Salaria
Kea
was
born in Georgia in 1917. Her father, an attendant
at the Ohio State Hospital for the Insane, was stabbed to death when
Kea was a child. His widow took her four children, including Salaria,
to Akron, Ohio.
Kea became a nurse
and while working at the Harlem Hospital School of Nursing, led a
successful campaign against racial segregation. In 1935 she helped
to organize medical care in Ethiopia
when it was invaded
by Italy.
In March 1937
Kea joined an American Medical Unit working with the Abraham
Lincoln Battalion in
the Spanish Civil
War. Kea helped establish a field hospital at Villa Paz near Madrid.
Villa Paz had been the summer home of Alfonso
XIII who had abdicated
in 1931.
Kea was captured
by the Nationalist Army but after
being held prisoner for seven weeks she managed to escape. Kea
returned to her American Medical Unit but was badly wounded by a bomb
while working in a field hospital. Her injuries were so severe she
had to return to the United States.
During the Second
World War Kea worked as a nurse with the United
States Army.
While in Europe she met and married an Irish engineer, John P. O'Reilly.
After the war
the O'Reilly family lived in New York
before moving to Akron in 1975. Salaria
Kea O'Reilly
died
in May 1990.
(1)
Salaria Kea O'Reilly, Health and Medicine (Spring, 1987)
I
sailed from New York with the second American Medical Unit. I was
the lone representative of the Negro race. The
doctor in charge of the group refused to sit at the same table with
me in the dining room and demanded to see the Captain. The Captain
moved me to his table where I remained throughout the voyage.
(2)
Salaria Kea O'Reilly, Health and Medicine (Spring, 1987)
The Second American Medical Unit, authorized
by the Republican Government of Spain, at once turned the cows out
of Villa Paz, cleaned the building and set up the first American base
hospital in Spain.
The beds of Villa Paz
were soon filled with soldiers of every degree of injury and ailment,
every known race and tongue from every corner of the earth. These
divisions of race, creed and nationality lost significance when they
met in a united effort to make Spain the tomb of Fascism. I saw my
fate, the fate of the Negro race, was inseparably tied up with their
fate: the efforts of the Negroes must be allied with those of others
as the only insurance against an uncertain future.
The Negro men who fought
for Loyalist Spain never tire of telling how they celebrated when
they got news that the Second American Medical Unit included a Negro
nurse. Their battalion had been in the trenches 120 days of continuous
fighting. I am told that during the entire First World War a fighting
unit was never required to be under fire longer than this. Their clothing
was shabby and worn. Many had so little to wear they could not appear
in public.
I was so excited over
going to Spain I did not realize that many other Negroes had already
recognized Spain's fight for freedom and liberty as a part of our
struggle too. I didn't know that almost a hundred young Negro men
were already fighting Hitler's and Mussolini's forces there in Spain.
(3)
In 1938 the Medical Bureau and North American Committee to Aid Spanish
Democracy in New York published Salaria Kea:
A Negro Nurse in Republican Spain.
The hospital beds were soon filled with soldiers of every degree of
injury and ailment,
of almost every known race and tongue and from every corner of the
earth. Czechs from Prague, and from Bohemian villages, Hungarians,
French, Finns. Peoples from democratic countries who recognized Italy
and Germany's invasion in Spain as a threat to the peace and security
of all small countries. Germans and Italians, exiled or escaped from
concentration camps and fighting for their freedom here on Spain's
battle line. Ethiopians from Djibouti, seeking to recoup Ethiopia's
freedom by strangling Mussolini's forces here in Spain. Cubans, Mexicans,
Russians, Japanese, unsympathetic with Japan's invasion of China and
the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo axis. There were poor whites and Negroes from
the Southern States of the United States. These divisions of race
and creed and religion and nationality lost significance when they
met in Spain in a united effort to make
Spain the tomb of fascism. The outcome of the struggle in Spain implies
the death or the realization of the hopes of the minorities of the
world.
Salaria saw that her fate,
the fate of the Negro Race, was inseparably tied up with their fate;
that the Negro's efforts must be allied with those of other minorities
as the only insurance against an uncertain future. And in Spain she
worked with freedom. Her services were recognized. For the first time
she worked free of racial discrimination or limitations.
There were not too many
skilled hands to make the wounded comfortable. Everybody's services
were conscripted. Nurses taught carpenters to make hospital supplies
- shock blocks, back rests, Balkan frames for fractured arms, Fire
and fuel they needed desperately.
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