Raymi Echavarría
Final Essay
HONS 2011J
Professor Hernández-Ojeda
Personal Statement
Some notable literature and film of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War depict issues of race and gender as non-existent in Spain and show the war as being one that indefinitely united those on the left. Because the Republican side of the war was sustained mostly by passion, ideology, and a strong conviction that those on the Republican side were fighting for the moral good by seeking to halt the spread of fascism, it is difficult to avoid romanticizing the Republican front. The American volunteers lacked U.S. national support, military equipment, proper military training and economic rewards. Thus their desire to fight was mostly fueled by the strong ideological conviction that fascism was an evil that threatened the livelihood of the world and of future generations. While one can effortlessly sympathize with those fighting against fascism, it is important
to recognize that we can easily simplify what is complicated, and thus we must acknowledge that we can simultaneously admire the fight and acknowledge the fractures of the Republican side.
As a fair skeptic might suspect, however, deeply entrenched social hierarchies do not abruptly disappear, even when people are uniting for a common cause. Interested in how we, as human beings, tend to be selective about which hierarchies are worthy of resisting, mostly based on convenience and self-interest, I wanted explore the experiences of African Americans during their time as volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The literature also points out the status of women, and how women volunteers struggled with dominant male forces and sexism. The story of Salaria Kee, one of two African American women volunteers, who was called racial slurs while on the ship on the way to Spain, exemplified this and sparked my interest in the topic. While initially interested in researching the experiences of an African American woman, it occurred to me that since her story has already been largely written about, it would be more fruitful to rescue Eluard Luchell McDaniels’ story from obscurity.
The Tamiment Library at New York University houses archives on labor and leftist movements. The Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archives (ALBA) is the largest resource for the study of American volunteers during the Spanish Civil War. There, in a folder of African American volunteers of the Spanish Civil War, I found an oral interview conducted on March 13th, 1978, when Eluard was 66 years old, where he recounts his early life, his political activism, and lessons learned from the war.
Eluard Luchell McDaniels on March, 1938
Source: Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. Elmer Holmes Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South, New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Introduction
Eluard Luchell McDaniels was one of about 2,800 American volunteers who left the United States to aid the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War in fighting against the Nationalist rebellion led by fascist General Francisco Franco to overthrow the Democratically-elected Popular Front government.[1] Collectively, the American volunteers made up the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Eluard’s experience as an African American born on 1912 in Lumberton, Mississippi would come to influence his thoughts on justice, and the lens through which he would come to conceptualize the events of the Spanish Civil War.[2] While activism can take many forms, Eluard, from an early age, was concerned with workers’ rights, a concern which was informed by his exposure to communist organizers. In retrospect, Eluard connected injustices that he experienced on the basis of race and class in the United States to his justifications for fighting with the Republican side during the Spanish Civil War, a side which was composed of leftists who often struggled to, within their own movement, find ways to reconcile the tensions caused by different political ideals and power differentials. In recounting these connections, Eluard explains, “I saw in the invaders of Spain the same people I’d been fighting all my life. I’ve seen lynching and starvation, and I know my people’s enemies.”[3] The political activism at home in the United States prompted Eluard to make his trip to Spain as a volunteer, and this predisposition to fight for justice stemmed from his relationship with his father, a man whose behavior Eluard came to often resent and as a result strived to avoid.
His Father’s Conformism Fuels Eluard’s Radicalism
Eluard was the second youngest of five children born to a church moderator father and a housewife mother. From an early age felt discontent about the treatment of African Americans, and this would come to influence the complex relationship with his father. His father was a moderator of Southern Baptist Churches, and often an engineer in the saw mills. He was also a learned man who spoke multiple languages and who made missionary trips to various countries. Eluard described his relationship with his father as one that would have an intellectual influence on him during his later life. He described his father as being very strict and earnestly trying to inculcate the values of the church on his children. A memorable principle for Eluard was his father’s constant recitation of the phrase, “one bird in the hand is better than nine in the bush,” which to Eluard reflected a preference for what was stable over what was preferable, and thus could be interpreted as a sign of his father’s cowardice.[4] Eluard described himself as too radical to abide by some of the principles that his father believed in, and in part resented the fact that his father was not vocal enough in speaking out against the unjust treatment of African Americans. Eluard’s disagreement with the major principle guiding his father’s life would later prove to be particularly notable, since Eluard risked safety and stability in order to fight for his most deeply held values of justice, and thus risked the security his father valued for an important ideal that Eluard considered being worthy of a fight.
