This is part nine 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, Milton Herndon.
Hendron joins the Communist Party
Milton Herndon was born on March 10, 1908, in Wyoming, Ohio to Paul Herndon, a coal miner, and Harriet Herndon, a maid. After completing two years of high school Herndon went to work as a steelworker. He also served 18 months in the National Guard. Herndon exemplified the internationalism of the communist movement and the importance of Black workers leading the class struggle, not just against the U.S, capitalists, but for the international working class.
He joined the Communist Party in 1934 and became an organizer in Chicago. In July, 1934, Herndon wrote of the struggles of the Black, single, jobless workers of Harlem in the magazine Hunger Fighter, published by the Communist-led United Action Conference on Work, Relief, and Unemployment (price 3 cents). Other articles exposed Mayor Fiorella LaGuardia’s cops who clubbed and jailed demonstrators on May 26, 1934.
On September 1, 1934, Herndon was arrested with three other Black and white workers while picketing the Empire Cafeteria on Lenox Avenue and 125thStreet, in Harlem. The demonstration was organized by the Young Liberators Club of Harlem, a Communist-led group. They protested the refusal of Empire Cafeteria’s bosses to hire Black workers in any other job except porter.
Hendron dies fighting fascism in Spain
Herndon continued his organizing efforts until he volunteered with other Communist Party members to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Using the alias "Milton Braxton" he departed for Europe on May 8, 1937.
In Spain, Herndon became section leader in the newly-formed Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion of the International Brigades. He fought in the battles at Brunete in July, 1937, and at Belchite, on the Aragon front, in October.
During the Mac-Paps’ first action on October 13, 1937, at Fuentes de Ebro, Herndon was ordered to move a machine gun up to support the advance of the Battalion. In carrying out the order Herndon was killed along with his entire gun team by long-range machine gun fire. He was 29 years old.
Hendron’s last letter
A few days later, his last letter was received by Anna Damon, secretary of the International Labor Defense, The ILD was a legal advocacy organization established in 1925 in the United States as the American section of the Comintern's International Red Aid network. The ILD defended Sacco and Vanzetti, was active in the anti-lynching, movements for civil rights, and prominently participated in the defense and legal appeals in the cause célèbre of the Scottsboro Boys in the early 1930s. Its work contributed to the appeal of the Communist Party among African Americans in the South. In addition to fundraising for defense and assisting in defense strategies, from January 1926 it published Labor Defender, a monthly illustrated magazine that achieved wide circulation.
Here are some excerpts from that letter, published in the Communist Party’s newspaper Daily Worker on October 21, 1937. They give some indication of Milton Herndon’s dedication to the fight against racism and fascism.
We Americans who are fighting in Spain greeted with great joy the success of the ILD and its many friends in freeing four of the nine Scottsboro boys Yesterday we, the members of the Frederick Douglass Machine Gun Company, had a meeting and explained to our Spanish comrades the importance of joining the American ILD in its fight for the freedom of the remaining five Scottsboro boys. One of them replied in broken English: “When we get through with Franco we will go back to the states with you and help to drive out the anti-democratic forces in your country.” …
… I believe it is possible to obtain aid for the suffering people in Spain by building a world people’s defense movement against the horrors, the desperate slaughter and injustice of world capitalism.
The letter ends:
Comradely yours, Milton Herndon
P.S. Fascist planes just flew overhead and dropped some bombs.
The effort of Herndon to bring the struggle to free the Scottsboro Boys to workers in Spain, was a powerful example of international working class unity. The working class is involved in a single unified struggle against capitalism. But the capitalists are constantly trying to divide us. None more so than the fake leftists who are always trying to separate the people fighting back into smaller and smaller groups and smaller and smaller struggles.
Even as he was battling in Spain, Herndon understood the anti-racist struggle for the Scottsboro Boys was the front line and put communist ideas into practice. He saw his role in Spain was to expand the understanding and unity of the working class struggle across the bosses racist divisions and capitalist borders.
Richard Wright, later famous as the author of such books as Native Son and Uncle Tom’s Children, and at this time an active member of the Communist Party, wrote three unsigned articles about Herndon for the Daily Worker. One of them announces the formation of the “Negro People's Committee for Medical Aid to Republican Spain,” made up of medical doctors and others in Harlem. He wrote that “The organization of this committee was the result of the death of a number of American Negroes in Spain, particularly that of Milton Herndon …”
In a November 29, 1937 article Wright wrote that Ms Audley Moore, Chairman of the Woman’s Commission of the Upper Harlem Section of the Communist Party, stated:
I can think of no finer tribute to Milton Herndon than build the Communist Party which fights for that democracy for which Milton gave his life in Spain.
In the November 27, 1937 Daily Worker Wright wrote about the large number of prominent leaders of civic and anti-racist organizations who were scheduled to speak at the memorial service for Milton Herndon on November 28 at a Harlem Church.
Sources:
Daily Worker
New York Times, 10/20/1937
ALBA-VALB biography
Earle Bryant, Byline: Richard Wright (2015)
Frederick Griffiths, in African-American
Review, Winter 2001.