Part 8 of Black communists in Spanish Civil War: Frank Alexander, a red leader for life

This is part eight 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 reestablish the repressive monarchy. Hitlers 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. Black workers, especially Black communists, emphasized the importance of fighting racism to win anything for the working class. And they brought this antiracist fightback with them when they returned to the United States. They were building a movement they hoped would lead to communist revolution around the world. They succeeded in organizing millions around communist ideas and practices. But the movement believed that uniting with liberal bosses to defend the Republic in Spain would further the fight for communism. This was part of the united front against fascism, which resulted in only fortifying the bosses system and laid the basis for the corruption of the old communist movement. 

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’ leadership is essential. That is the only way our class can destroy racism, the lifeblood of capitalism. The following is a story of one such leader, Frank Alexander.

Frank Alexander was born of a white and indigenous mother and a Black father on the Omaha Sioux reservation on February 8, 1911. The indigenous people welcomed mixed marriages, which were illegal in most of the United States. He first moved in with his younger brother, Herschel, who was in the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and lived in the home of the famous communist leader Mother Ella Reeves Bloor. 

A proud Black communist

Frank moved to Los Angeles, where he became active with the Communist Party, which he joined in 1931, at the age of 20. He said:

See, in those days, the Communist Party, and the YCL [Young Communist League], was a very popular body, especially in the Black communities. And so these guys had the respect of ... the community as a whole ... because of the struggles that they carried on.

Frank’s words debunk the idea that communism is somehow alien or irrelevant to Black workers. In fact, he was one of countless Black workers who joined the long fight for a communist world.

Organizing multiracial unity

He became involved in a Longshoremen’s strike in which the bosses hired Black workers as strikebreakers. 

And our idea was to discourage Black [workers] from going there as scabs and strikebreakers, despite the fact that at that time no Black [workers] were in the Longshoremen's Union at all, you see. [We] explained how it was the efforts of the bosses to separate people and in that way keep the wages down and use one group against the other. Eventually they were going to let the [Black workers] go, and they would hire the [white workers] back, and you knew that the white workers wouldn't want you in the shop if you had worked as a scab. So it was just a temporary thing, and the best thing you could do was to work with the white workers and try to educate them and fight for the rights of [Black workers] to get into the union.

‘Put me on the list!’

When the Spanish Civil War broke out, Frank volunteered to go to fight the fascists. 

… I just knew that I wanted to go to Spain when I heard about Spain … Because I told you that I'm the kind of person who wants to fight back, and I thought this was a way of really getting to the source. I thought the American people would learn much faster when America became involved in that struggle, that they would wise up to the problems that were here. So I figured that was the best way to show my support for what I believed in. So when they began to talk about sending guys over there, I said put me on the list.

In Spain, Frank Alexander was assigned to the Washington Battalion. After recovering from pneumonia, he was reassigned to the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion (Canadians) and appointed squad leader of a machine-gun company.

He was wounded twice during the fighting at Fuentes de Ebro (July – November 1938). Eager to continue fighting the fascists, Alexander "deserted" the hospital where he was recuperating to rejoin the XVth Brigade.

During the fighting at Teruel (Dec. 1937-Feb. 1938), Frank and his squad were ordered on a reconnaissance patrol near the enemy's lines but were caught in the open and cut down by long-range machine gun fire. Alexander was the only man to survive the sprint back to friendly lines.

During the retreats that followed the Nationalist's rapid advance in March and April 1938, Alexander found himself behind enemy lines. After several harrowing days, including a night perched in a tree directly above an Italian encampment, Alexander made it back across the Ebro into Republican territory. Alexander was with the Mac-Paps when they crossed the Ebro during the Republic's last offensive in July 1938. However, he was wounded shortly after the offensive began and he spent the remainder of his time in Spain in a hospital. Due to the severity of his wound, Alexander was left behind when the other Americans were withdrawn. He finally crossed the Pyrenees, together with thousands of Spanish refugees and, together with them, was imprisoned by French authorities in a hastily constructed concentration camp around Perpignan where he spent several weeks until a U.S. embassy official arranged his passage to the United States.

In 1939 Alexander married Lillian Perlowe, also a Communist Party (CP) member. Because inter-racial marriages were illegal in California, she had to register as “Negro.” During World War II Alexander served in the segregated U.S. Army with an all-Black Engineer Combat Battalion. 

After the war Alexander was a full-time Communist party functionary from 1948 to 1955. He chaired the Negro Commission of the Los Angeles Communist Party and was a member of the California state committee. During the McCarthy period, Alexander endured constant surveillance and harassment. He was indicted as one of the Los Angeles Twenty-One, a group of Communist Party members charged with conspiracy. Alexander was the chief liaison between the CPUSA and the indicted CP members. The charges against Alexander were subsequently dropped but not before he had served a short jail term.

Discouraged and confused like many other communists by class traitor Nikita Khrushchev’s attack on the communist leader Joseph Stalin, and then the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, Alexander and his wife quit the CP. But he continued to support the struggle.

But I'll never be able to leave my philosophy. And I'll never be able to renege on the working class and whatever struggles they have … I still support the movement in every way that I possibly can since the late fifties … I was in every damn picket line about Korea or Vietnam that there was.

Fighters Frank Alexander is a testament to how communist ideas live on despite the betrayals of the old communist movement, and how the working class desperately needs the leadership of Black workers in the fight for communist revolution. 

​​Sources: 

The Volunteer, December 1976; 

Joseph Brandt, Black Americans in the Spanish Civil War Against Fascism; 

Cullum & Berch, African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War;

 The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.