African+American+Volunteers+in+the+Spanish+Civil+War


 * by Jabari, Grade 6**

**Vaughn Love** Vaughn Love was born in Tennessee in the city of Dayton. He left Tennessee at the age of fifteen. He went to college and studied football but an injury ended his football career. In 1929 he moved to New York where he enrolled in the Federal Theater Project. This led to a connection with the League of Struggle for Negroes’ Rights and the Southern Labor Committee. This eventually led to service in Spain, in 1937, in the Spanish Civil War. Love said that fascism was the enemy of Black people. Fascism is when a group of people don’t like a certain culture or race of people because they don’t fit their ideology or conform to their rules. In Spain a peasant tried to wipe dirt off Love’s face, but Love explained that he was Black and the peasant stopped. Love died in New York in the year 1990.

**Salaria Kee** Salaria Kee was born in 1913, on July 13. Her father was a sea merchant. Salaria’s parents died, so she was raised in foster care. When she was around high school age she wanted to be a nurse. None of the schools would accept her because she was Black. So she went to the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing. In the training the Black nurses were sent to the tuberculosis wards. The overseers didn’t even go down to the tuberculosis wards. In 1937 Salaria Kee went to Spain because she had heard of nuns who had helped the sick and wounded from the Spanish Civil War. When she was in Spain, Salaria Kee said that the Loyalists weren’t just Communists as people thought.

**Frank Alexander** Frank Alexander was born on February 8, 1911 on an Indian Reservation in Nebraska. His mother was an Omaha Indian, and his dad was a cowboy in the pony express. When Frank was fifteen he was out on his own. He and three of his friends stole some animals, sold them for eighty dollars and used the money to go to California. When he moved to California he stayed with his brother and other Black communists. They convinced him to join the Young Black Communists. In 1937 he became the first Black to depart for Spain. When he was in Spain he joined the Washington Battalion, but he was hospitalized. Then he joined the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. He was wounded in the leg and hospitalized again. Then he went to Teruel to help with the retreat across the Ebro. He didn’t remember any racism in Spain. He said “I ran into some vets who were racist since Spain. But they weren’t racist in Spain.”