Eluard’s father worked at and graduated from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee Institute. An influential leader, Booker T. Washington had a strong influence in the debate on the normative questions regarding how African Americans should be educated in American society. His opponent in this still-relevant debate was historian and sociologist W.E.B. DuBois. Both men had the mutual purpose of solving the problems that affected the conditions of African Americans in American society, which included illiteracy, poverty, high mortality rates, and racial discrimination that affected their social, political, and economic well-being. Booker T. Washington’s philosophy advocated for withdrawal of the black community from mainstream American society with the goal of economic advancement, which could be achieved through vocational education, and which would eventually lead to earning the respect of their white counterparts and also eventually bring more political power. DuBois, on the other hand, argued for a civil rights agenda and for liberal arts education that would lead to challenging the white supremacy so deeply entrenched in American society.[5]
On his father’s relationship with Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, Eluard argued that although he loved DuBois’s message, it was one that did not resonate with the conditions of African Americans in the South, and that Washington’s ideals proved to be more practical and more appropriate than those DuBois advocated for. “DuBois, being out of Boston up there, didn’t have the situation to endure that Booker T. Washington had in going around banging heads and get poor uneducated Negroes, knew more about the Negro question than William W.B. DuBois did. DuBois lived 25 years later than the situation he was, the road he was pursuing was incorrect at the time.”[6] When asked about his views on these issues on March of 1978, when he was 66 years old, Eluard said, “DuBois was not too popular at that time among those negroes down there. Because they figure Booker T. Washington was correct which I feel is correct even though I love DuBois as a friend leader, but I think that Booker T. Washington was correct in what he did.”[7] Although Eluard called himself a radical in relationship to his father, it is telling that in the debate between more conservative and more liberal values, he chose to, at the end his life, side with the idea that valued practicality over more holistic approaches to alleviating what he thought were urgent social injustices. As was seen later in his political involvement with low-wage workers, Eluard was thoughtful, strategic, and deeply connected with reality when trying to effect social change.
Eluard’s Childhood: A Premature Coming-of-Age
Eluard left his home in Mississippi at the young age of seven years old to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and then to Chicago for a short stay with a relative, before making his trip to California, where he claimed to have arrived before his eighth birthday. Although Eluard did not initially describe his trip to California as a “runaway” from home, all evidence suggests that he ran away from home. When asked how he traveled to California, he described his pursuit as ‘hoboing’ which is surprising for a seven-year-old child, but which Eluard confirmed when asked to verify. He admitted to not having received the consent of either of his parents and having traveled alone by train. His departure was also immediately after a disagreement with his father, which resulted in Eluard receiving sixteen lashes with a razor strop. According to Eluard, thirty years later he went back to his father and received the remaining sixteen lashes. He kept a basic connection with his family after he left Mississippi. Upon his arrival in Los Angeles, he slept in the hotel terminal, sold newspapers, and boot-blacked for about six months. Then Eluard made his way to San Francisco, where he would “banquet with anybody who had food.”[8] Consuelo Kanaga, a photographer, eventually hired him as a housekeeper and chauffeur, and thus he lived with her and an art critic by the name of Julius Kraybourne. His time spent serving the German-Scotch family affected his upbringing and his education enough for him to feel a distance between other African American volunteers during his time in Spain.
Eluard attended Mission and Humboldt High School where he was initially the only black student, which made the family he was staying with insist that he be the best student in the school. He then went to San Francisco State College where he studied at the Art College. In 1930, at the age of 18, Eluard joined the Communist Party and seven years later, when he was 25 years old, he left to volunteer in Spanish Civil War in 1937. During his early life in the United States, Eluard was active in labor movements and organized numerous labor strikes. In recounting his experiences as an organizer, Eluard recalls the attitudes the police had toward him, and the poor treatment he received by the police because of his race. Upon arresting him for organizing a labor strike, the police wanted to deport him because they were convinced he was not American and called him a Bolshevik. The only reason why the police could not start deportation procedures was because they lacked information on Eluard’s hypothetical receiving country. Because of the logistical barriers that the police faced, they opted for sending Eluard to Cincinnati.
