, kind of globally like around like the nineteen
thirties and like with this rise of fascism. And I
don't know who coined this phrase, but there's like this
real idea that fascism is always writing the tales of
a failed revolution.

Speaker 1 (44:43):
And yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 2 (44:44):
I kind of. It gives that aesthetic of dealing with
social and economic problems, and it can sell that aesthetic
to you without selling you material conditions or actually changing
your material conditions. So as this invasion of Ethiopia uful,
it was a clear escalation for folks in the States
about the escalation in world authoritarian violence, and across the

(45:08):
nation of the US, people erupted on protests signs reading
hands Off Ethiopia, and the organizing to expose the links
of anti colonial resistance abroad to the anti lynching campaigns
at home became even stronger, and it all kind of
became part of the same struggles there is Salary a key.
Who is someone else I'm going to talk about a

(45:30):
lot more. Who's a black nurse and anti fascist that
went over to go lend aid to the Spanish Republic.
They were at this time still in the south end
of that, I believe at this point they were in
the Midwest, and they were helping raise funds for an
entire seventy five bed hospital to be built in Ethiopia.
And Yates goes on to describe some of the organizing

(45:51):
that they saw in their book Mississipia Madrid as quote.
As Mussolini's massive attacks against Ethiopia continued, we focus all
of our energy in to stop the fascists. We roamed
the cities collecting food clothing to be sent to the
victims of the bombs. In addition to passing out leaflands
denouncing the war, we gathered signatures and sent them to
President Roosevelt and treating him to stop Mussolini end quote.

(46:13):
So it really like this beginning of these like people
recognizing the global fascist and authoritarian threat and doing like
the on the ground at home grassroots organizing to talk
to your neighbors about it. See if we can talk
to any of our politicians who have way more sway
when it comes to other world leaders, unless well, I'm
not gonna get into that. And then there were street

(46:34):
demonstrations and riots over the invasion in most large cities.
There was like a minority of black folks looting a
lot of Italian shops at the time, Like there's a
lot of horizontal racial violence happening. Well horizontal weird to
say for me, but yeah, groups ended up organizing and
putting out statements that Italians themselves did not agree with Mussolini,

(46:58):
which to a lot of folks that went over to fight,
which they were about ninety black anti fascists from America
that went over to go fight. It became even clear
to them with how many Italian soldiers ended up joining
the internationalists brigades in the Spanish Civil War.

Speaker 1 (47:14):
Yeah, it's a kind of a good moment to be like, oh, yeah, right,
there's internationalists and anti fascists in every fucking place. Is
like all going over there together, that's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (47:24):
Yeah, And as most people listening now may know, protesting
and urging your state to change foreign policy decision on
an ongoing war that the state has already deemed its
response to it's very hard, tiring, and a lot of
the times some consider fruitless, but it's not. There are many,
many things to do, and this is a constant in
US history that leads every generation of protesters to advance

(47:45):
their tactics and develop and reimagine what goals they have,
to reconsider what is a winning campaign, and for folks
in the early twentieth century, especially black people. Yeates talks
about what it feels like or what it felt like
to decide to start getting engaged, and a lot of
that came when Republican Spain itself started to come under

(48:06):
attack after the invasion of Ethiopia. And read the decision
that James Yates in their affinity group with were just
like they were living with a bunch of artists in
New York at this time, or maybe it was Chicago,
just being around, organizing scenes, going to rallies, train hopping,

(48:28):
just doing the thing.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Yeah, same shit, yeah, uh huh, he said.

Speaker 2 (48:33):
Quote. The loft had become a very gloomy place. Then
one day Hermann rushed in with an armful of groceries
and newspapers. He held five different papers in his hands
and all of them read in effect Republican Spain under attack.
The headlines screamed out at us and the fascist collaboration
in Spain seemed to jump off the pages. One paper

(48:53):
boldly announced Mussolini pledges the support of his troops. The
article concluded by saying that Spanish Republican government, democratically elected,
was asking the entire worlds for volunteers to come to
Spain and aid in his fight against Mussolini, Hitler and
the fascist generals. Hermann shouted at no one in particular.
Now you see what did I tell you? I've been

(49:15):
saying for three years that Hitler would move. First he
tightened his Nazi grip on Germany, and then he'd look
around the rest of Europe. Such a maniac cannot be appeased.
I've said it over and over. But who will listen?
Alonzo didn't look up. He stared silently at his paper,
and then he said, in his typical quiet manner, I'm going.
I'm volunteering. The time for talking is over. You've got

(49:37):
to put your convictions where your mouth is. I was
silent with the question pressed upon me, Am I ready
to go to Spain with Alonzo? I had been more
than ready to go to Ethiopia, but that was different. Ethiopia,
a black nation was part of me. I was just
beginning to learn about the reality of Spain and Europe,
but I knew what was at stake. There was the poor,
the peasants, the workers, and the unions. The socialists and

(50:00):
the communists together had won an election against the big landowners,
the monarchy, and the right wingers in the military. It
was the kind of victory that would have brought black
people to the top levels of government if such an
election had been won in the US. The new government
in Spain was dividing its wealth with the peasants, Unions
were organizing in each factory, and social services were being introduced.

