Part 13. Black communists in the Spanish Civil War: Albert Chisholm, a communist serving ‘best interest of the human race’

This is part 13 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. 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. 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, Albert Chisholm.

Birth of a life-long communist
Albert Chisholm was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1913 while his father was serving in the U.S. Army. The family later moved to Seattle. He told an interviewer:

Racism makes money. My parents had the attitude of "This is the situation, just do the best you can. Take what they give you, go to church, and so on." But that never rubbed off on me.

In the meantime the Communists were fighting like hell in the unions to permit Black people to join. They fought until I had a chance to join the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union and to get a job.
The communist Party coached me better than my parents did. They were the ones that had an understanding … The Communists told me I couldn't fight the battle alone.

Interviewed late in life, Chisholm had this to say about communism:

When you're a communist, that's the greatest type the human race can have. You think of the best interest of the human race. If you can't do that, you're no Communist. You don't have to have a degree and all that stuff, because your mind is conditioned to want to know what's best for the interest of the human race. You don't give a damn about anything else. That's what makes communism so potent. I joined the Communist Party when I was a kid, when I was on the ship and the Communists were out picketing for better conditions.

And the communists won many “better conditions.” They were involved in achieving Social Security and unemployment benefits during the Great Depression. They fought evictions and put workers back in their homes. But they did not fight for communism where workers run everything. That task is left to us. Join us in the Progressive Labor Party as we fight to get rid of the whole damn capitalist system.

As a teenager Chisholm became one of the first Black members of the Marine Cooks and Stewards Union, thanks largely to the anti-racist struggle led by the Communist Party. He joined the Young Communist League in 1933 and the Communist Party a year later.

Chisholm drew the connection between Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and his own subsequent participation in the antifascist fight in Spain.

I signed up to go to Spain because in that era, fascism was on the march. Italy attacked the country of Ethiopia ... It was sort of a primitive society, but nevertheless it was something that Black people throughout the world could look up to because it was governed by a Black administration .... I was asked if I would like to go to Spain and fight against fascism. I told them, 'Sure, I'd be glad to go.' I wouldn't be in Ethiopia, but I'd be fighting the Italians in Spain, striking a blow against fascism.

Chisholm left New York in August 1937. In Spain, after a brief training period, he was sent to Belchite to join the Lincoln-Washington Battalion.

When we got to Belchite there was nothing standing except for a bell tower. It was a bloody battle - bodies all over the place. We had to go and help bury the bodies. They were bloated, swelling up. We put them in bags. Anyway, that's where I joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

While in Spain, Chisholm met Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Ernest Hemingway on their visits to the front.

They all came down to wish us well and gave us encouragement. You bet it helped our morale.

During the first day of the Ebro Offensive, Chisholm and fellow volunteer, Sam Zakman, took shelter in the hills during an air attack on the bridgehead. Both men were picked up as stragglers by a Spanish unit and spent the rest of the campaign attached to it.

About the defeat of the Spanish Republic by the Fascists, Chisholm said:

Our main problem was not having enough ammunition. The Soviet Union sent us as many men as they could to train us. They sent us their planes, with the star on the tail; they were damn good planes. They sent us their artillery, machine guns, and rifles …

Chisholm returned to the U.S. on December 20, 1938. After a brief rest, he returned to sea. During World War II, he served in the Merchant Marine and made numerous dangerous runs. On one trip to Murmansk, his ship was torpedoed and sunk in the North Sea.

Today profiteering wars cover the world and an imperialist World War III is ever closer. Join us in turning the guns on the bosses and turning the imperialist war into a class war for workers power–communism.
During the 1960s Chisholm’s ship docked in Vietnam, where he contacted the Vietnamese communists – “Viet Cong” -- who were fighting the United States imperialist army.

When we sailed to Vietnam … I was able to get into the Viet Cong restaurants. They would send someone down with a motorcycle to the docks at night to get me, and we'd go all over the city. They're wonderful people. They didn't want capitalism; they wanted socialism.

Chisholm continued this work until 1971, when his union membership was revoked because he was a communist. He died in Seattle on March 25, 1998. We can learn a great deal from his example in our daily struggles against capitalism and imperialism, and we can also learn about his limits. While Chisholm was a brave soldier and leader for the working-class internationally he, along with communists of his time, stopped short of making the bosses’ reforms more class conscious. Now more than ever workers need to go beyond, taking these lessons from each antiracist, internationalist, class consciousness fightback and build on them a foundation for communist revolution.

Sources: Collum and Berch, eds, African-Americans in the Spanish Civil War; ALBA-VALB volunteer database.