African American Internationalism and Anti-Fascism

By the late 1930s The Crisis could claim that in Harlem ‘Spanish Freedom and Negro freedom were made to be synonymous’ and nearly 100 African Americans joined what is now referred to as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade to fight for the Spanish Republic. The chapter shows that the links made between racism and fascism by black activists were informed by the lived experience of ‘race’ in the US and also by the ambitious and dynamic race/ class politics of the black Left. As victims of the ‘domestic fascism’ of Jim Crow many of these activists pointed to their vanguard role in fighting fascism at home and abroad and presented an anti-fascist vision which was dependent on anti-racist transnationalism