James Yates (activist)
James Yates | |
|---|---|
Yates c. 1979 | |
| Born | August 9, 1906 Quitman, Mississippi, U.S. |
| Died | November 7, 1993 (aged 87) New York City, New York, U.S. |
| Political party | Communist Party USA |
James Yates (August 9, 1906, Quitman, Mississippi – November 7, 1993, New York City, New York) was an African American anti-fascist who fought in the Spanish Civil War as a soldier in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.
Biography
Before he volunteered to go to Spain to fight fascism in 1937, he lived first in Quitman, Mississippi, as the son of sharecroppers. He went to Chicago at the age of 16 and found work as a meatpacker.[1] His grandmother had been a slave in Misssispi and died while Yates was driving supply trucks for the Republicans in Spain.[2] He was active in the movement to protest the Scottsboro Case and became active in the Unemployed Councils organized by the Communist Party USA.[3] He joined the Communist Party USA in 1936.[1]
In Spain he met Langston Hughes and Ernest Hemingway. He served as an ammunitions and ambulance driver.[4] Arriving on December 15, 1938, alongside 147 other American volunteers in New York after the disbandment of the International Brigades, Yates was turned away by hotel staff due to his race from the hotel which had been booked for returning volunteers by Lincoln supporters. Speaking about the experience of discrimination following the equality he had experienced while serving in Spain, he said "the pain went deeply as any bullet could have done."[5] He later wrote a memoir about his experiences in Spain, Mississippi to Madrid: Memoir of a Black American in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.[3]
During World War II he served in the United States Army. According to his obituary in the New York Times he struggled to find work in the 1950s due to McCarthyism.[4]
References
- ^ a b Yates, James (December 11, 2019). "Biography". Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives.
- ^ Hochschild, Adam (2016). Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. p. 99.
- ^ a b Yates, James (1989). Mississippi to Madrid. Seattle, Washington: Open Hand Publishing Inc. pp. 1–78. ISBN 0940880199.
- ^ a b "James Yates, 87, Head of NAACP Chapter". The New York Times. November 11, 1993.
- ^ Hochschild, Adam (2016). Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. pp. 348–349.