In 1929, Eluard traveled to Montgomery, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. He was prompted to make a railroad trip to the South because he had heard of streetcar strikes over pay increases, better working conditions, and break time. Eluard was informed that there was a white headquarters and a black headquarters, and did not feel the strike was being organized properly. The Union in New Orleans was the American Federation of Labor Transportation Workers, which Eluard assumed was employing a “divide and conquer” strategy, where their method of ensuring that they beat the strike was by creating a white headquarters and a black headquarters. According to Eluard, he approached the white strikers and said, “Negroes across the street and you across over here, and you both striking the same concern… That make no sense.”[9] There were wage differences between black and white workers, with white workers receiving about 25 to 30 percent more than blacks. Eluard acknowledged that he would not get rid of these inequities, but as he convinced workers to follow his leadership, he was able to integrate the strikers and to make better demands that would benefit all workers. Eventually, the police ran Eluard out of New Orleans on grounds that he was an “undesirable alien,” but the workers won the strike. The police had to fight the white people to get to Eluard, and Eluard concluded that the support of whites was the only reason why the police let him go as opposed instead of incarcerating him.
During his involvement in the Communist Party, Eluard helped plan and organize Southern sharecroppers. In their organizational strategies, the Communist Party sent black organizers and white members who would serve as protection for black activists. He traveled around the South and saw many people organizing and joined them to offer help. “There were a lot of activities in the South. Whenever I seen a bunch of people struggling, I was [like]… That’s my business anyway,” Eluard said as he recounted his organizing efforts.[10] Eluard also made a trip to New York to bring the Scottsboro boys to the Communist Party’s attention. In the Scottsboro case, nine African American boys were falsely accused of raping two white women and were thus sentenced to death. The Communist Party USA and the NAACP provided legal assistance for the first appeal of many.[11]
Eluard As A Volunteer: Reflections on Military Failures
Eluard arrived on the Ausonia on July 25th, 1937.[12] As a volunteer, Eluard’s first occupation was as an ambulance driver, a position in which he brought medical supplies from France. Although the occupation might not at first sound like one of great danger, documents of ambulance drivers show that many of them often died from lack of oxygen when they remained in their vehicles during their sleep or during the cold. Eluard later became an infantryman for the Mackenzie-Papineau battalion and later the Lincoln-Washington battalion. Of the multiple occupational transitions that he had to make, Eluard concluded, “I guess I was the most shoved around because of being a negro.”[13] During his time as an infantryman, Eluard gained the name of “El Fantastico” because of his amazing ability to “pitch” hand grenades at the enemy forces with great precision.[14] Eluard was wounded in his left leg and spent the rest of his short time in Spain in a hospital, until his return to the United States on the President Harding in December of 1938.
Eluard noted that differences in motivation and training affected the quality of the fighting. He pointed out that there were differences in the way that American and English soldiers fought when compared to other European soldiers, particularly because many European soldiers could not return home, and were thus fighting to make Spain their home. He also noted that the lack of training for Americans was notable in the fact that in comparison to others, more American soldiers became wounded or died. Eluard also argued that there were many casualties due to avoidable mistakes. For example, one of his commanding generals had him move from place to place, although it might have been dangerous, because he wanted Eluard to take photographs in order to show that The Republic had more Blacks on all fronts. Similar commands were made by Eluard’s leadership, as he was often asked to make the speeches and appearances. Eluard denied ever being subjected to racial discrimination during the time of the war. On this, he said, “the only racial problems there had were that the general staff just kept putting me up there so people could see me. That’s propaganda. That’s propaganda.”[15]
But Eluard’s criticism of his leadership goes beyond the continuous tokenization they subjected him to. In multiple instances, Eluard described the men in leadership positions to be too preoccupied on women. While Eluard admitted that he had occasional sex when he was in Spain, he concluded that the purpose of his trip was not to find someone to marry, which appeared to be a goal of other men around him. “They were running around with a lot of women and not take caring of key political issues.”[16]
In recounting his experience as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, Eluard expressed the differences in the struggle against fascism for other African American volunteers and himself, and that perhaps he felt that difference because he had been raised by a wealthy bohemian white family. [17] Although other black soldiers were nice to him, he always felt like there were differences. Eluard concluded that his fellow black soldiers had been primarily associating blacks in the South. Eluard, on the other hand, was brought up in a strict era where he felt he could not afford to use slang or sound black. But also, he had grown up in an art district surrounded by whites. Because he was raised differently, he felt differences between himself and other blacks in the Lincoln Battalion. He said he probably felt that he might have given the impression that he thought he was a lot better than them. Eluard admitted that he did not think he was better, but that he often disagreed with them, and thought that this was because he was more educated than they were.