(50:20):
Spain was the perfect example of the world I dreamed of.

Speaker 1 (50:23):
And that's fucking cool. I was just gonna like that moment.
I don't know, I know, I know that most of
my response to the script so far as that's fucking cool,
but like that moment of like, no, we just got
to do it, yeah, and being like oh shit, yeah,
you're right, this is the same struggle in a different place, Like,

(50:44):
I don't know, it's cool.

Speaker 2 (50:45):
Yeah, And I think it's a lot of to me.
Something in the beauty of this that I see is
it's kind of also some of the beauty I see
in snick the oh what is their actual name?

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Student Onnviolent Coordinating Committee?

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yeah, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. And with Martin Luther King Junior,
my coast and I print Secure talk a lot, especially
during the election, around like what voting means to us
and what especially as black anarchists, and what voting that's
respected by the state means. And there's these beautiful speeches
of Martin Luther King very early on, being like, we

(51:20):
will have our black judges, our black cops, our black
lawmakers will be at everywhere. If they just give us
the vote, we won't need to even hear from the
white oppressors anymore. And I know, damn well, even as
a black anarchist, if I had heard that one hundred
years ago, I'd be in the back like, yeah, let's
get our thing on. And because it's one of those
fundamental human urges that folks see something being denied them,

(51:44):
something granted access to others, and they're like, well, why
not us, And the imagination of being able to think,
oh well, if we were able to, especially post reconstruction
actually have a black republic outside of that that was

(52:04):
like based on the majority and based on how things
were going, they would be the government of the South
would be a lot blacker than it is now and
has ever been post reconstruction.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
I think about this constantly. As soon as I learned
about how terribly you know, the Ku Klux Klan came
in and was like, we're going to fuck this up
through random, non legal violence. But then instead they just
came in with Jim Crow and were like, actually, we're
gonna put this down legally, and like, yeah, how completely
fundamentally different the United States would be without Jim Crow.

(52:35):
It wouldn't just be like, oh, we had reached a
quality sooner or whatever, but like just literally it would
be a different country, and a almost certainly substantially more
interesting and good one.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Yeah, like extremely interesting. And that's something that even now urges.
There's efforts for like the Republic of New Africa, which
is like the combination of like the Deep South states
into being formed of public and even through to the
Black Panther parties kind of held this this political line
that I still love, which is we still haven't got

(53:08):
to decide whether we wanted to be US citizens or not,
and we should have a referendum on that because I mean.

Speaker 1 (53:15):
Yeah, like all right, we got we get to choose,
and we're going to try and choose. Yeah, no, it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (53:20):
Yeah, And with that conviction, they had decided they were
going to travel to Spain. And that is a kind
of conversation that happened with a lot of folks, with
some folks lying to their family about where they were going.
And one thing before in this off like to talk
about how isolationless the US was at this point and

(53:43):
how they very much I think, as you said earlier,
they were like, we're not picking a side, which usually
means neutrality usually means you're never fully neutral. Like they
stopped people from getting passports to go over to Spain
to go and try to actually participate. So a lot
of folks had to go directly to France and cross

(54:03):
the Pyrenees mountain range, and like all these different ways.
It was not a straight shot for anyone to go
straight to Spain unless you were already over there. There's
like a combination of boat, train and hiking through these
mountain ranges.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Yeah, yeah, the whole like isolation has just mean deciding
with the oppressor, like the US, France and England, we're like, oh,
we're staying out of it. And by that, I mean
we're putting an embargo on arms for either side to Spain,
whereas like Germany and Italy like sweet, we're gonna send
fucking munitions to the fascists. That's great, you know, and

(54:39):
leaving you know, the overwhelming majority of international munitions came
in through the USSR, which of course has its own
mess because then they were like and now we're in
charge of everything.

Speaker 2 (54:47):
Yes, absolutely, And I think there's there's a lot of
stuff written about, like the Communist Party and how the
USSR engaged in the SPANISHI War, which is not something
I get too into in these next couple episodes, but
it is a very interesting way to see international relations
be played out, and how the USSR took that mantle

(55:08):
up when it came to other revolutionary causes, something even
Sha Gavera had issues with.

Speaker 1 (55:13):
Oh shit, I need to one day, I'll read more
about that whole thing. That's the infinite onion of history.

Speaker 2 (55:20):
Yeah. Fun fact Shay went and fought in the Democratic
Republic of Congo after he yelled at the USSR for
having terrible revolutionary politics with other international brigades, and went
over there to go try to help them before he
went over to more South and Central America. Yeah, yeah,
it's very very interesting, And yeah, travel wasn't a straight shot.

