Bali Kilas: Encountering Black American Volunteers

Black Americans also fought in the Spanish Civil War, but none of them signed the fan. The story of Bali Kilas illustrates that the men of the 129^th Brigade were familiar with American volunteers from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

Background

Little is known about Bali Kilas. Of Russian-Lithuanian origin, he was born on February 15, 1914 in Rumford, Maine. In the 1930s, he moved to New York City where he was employed as a chemical engineer. He sailed to Spain aboard the SS Washington in March 1937. With him on the ship was Herbert Verdier, a Black American volunteer, whom he would meet again in Spain under tragic circumstances. Both Verdier and Kilas were initially sent to the 14^th Brigade, like Carl Slater, another signatory of the fan. In this brigade, with primarily French-speaking volunteers, they both served in the transport and ambulance unit. Because of problems with the French language, Kilas later requested to be transferred to the English-speaking 15^th Brigade.

Medical Service

**Members of the American Medical Bureau traveling to Spain on the *SS Paris*, January 16, 1937. Black American nurse Salaria Kea is second from the left in the first row.**
XV International Brigade in Spain, Kevin Buyers

During the Spanish Civil War, volunteers were not only on the battlefronts but also served fighting troops in supportive functions. Among them were ambulance drivers, like Peter Reed, another signatory of the fan. Kilas also worked in the transport and ambulance service, the Service Sanitaire.

During his eleven months at the front, Kilas participated in battles at Jarama, Cuesta de la Reina, Brunete, and Levante. After the battle at Cuesta de la Reina, Kilas reported the deaths of Tony Larlham, a British volunteer, and Herbert Verdier. Both were killed in action in October 1937. Verdier was among the 80 to 90 Black Americans volunteering in the International Brigades.

Verdier and Black Americans

**Herbert Verdier.**
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA)

Herbert Verdier was born in 1909 in Savannah, Georgia. When he lost both his mother Phoebe and father William at a young age, he was raised by Martha Major, whom the adult Herbert called his mother. At age 17, he went to New York. He worked as a seaman and several other jobs, including two years in the military. On March 10, 1937 he boarded the SS Washington. Like Kilas, he served in the 14^th Brigade where their paths crossed. When the Spanish Civil War came to an end and the American volunteers returned home, Verdier’s adopted mother, Martha Major, wrote to the U.S. State Department to get information about her missing son. The State Department replied that they had found no records of Verdier among the American volunteers evacuated from Spain.

Why would Verdier, like other Black Americans, fight far away from home in the Spanish Civil War? Black American workers did not only suffer like most Americans from the severe economic crisis of the Great Depression but also from the Jim Crow laws that were deeply entrenched in the American south—like in Georgia, Verdier’s birthplace. 70 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, the new Jim Crow laws kept Black Americans segregated in all spheres, from schools and transportation to restaurants and the military. Given the ongoing discrimination in the South, many Black American men went to Spain to fight for a larger cause. It helped them escape and transcend the harsh conditions at home. Many, like Verdier, joined the Communist Party or the Young Communist League, neither of which subjected them to segregation. The participation of Black American volunteers in the International Brigades in Spain led to the creation of the first racially integrated army in the history of the United States.

The poet, novelist, and activist Langston Hughes wrote in his 1956 autobiography, I Wonder as I Wander, that Black American volunteers “had come to Spain to fight against the people who oppress Negroes in the American South.” Canute Frankson expressed similar sentiments. Frankson had migrated from Jamaica to the United States in 1917 and sailed to Spain in 1937. As a skilled machinist, he was soon appointed Head Mechanic at the International Garage in Albacete. In a letter from Spain, he wrote:

**Langston Hughes, left, with Abraham Lincoln Brigade volunteer, journalist, and poet Edwin Rolfe.**
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA)

“Why I, a Negro, who have fought through these years for the rights of my people, am here in Spain today? Because if we crush Fascism here, [we] will build us a new society–a society of peace and plenty. There will be no color line, no jim-crow trains, no lynchings. That is why, my dear, I am here in Spain.”
Quoted in William Loren Katz et. al.

**Salaria Kea working in the American Hospital of Villa Paz, Madrid.**
Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA)

Among Black American volunteers were also a few women, including Salaria Kea, the only Black American nurse to serve in the Spanish Civil War. She worked alongside other Black women such as Thyra Edwards, Louise Thompson, Melva Price, and Alison Burrough who participated in international antifascist politics. While Thyra Edwards was an active socialist and feminist who came to Spain to support the Republic, Salaria Kea volunteered in Spain as nurse with the American Medical Bureau. The Red Cross had earlier denied Kea this opportunity because of her race.

“It seemed so funny,” Kea remarked, “me being turned down in a democratic country and then allowed to go to a fascist one.”
Quoted in Emily Sharpe.

In 1938, Kea and Edwards traveled throughout the United States together in an ambulance inscribed “From the Negro People of America to the People of Republican Spain.” The tour included lectures about the situation in Spain and a variety of fundraisers to help the Republican cause. In the African American Press, Kea was called the “Head Nurse, Harlem Hospital, New York” and Edwards a “World Traveler and Social Worker.”

Back Home

After Verdier’s death, Bali Kilas transferred to the 15^th Brigade. In December 1938, like other signatories of the fan, he filed for repatriation, eventually crossing the border into France and returning to the United States on the President Harding in February of 1939.

According to the 1940 census, he was unemployed for some time. He married Hope Eleanor and lived for some time in Boston. Later, during World War II, Kilas was drafted into the U.S. Navy where he served as a radioman, third class (RM3). He was honorably discharged on October 31, 1945 and moved to San Francisco. Only few details are known about him afterward, such as his divorce in 1951 and receiving a $100 fine for drunk driving in July 1946.

When Kilas died on July 27, 1978, he lived in Alameda, California. He was buried in Willamette National Cemetery, Portland, Oregon.

Kilas Profile