James Yates (activist)

James Yates
File:James Yates 1979 Edit.jpg Yates c. 1979
Born	(1906-08-09)August 9, 1906 Quitman, Mississippi, U.S.
Died	November 7, 1993(1993-11-07) (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

File:Four Veterans, Frank Feingersh, Bill Bois, James Yates and Joe Drice, Return to the United States After Months of Front Line Service in Spain 1938 Edit.jpg

Four Lincoln Brigade veterans return to the United States from Spain, 1938.
(L-R): Frank Feingersh, Bill Bois, James Yates and Joe Drice.

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. He was active in the movement to protest the Scottsboro Case and became active in the Unemployed Councils organized by the Communist Party USA. He joined the Communist Party USA in 1936.

In Spain he met Langston Hughes and Ernest Hemingway. He served as an ammunitions and ambulance driver. He later wrote a memoir about his experiences in Spain, Mississippi to Madrid: Memoir of a Black American in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

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.