“I Knew that Spain Once Belonged to the Moors”: Langston Hughes, Race, and the Spanish Civil War

The influence of communism’s racial politics inspired new modes of journalistic agitation in the 1930s to combat segregation and the Great Depression. The commercial black press, particularly several of its national newspapers, fit within a coalition of progressive black institutions that operated as cultural fronts. Journalists fitted progressive racial advocacy to commercial appeal by adopting a reporting template that embraced sensationalism, realism, and direct action. This chapter examines the strengths and weaknesses of this reportage by analyzing J.A. Rogers' dispatches from Ethiopia during its war with Italy for the Pittsburgh Courier and Langston Hughes' reports from the Spanish Civil War for the Baltimore Afro-American. Journalists’ political radicalization intensified their efforts to gain professional recognition and workplace independence within a modernizing industry benefitting from surging circulations.

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Four Poems from Langston Hughes's Spanish Civil War Verse

PMLA ◽

10.1632/pmla.2019.134.3.562 ◽

2019 ◽

Vol 134 (3) ◽

pp. 562-568

Author(s):

Anne Donlon ◽

Evelyn Scaramella

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

African Americans ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Dynamic Range ◽

Langston Hughes ◽

Political Organizations ◽

Rare Book ◽

John Reed ◽

First Time ◽

At Home

Langston Hughes traveled to Spain in 1937, during that Country's Civil War. He saw the Republic's Fight against Franco as an international fight against fascism, racism, and colonialism and for the rights of workers and minorities. Throughout the 1930s, Hughes organized for justice, at home and abroad, often engaging with communist and other left political organizations, like the Communist Party USA's John Reed Club, the League of Struggle for Negro Rights, and the International Workers' Order (Rampersad, Life 236, 286, 355; Scott). When the war in Spain began, in 1936, workers and intellectuals who were engaged on the left came from around the world to fight against Franco's forces; these volunteers, the International Brigades, included approximately 2,800 Americans known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, of which about ninety were African American (Carroll vii; “African Americans”). Hughes went to Spain to interview black antifascist volunteers in the International Brigades and write about their experiences for the Baltimore Afro-American, VolunteerforLiberty, and other publications. Much of Hughes's writing from Spain sought to explain to people at home why men and women, and African diasporic people especially, had risked their lives to fight in Spain. Hughes profiled African Americans fighting for the first time alongside white comrades in the International Brigades, including Ralph Thornton, Thaddeus Battle, and Milton Herndon (“Pittsburgh Soldier Hero,” “Howard Man,” “Milt Herndon”). In addition to writing articles, he wrote poetry, gave radio speeches, and translated poems and plays from Spanish into English. Much of Hughes's work from the Spanish Civil War has been collected in anthologies. However, so prolific was Hughes, and so fastidious was he in saving drafts and ensuring they reach his collection at Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, that many unpublished works exist in archives. The four poems here represent different poetic registers and levels of polish, and they illuminate the dynamic range of Hughes's literary production during his time in Spain.

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Langston Hughes and the Spanish Civil War

The Explicator ◽

10.1080/00144940.2013.811395 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 71 (3) ◽

pp. 211-214

Author(s):

James Fountain

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Langston Hughes

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Through the prism of Spain. Socio-economic causes of different outcomes of Russian and Spanish civil wars

Voprosy Ekonomiki ◽

10.32609/0042-8736-2017-1-142-155 ◽

2017 ◽

pp. 142-155

Author(s):

I. Rozinskiy ◽

N. Rozinskaya

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

World War I ◽

Civil Wars ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Statistical Data ◽

Well Being ◽

Russian Civil War ◽

World War ◽

Common Features ◽

Economic Well Being

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.

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The Spanish Reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (1913–1936)

Dance Research ◽

10.3366/drs.2018.0220 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 36 (1) ◽

pp. 48-66

Author(s):

Idoia Murga Castro

Keyword(s):

Nineteenth Century ◽

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Original Work ◽

Silver Age ◽

Avant Garde ◽

Ballets Russes ◽

Rite Of Spring ◽

Le Sacre Du Printemps ◽

Cultural Expansion

Centenary celebrations are being held between 2016 and 2018 to mark the first consecutive tours of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes in Spain. This study analyses the Spanish reception of Le Sacre du Printemps (The Rite of Spring) (1913), one of its most avant-garde pieces. Although the original work was never performed in Spain as a complete ballet, its influence was felt deeply in the work of certain Spanish choreographers, composers, painters and intellectuals during the so-called Silver Age, the period of modernisation and cultural expansion which extended from the end of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War.

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Kate O'Brien and Virginia Woolf: Common Ground

Irish University Review ◽

10.3366/iur.2018.0334 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 48 (1) ◽

pp. 127-142

Author(s):

Aintzane Legarreta Mentxaka

Keyword(s):

Civil War ◽

Virginia Woolf ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

Common Ground ◽

Point Of View ◽

Political Alignments ◽

Literary Influences ◽

Kate O'brien

Convergences in the work of Kate O'Brien and Virginia Woolf range from literary influences and political alignments, to a shared approach to narrative point of view, structure, or conceptual use of words. Common ground includes existentialist preoccupations and tropes, a pacifism which did not hinder support for the left in the Spanish Civil War, the linking of feminism and decolonization, an affinity with anarchism, the identification of the normativity of fascism, and a determination to represent deviant sexualities and affects. Making evident the importance of the connection, O'Brien conceived and designed The Flower of May (1953), one of her most experimental and misunderstood novels, to paid homage to Woolf's oeuvre.

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“The heart above the ruins”: Miriam Waddington’s Poetry, the Spanish Civil War, and Jewish Canadian Literature

Canadian Jewish Studies / Études juives canadiennes ◽

10.25071/1916-0925.40065 ◽

1969 ◽

Vol 26 ◽

Author(s):

Emily Robins Sharpe

Keyword(s):

Human Rights ◽

World War Ii ◽

Civil War ◽

Spanish Civil War ◽

World War ◽

Canadian Literature ◽

The Earth ◽

The Holocaust ◽

The Subject ◽

War Consequences

The Jewish Canadian writer Miriam Waddington returned repeatedly to the subject of the Spanish Civil War, searching for hope amid the ruins of Spanish democracy. The conflict, a prelude to World War II, inspired an outpouring of literature and volunteerism. My paper argues for Waddington’s unique poetic perspective, in which she represents the Holocaust as the Spanish Civil War’s outgrowth while highlighting the deeply personal repercussions of the war – consequences for women, for the earth, and for community. Waddington’s poetry connects women’s rights to human rights, Canadian peace to European war, and Jewish persecution to Spanish carnage.

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