(55:42):
It was a combination of boat train and hiking through
treacherous mountains. James Yates describes one of like the last
moments of their climb as quote, Within minutes of beginning
the second lap of the climb, we tossed away most
of our possessions. Men threw away their knapsacks, coats, blankets,
anything to lighten the load. They even took off their
socks and flung them into the darkness. I kept my shoes,

(56:05):
but threw away most everything else. When it came to
my books, I tried to fit them into my pockets,
but they felt like pieces of lead. I fingered them regretfully,
then pulled too out, letting them drop. They flittered down
through the blackness. It was a part of me falling.
Later I found the books I still had was the
one by Lynston Hughes end quote. And then when arriving

(56:26):
I really love how Yates describes their first contact after
these like the Pyrenees mountain range is like they went
up one mountain, then down another steep, steep mountain, and
then up another steep, steep mountain, and then down another steep,
steep mountain, and then the second lap was up Another's
like it was a lot of up and down And
it's to me one of those convictions because a lot

(56:50):
of folks died just getting to Spain and specifically on
that mountain range, and it kind of to me colors
some of the approach of this is something that I
didn't really mention it, but like Yates talk about, like
it didn't really hit James what they were really going
to do until they were on the boat to France

(57:10):
and they were like, crap, I might die. Yeah, And
I think that's also something that really shows how little
society back then, even kind of now we have an
issue with it. But talked about war, the trauma of war,
what it means to like engage in violent acts, but
then also what it means to take those violent acts
that are being disposed onto you and do something to

(57:32):
dismantle the system that is making that systemic.

Speaker 1 (57:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
But yeah, and then the kind of through lines that
in also highly recommended like folks read this Mississippi to
Madrid because they bring so many beautiful comparisons between Spanish
culture and Black American culture that kind of struck me,
which I guess I'll just end some of this off
by saying another quote from James Yates book is quote

(57:58):
around five in the morning, we arrived at our first
Spanish outposts, a monastery. It was midway down the mountain
and served as a way station for those who have
been forced to take this route into Spain. No monks
were there. A few Spanish loyalists guarded the posts, receiving
and dispatching volunteers. It struck me that this monastery was
much like the places used by abolitionists who temporarily house

(58:18):
slaves escaping the plantations of the South in America.

Speaker 1 (58:23):
That's cool, I mean, sorry, I keep fucking saying that,
But like this idea of the through line that they
don't see this as a separate thing, and I don't know,
sometimes it's interesting.

Speaker 2 (58:33):
Yeah, And this was only the beginning of their journey,
and one that was mirrored by many anti fascists and
black anti fascists alike that had to go through these long,
long tracks. Yeah, and there's even more to come, and
I hopefully I'm going to tell you even more about
the specific anti fascists that came through next episode.

Speaker 1 (58:54):
Hell yeah, I am impressed that you managed in true
cool people who did cool stuff style. One half of
the podcast is to get you to where the thing happens.
That's what we do.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Yup.

Speaker 1 (59:07):
I'm making fun of myself when I say this, but
it's like, it makes so much sense with this because
it's like, yeah, the whole point is that this connection
between these two struggles is so often ignored and so
showing the connection directly, Fuck yeah, I'm excited to find
out what happens.

Speaker 2 (59:23):
Yeah, And there's so much more history for folks to
delve into in context of anti racist and anti oppressive
organizing that drove fifty two different nationalities to come to
Spain and fight some fascists and yeah, yeah, I think
it's a really beautiful context for folks to look into,

(59:44):
or like point of history for folks to look into.
I think there's a lot of really dopeap like organizing,
especially like black autonomous and cooperative organizing that happened post
reconstruction that is rarely rarely talked about.

Speaker 1 (59:56):
Well, we're gonna hear more about what happened in Spain
with it on Wednesday. But in the meantime, what if
people are like, wow, I sure liked hearing Jordan talk
about a thing. If only there was another podcast where
I could hear Jordan talking about a thing. What could
they do?

Speaker 2 (01:00:14):
Well? They could hop over to anywhere that they listen
to podcasts and look up The Dugout, a Black Anarchist Podcast,
or you can go to our Instagram at Dugout Podcast
and check out the link in our bio to get
us on Spotify or any of those major platforms. Because
sometimes it's still a little hard to reach out to
us because we did a podcast called The Dugout in America,

(01:00:36):
so it's very baseball heavy things. It's kind of hard
to find our show.

Speaker 1 (01:00:40):
Whenever you're listening to this podcast, just go over listen
to The Dugout, a Black Anarchist podcast, or just start
getting into baseball. That's another thing you could do if
you want, sofa, are you into baseball? Basketball? I know
you're into basketball, but I was wondering if you're multi
sport us. I don't dislike baseball, but it's not a passion. Okay,

(01:01:05):
fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:01:06):
Yeah, I only ever played in the outfield and my
parents would always gett mad at me because I just
did like gymnastics in the outfield and was never there
when the ball was coming my way.

Speaker 1 (01:01:14):
Exactly, exactly, all right, We will see you all on Wednesday.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
They Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff is a production
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