Salaria Kea: A life of service to our class lives on

This is part of a series about Black communists in the Spanish Civil War. 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.
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. But, in defending the Republic, they were defending capitalists. This was part of the united front against fascism, where communists united with so-called liberal capitalists against the fascist capitalists.
In the Progressive Labor Party we are against any unity with capitalists. They all have to go and the working class must rule: that’s communism.
If the working class is to seize and hold state power throughout the world, Black workers and their leadership is essential. Our class cannot destroy racism—the lifeblood of capitalism—without their leadership. The following continues that story:
Salaria Kea was born in 1913 in Georgia. Her father was a worker in a sanitarium that was overcrowded and understaffed. When he was killed by a deranged patient, her mother moved the family to Akron, OH. There Salaria got her first taste of the power of collective action and fightback. First her older brothers raised her and worked so that she could get an education. One started working at the age of nine. When she wanted to play basketball but was rejected at Akron Central High, her brothers went to the school board with her. She got transferred to West H.S. and got on the team: “That was her first realization that one does not accept and submit to unfair practices. One resists and fights” (see sources at the end).
Thus began a lifetime of helping the working class as a nurse and fighting against racism. It took her from protests at Harlem Hospital to the front lines of the Spanish Civil War against fascism to joining the Communist Party in 1935. Ultimately the Communist Party became a reformist party and gave up the fight for workers’ power and communism. But, Salaria never gave up the fight against racism and to improve conditions for the working class. It is now our task in the Progressive Labor Party to fight to end the horrors of capitalism once and for all with communist revolution.
Fighting segregation, and winning!
Aiming to be a nurse, she was rejected by nursing schools in Ohio and moved to New York City. While training at Harlem Hospital, she and others helped end segregated seating in the cafeteria.
One day Salaria entered the dining room with a group of her fellow students. They found only one vacant table so seated themselves there. The waitress refused to serve them saying that this table was reserved for white social workers … At once the five students rose, gathered up the ends of the cloth and dumped the table over.
They demanded an end to racial segregation in the staff dining room and the appointment of one Black dietitian (all five were white). These demands were won!    
That summer [1934] infantile diarrhea spread through the hospital. Daily from three to five babies died. People in the street began … referring to the hospital as the “Death House” … Discontent finally crystallized in organized protest. A picket line was thrown around the hospital demanding an investigation into the deaths of so many babies, … These demands were met. … Salaria learned that the individual is only as secure as the group.
Making connections: From Harlem to Ethiopia to Spain
Salaria became active with other progressive nurses. She began to understand the connections between racism at Harlem Hospital, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, and the Spanish Civil War against fascism. She joined the Communist Party. The Red Cross in Spain rejected her application, so she went to Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade organized mainly by the Communist Party. She was the first Black American woman there.
First she worked at the former Spanish King’s summer palace, now turned over to cows and goats while the Spanish peasants lived in hovels. She helped organize to make the dilapidated halls clean and safe for the peasants to move in.
This was Salaria’s first concrete example of discrimination where race was not a factor. Here it was peasantry versus nobility. The peasants had previously accepted the belief that nothing could be done about it [their conditions]. Like the Harlem nurses the peasants were now learning that something could be done … One resisted, one fought, … There was nothing inviolable about the old prejudices.
Behind the battle lines, conditions were poor, ignorance everywhere.
Two years of war and all Spain’s trees have been burned for fuel. One morning in a cold rain they brought in a young French soldier. A leg had to be amputated immediately. There was no time to warm him – and no fuel …
Pack his bed with hot water bottles,” the doctor ordered. Collectively the nurses puffed at little oil stoves which refused to take fire with dilute kerosene. It seemed horrible to watch this young chap die when so simple a thing as hot water could save him …
Salaria glanced at the clock, noted it was approaching lunchtime and soup should be boiling. Nimbly she gathered up hot water bottles, ran down the stairs and, unnoticed, into the kitchen. With a big pitcher she filled the three hot water bottles with steaming soup. The patient recovered.
Wounded, then back to the struggle
Transferred to the front lines, Salaria treated the wounded while helping to fight off German dive-bombers with a machine gun. In March, 1938,
… her hospital unit suffered a particularly heavy bombardment … Suddenly the signal was given “Cover! In the trenches!” Lying flat, face buried in the earth floor of the trench she heard a tremendous explosion. Some time later she was uncovered and dug out from under six feet of rock, shell and earth.
Wounded, she was furloughed back to New York. During three months of convalescing she traveled around the country raising money for medical aid and food for the Spanish people. During World War II racism prevented Salaria from joining the Army Nurse Corps until near the war’s end.
Salaria Kea devoted her life to the working class. As capitalism ravages the world’s workers and imperialist rivalries bring us ever closer to world war, let’s fight for a world run by and for workers like Salaria. That’s communism!

Sources
Emily Robins Sharpe, “Salaria Kea’s Spanish Memoirs” The Volunteer, December 2011
Mark O’Sullivan, “What Do We Know About Salaria Kea’s Irish Husband?” The Volunteer, May 2021.