Of the African American volunteer fighters who heeded the call of the Communist International in 1936 and went to battle Franco’s fascist forces in the Spanish civil war, most were galvanized not only by socialist and anti-imperial ideals but also by a Pan-Africanist consciousness that prized Islamic Spain as a glorious era when African civilization extended into Europe. Inspired by Spain’s Moorish past, these black fighters hoped to rescue tolerant, pluralist Spain from the gathering flames of European fascism. Many were thus stunned by Franco’s use of Moorish troops in his anticommunist “crusade,” by the rabid anti-Muslim racism of the Republican forces, and, more broadly, by how the Moor and Spain’s historic relations with the Islamic world figured so centrally in a civil war fought ostensibly for domestic reasons. African American soldiers were so appalled by the hatred of Moors on the Republican side, that some — especially those who were mistaken for Moroccans and shot at by fellow Republican troops — contemplated quitting and returning to the United States. Langston Hughes was particularly intrigued by the racial dynamics of Spain’s “Moorish question.” “I knew that Spain once belonged to the Moors, a colored people ranging from light dark to dark white,” he wrote. “Now the Moors have come again to Spain with the fascist armies as cannon fodder for Franco. But, on the loyalist side, there are many Negroes of various nationalities in the International Brigades. I want to write about both Moors and Negroes.”1
