Black communists in the Spanish Civil War: Douglas Roach, a red ace

*This is part of a three-part series exploring a few of the Black communists from the U.S. that fought in the International Brigades against fascism. 

In the early 1930s the urban bourgeoisie (capitalists) of Spain, supported by most workers and many peasants, overthrew the violent, repressive monarchy to form a republic. In July 1936 the Spanish army, eventually commanded by Francisco Franco, later the fascist dictator, rebelled to re-establish the repressive monarchy. Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy gave Franco massive military aid. The Western imperialist countries and the United States refused to help the Republic. Only Mexico and the then-socialist Soviet Union came to the Republic’s aid, to try to stop fascism before it engulfed the world. 

In 1936, the International Communist Movement, called the “Comintern,” headquartered in the Soviet Union and led by Joseph Stalin, organized volunteers—mainly workers—from more than 60 countries into the “International Brigades” (IBs) to go to Spain to defend the Republic. 

In hindsight, the defense of the Republic was a nationalist defense of an aspect of capitalism. At the time, this was part of the united front against fascism, where communists united with liberal capitalists against the fascist capitalists. In the Progressive Labor Party, we fight all faces of capitalism and try to win people to the understanding that liberalism is the bigger danger to our victory. Our class has to go and the working class must rule—that’s communism.

After several years of heroic fighting and devastating losses, the IBs were withdrawn by the Spanish Republican government, which naively hoped that the German and Italian fascist troops would also withdraw. They did not, and Spain fell to Franco’s fascists in March, 1939. Spain remained a fascist dictatorship until 1978. But Spain was part of the European capitalist “community” as so-called liberal capitalists often get along very well with the fascist capitalists. Look at how the liberal U.S. capitalists have gotten along very well with fascist dictators all over the world.

Black Volunteers 

Among the 2,800 U.S.  volunteers—80 percent of whom were members of the Communist Party—were more than 60 Black workers from the U.S. This is the story of one of them: Douglas Roach  (1900 – 1938). 

A native of Provincetown, Massachusetts, Douglas Roach was an active member of the Communist Party from 1932. At Provincetown High School, he was an "ace" end on the football team. He graduated from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in Amherst, where he was a star wrestler.

He was one of the first workers from the U.S.  to volunteer in defense of Spanish capitalist democracy in the early days of the siege of Madrid (October, 1936). Roach was assigned to the 15th Brigade (the International Brigade), Lincoln Battalion and Lincoln-Washington Battalion, and served in the Tom Mooney machine gun company, often carrying his machine gun single-handedly during long marches. Roach fought with the battalion at Jarama and during the Brunete Offensive and attained the rank of Gun Commander. 

At the fierce counter-offensive launched by the fascists in July, 1937, at Brunete, he often went for water and supplies for his comrades under heavy fire.

On the Jarama front (1937), he inspired the members of the Lincoln Battalion. Time and again he held his position in the repeated charges of Franco's Moorish cavalry, saving the men in the lines behind him. In Fall 1937, wounded by shrapnel, Roach returned to the U.S. He immediately plunged into activity, working in support of trade union organization among seamen. In his spare time, he diligently studied Marxism-Leninism. 

Unfortunately, at this time the Communist Party made union organizing primary over fighting for communist revolution. At its weakest, the old communist movement at the time was engulfed in nationalism and electoral politics. In the Progressive Labor Party today, we are trying to correct those errors by making revolution primary in all of our battles against the horrors of capitalism.

Returning veterans formed the VALB—the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade—late in 1937 and at their first convention they elected Roach as National Adjutant Commander. He held the post briefly before he contracted the pneumonia that killed him on July 13, 1938.

The following quote is from Benjamin J. Davis Jr., editor of The Negro Liberator,  Communist Party’s (CPUSA) newspaper targeted towards Black workers. He later became CPUSA's official English-language daily, The Daily Worker. 

When I complimented him on his war record, he said, "Oh, never mind that. Whatever I did, the [Communist] Party brought it out in me." And knowing him, one can understand very well, despite his modesty, how he made such a distinguished record in Spain.

As capitalist powers (imperialists) once again prepare for world war to redivide the world among themselves, the Progressive Labor Party fights for a world run by and for the working class, that’s communism. Join us!