Harry
Haywood
was
born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1898. The son of former slaves,
Haywood did well at school and became an ardent admirer of Booker
T. Washington.
However, his views became more radical after his family were attacked
by a white mob and ordered to leave town.
Haywood
joined
the United
States Army during the First
World War and in 1918 served for six months on the Western
Front in France.
On
his return to the United States Haywood became
a railroad waiter in Chicago. In 1919
a white mob killed a black teenager for swimming in Lake Michigan
near a white beach. This resulted in a six-day race riot that resulted
in the deaths of 38 people. During the riot Haywood joined other First
World War veterans in setting up an armed group to defend black communities
in the city.
Haywood
became active in the civil rights
movement and was a member of the African Blood Brotherhood and Young
Workers League before joining the Communist
Party in
1925. Later that year he travelled to the Soviet
Union and studied Marxism at the Lenin
School in Moscow. Haywood became an important political figure and
was influential in the decision of the Comintern
in
1928 to state that "American blacks as an oppressed nation".
In 1930 Haywood returned to the United States where he became a prominent
figure in the party. He also formed the League for Negro Rights which
campaigned against lynching. Haywood
was also active in the attempts to free the Scotsboro
Boys.
In 1936 Haywood joined
the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, a unit
that volunteered to fight for the Popular
Front government during the Spanish
Civil War. Haywood
arrived in Spain in May 1937 and was appointed
adjutant commissar of the Fifteenth Brigade.
During the Second
World War Haywood served in the Merchant Marine. He also published
Negro Liberation (1948) and his
memoirs, Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of
an Afro-American Communist (1978). Harry
Haywood died
in 1978.
(1)
Steve
Nelson explained why Oliver
Law
was promoted to company commander when he was
interviewed by Peter N. Carroll on 9th June 1990.
The
idea was that we do something about advancing a black. But the thing
that mattered most was that he had military experience. Law was the
guy who had the most experience and was the most acquainted with military
procedures on the staff.
(2)
Canute Frankson, member of the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion, letter from Albacete
(6th July, 1937)
I'm
sure that by this time you are still waiting for a detailed explanation
of what has this international struggle to do with my being here.
Since this is a war between whites who for centuries have held us
in slavery, and have heaped every kind of insult and abuse upon us,
segregated and Jim-crowed us; why I, a Negro who have fought through
these years for the rights of my people, am here in Spain today?
Because we are no longer
an isolated minority group fighting hopelessly against an immense
giant. Because, my dear, we have joined with, and become an active
part of, a great progressive force, on whose shoulders rests the responsibility
of saving human civilization from the planned destruction of a small
group of degenerates gone mad in their lust for power. Because if
we crush Fascism here we'll save our people in America, and in other
parts of the world from the vicious persecution, wholesale imprisonment,
and slaughter which the Jewish people suffered and are suffering under
Hitler's Fascist heels.
All we have to do is to
think of the lynching of our people. We can but look back at the pages
of American history stained with the blood of Negroes; stink with
the burning bodies of our people hanging from trees; bitter with the
groans of our tortured loved ones from whose living bodies ears, fingers,
toes have been cut for souvenirs - living bodies into which red-hot
pokers have been thrust. All because of a hate created in the minds
of men and women by their masters who keep us all under their heels
while they suck our blood, while they live in their bed of ease by
exploiting us.
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