Conclusion: Reflections on the War
Reflecting on the war, Eluard thought it was unfortunate that the Spanish government lost to such ruthless forces, but recognizes that there were mistakes made on the part of the Republic. He also believed that the fact that the church was on the Nationalist side and that Spain was predominantly Catholic had an influence on the war’s outcome. Upon his return to the United States, Eluard continued to face and fight racial discrimination, which he argued actors sometimes tried to disguise as being on the basis of political reasons, and not race. He continued to be politically active and was a factory worker until his retirement. He died in San Francisco on December 6, 1985.[18]
At the onset of the war in 1936, Eluard traveled around making speeches attacking American isolationist foreign policy. At an older age, while recounting the lessons learned from the war, his thoughts of American isolationism remained the same. He felt that it was ironic but not surprising that the United States, having a democratic government, would remain in isolation. When fascists openly attacked, the American government placed an embargo. Eluard believed that the United States, in claiming isolationism, in fact, sided with oppression. He said, “our government has always chosen the side of oppression even though for a while this was looking forward to liberty.”[19] While the United States promised justice for all, Eluard argued that it had never practiced what it preached, which he thought was similar to the behavior employed in trade unions.
Eluard saw the injustices faced by other human beings and felt that the onus was on him to help in what capacity he could. His early disagreements with his father about injustice prompted him to lead a courageous life in the search of his conception of justice even when it came at the cost of stability. He sought to unite workers and have them see their commonality. For example, he felt that white workers were also victims of modern corporations, and talked to them about this. He recounts telling white workers, “You may hate me as much as you want because I’m black. But I don’t care what color your skin is, you need more for your labor than what you’re getting there.”[20] He recalled that some would be so shocked at a black person speaking to them this way that they did not resent it. This exemplifies the philosophy employed throughout Eluard’s life, which was guided by a sense of solidarity for fellow human beings, and which was put into practice whenever others where in need of help, even when offering that help threatened Eluard’s liberty, security, and life.
Works Cited*
Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University, (1978).
Carroll, Peter N. “The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade: Americans in the Spanish Civil War.” Stanford University Press (1994).
Featherstone, David. “Black internationalism, international communism and anti-fascist political trajectories: African American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.” Twentieth Century Communism 7.7 (2014): 9-40.
Murray, Hugh T. “The NAACP versus the Communist Party: The Scottsboro Rape Cases, 1931-1932.” Phylon (1960-) 28, no. 3 (1967): 276-287.
Frantz, N. R. “The contributions of Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois in the development of vocational education.” Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 34 (1997): 87-91.
Nelson, Cary, and Jefferson Hendricks. Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War. Routledge, (2014).
Reid-Pharr, Robert F. “Archives of Flesh: African America, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique.” New York University Press (2016).
Tuccille, Jerome. “Roughest Riders: The Untold Story of the Black Soldiers in the Spanish-American War.” Chicago Review Press (2015).
Wald, Alan. “Narrating nationalisms: Black Marxism and Jewish communists through the eyes of Harold Cruse.” Science & Society (2000): 400-423.
[1] Nelson, Cary, and Jefferson Hendricks. Madrid 1937: Letters of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade from the Spanish Civil War. Routledge, 2014.
[2] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978.)
[3] Reid-Pharr, Robert F. “Archives of Flesh: African Americans, Spain, and Post-Humanist Critique.” New York University Press (2016).
[4] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978).
[5] Frantz, N. R. “The contributions of Booker T. Washington and WEB DuBois in the development of vocational education.” Journal of Industrial Teacher Education 34 (1997): 87-91.
[6] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978).
[7] Ibid.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
[10] Ibid.
[11] Murray, Hugh T. “The NAACP versus the Communist Party: The Scottsboro Rape Cases, 1931-1932.” Phylon (1960-) 28, no. 3 (1967): 276-287.
[12] ALBA. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels Biography.” Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archives. Web. Accessed May 10th, 2017.
[13] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978).
[14] Tuccille, Jerome. Roughest Riders: The Untold Story of the Black Soldiers in the Spanish-American War. Chicago Review Press, 2015.
[15] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978).
[16] Ibid.
[17] Featherstone, David. “Black internationalism, international communism and anti-fascist political trajectories: African American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.” Twentieth Century Communism 7.7 (2014): 9-40.
[18] ALBA. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels Biography.” Abraham Lincoln Brigades Archives. Web. Accessed May 10th, 2017.
[19] Bruce Kyper and Peter Carroll. “Eluard Luchell McDaniels.” Oral Interview from the Radical Elder Oral History Project. Tamiment Library, New York University (1978).
[20] Ibid.