Today it is us. Tomorrow it will be you.
March 27, 2018 8:02 PM   Subscribe

If black Americans recognized the dangers of Fascism abroad early, it was because they knew it all too well in its American guise. They saw Mussolini’s Blackshirts reflected in the white hoods of the Klan, and Hitler’s Jew-baiting mirrored by the systematic violence of Jim Crow. While much of the world slept, they fought Fascists in the streets of Jersey City, in the Ethiopian sky, and in the dirt of the Jarama Valley... Black Americans saw the clear line that led from the horrors of European imperialism to the puffed-up violence of a Mussolini, and they would not allow Il Duce to swallow the cultured, defiant, and ancient country that they admired. Langston Hughes captured the sentiment in “Ballad of Ethiopia”: “All you colored peoples/ Be a man at last/ Say to Mussolini/ No! You shall not pass.
posted by ChuraChura (8 comments total) 52 users marked this as a favorite
 
Thanks for sharing this!
posted by reedcourtneyj at 8:30 PM on March 27, 2018 [1 favorite]


Thank you. I am ashamed to say that I knew nothing of this, though I did know of Italy's takeover of Ethiopia. I appreciate this broadening of my knowledge.
posted by MovableBookLady at 9:49 PM on March 27, 2018 [2 favorites]


side note, if you where involved in any of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade activities, like went to a fundraiser or a meeting or even a dinner for members and well-wishers, it got you on the RED CHANNELS suspected communist spy list. Just being openly pro integration was enough. Racist American fascism runs deep.
posted by The Whelk at 10:08 PM on March 27, 2018 [19 favorites]


side note, if you where involved in any of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade activities, like went to a fundraiser or a meeting or even a dinner for members and well-wishers, it got you on the RED CHANNELS suspected communist spy list.

Wow. My mom has gotten their newsletter since forever. My mom's on a suspected communist list huh. Go mom?
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 10:52 PM on March 27, 2018 [8 favorites]


timely
posted by wibari at 11:34 PM on March 27, 2018


And the Ethiopian's defeat of the Italian army by Emperor Haile Selassie - otherwise known as Ras (ie Prince) Tafari - was celebrated as the first time Africans defeated a European Army, and led to his deification by the Rastafari. In Addis Abba you can visit his palace and see the bathroom of a god.
posted by RandlePatrickMcMurphy at 6:55 AM on March 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


> Though only five years old at the time of the war, playwright Lorraine Hansberry later wrote, “I remember the newsreels of the Ethiopian war, and the feeling of outrage. . . . Fighters with spears and our people in a passion over it, my mother attacking the Pope blessing the Italian troops going off to slay the Ethiopians.”

When we studied this in high school, I remember my mother telling me how angry her mother was at the League of Nations. Emperor Selassie had gone to them begging for help, and they turned him away. "They don't care about those folks. They don't care about black people," Granny said over and over. "They don't care!"

> On September 28, the day Haile Selassie mobilized the country, Ethiopia had 13 planes to Italy’s 595, 4 tanks to Italy’s 795, and only enough rifles to arm half its fighters. Ethiopia had no weapons factories, no one to grant it loans, and a League of Nations rhetorically committed to its collective security that, in reality, shrugged with contempt at the prospect of Ethiopia’s own Anschluss. Desperate, Selassie gave the order: on pain of death, every woman without a baby, and every man or boy old enough to hold a spear, must head to Addis Ababa.

Jesus God.
posted by magstheaxe at 9:41 AM on March 28, 2018 [6 favorites]


I learned about John Robinson during Black History Month from, of all places, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee. Please enjoy this history cartoon, with Ashley Nicole Black.
posted by ceejaytee at 10:49 AM on March 28, 2018 [2 favorites]


« Older We house our stuff but not our people.   |   Alice Guy-Blaché, World's First Woman Filmmaker Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments