Morgan Testifies to SACB (1954)

Wed Sep 15, 1954

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On this day in 1954, Crawford Morgan, a member of Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, a group of American volunteers that fought against Francoist fascists, testified before the anti-communist “Subversive Activities Control Board”.

In September 1954, the VALB were brought before the Subversive Activities Control Board (SACB), a United States government committee to investigate Communist infiltration of American society during the 1950s Red Scare, founded after the passage of the McCarran Act.

On September 15th, 1954, Crawford Morgan, a black member of VALB, testified before the SACB. Here is an excerpt of his testimony:

SACB: “Did you have any understanding, Mr. Morgan, before you went to Spain, of what the issues were connected to that war?”

Morgan: “I felt that I had a pretty good idea of what fascism was and most of its ramifications. Being aware of what the Fascist Italian government did to the Ethiopians, and also the way that I and all the rest of the Negroes in this country have been treated ever since slavery, I figured I had a pretty good idea of what fascism was…”

SACB: “Mr. Morgan, were those thoughts in your mind before you went to Spain?”

Morgan: "Ever since I have been big enough to understand things I have rebelled. As a small child of three or four years old I would rebel at human injustice in the way I understood it at that age. And as long as I have been able to remember, up until now, the government and a lot of people have treated me as a second-class citizen. I am 43 years old, and all my life I have been treated as a second-class citizen, and naturally if you always have been treated like one you start feeling it at a very tender age.

With Hitler on the march, and fascism starting the fight in Spain, I felt that it could serve two purposes: I felt that if we cold lick the Fascists in Spain, I felt that in the trend of things it would offset a bloodbath later. I felt that if we didn’t lick Franco and stop fascism there, it would spread over lots of the world. And it is bad enough for white people to live under fascism, those of the white people that like freedom and democracy. But Negroes couldn’t live under it. They would be wiped out."