PCUSA Honors Veterans of the Anti-Fascist Abraham Lincoln Brigade

By Max Reed.

This past Sunday, members of the Nearing-Marshall-Meyers Cell of the Party of Communists USA went to Arlington National Cemetery to identify and honor the fourteen veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who are buried there. Those buried are the following: Charles A. Barr, Theodore Cogswell, Gerald Cook, Edithe M. Dyer, Irving Goff, Louis Gordon, Burt E. Jackson, Vincent Lossowski, Harry Schoenberg, Kenneth Shaker, Robert G. Thompson, Vincent Usera, Harry Haywood, Edward A. Carter. These men sailed across the Atlantic to risk their lives in defense of the Spanish Republic against fascism. They also served in other wars such as World War I and World War II. Notably, this is marked on their graves, while their service in the Spanish Civil War is not. This is outrageous, as thousands of Americans were killed or wounded in defense of the Spanish Republic. 

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade was the first fully racially-integrated American combat unit with Black and White officers, long before the Army was finally desegregated in the 1950s. The Party of Communists USA remembers our history as we come out of the tradition of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the old Communist Party. To honor and mark the service of these men, members of the Nearing-Marshall-Meyers Cell laid both American and Spanish Republican flags at their graves.

Beyond the men buried in Arlington, we must remember the men who did not live through the war and who lie underneath Spanish soil. At Jarama, Brunete, Belchite, Teruel, the Ebro, and the Retreats, many sons of liberty lie, having shed their blood for the freedom of the people of Spain. Although bourgeois historians and military authorities have forgotten, we remember. 

The anti-fascist tradition of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade will not be forgotten!