“The connections between the enemy at home and the enemy in Spain”: Langston Hughes’ black internationalism in the Spanish Civil War

Abstract

From July to December 1937, Langston Hughes travelled to Spain to cover the Civil War as a correspondent. The five months he spent travelling throughout Spain gave rise to a prolific repertoire on which the author left a manifest ideological imprint. His observations from within and the ideological perspectives revealed the potential of travel writing as a tool to re-examine the local and international boundaries critically. This paper navigates Hughes’ dispatches in wartime Spain, which distanced him from traditional journalistic practices by demonstrating a clear preference for the ordinary, and a subjective interpretation of the events driven by an unambiguous ideological affiliation to the Loyalist faction. The analysis of the texts sheds light on how international travel facilitated Black connections and on the importance of travel to the politics of Black internationalism.