- Ramón (Ray) Durem was born #otd in Seattle, 1915. He joined the US Navy at 14. He attended Berkeley and joined the CPUSA and was active in left-wing campus causes. He arrived in Spain on March 20, 1937 and served with ALB until he was shot in the knee at Brunete.Jan 30, 2026 16:42
- Ramón served as a clerk at Villa Paz until he returned on December 20, 1938. He briefly married AMB nurse Rebecca Schulman and the couple had three daughters. Post-Spain he connected with his African American identity & wrote poetry for Robert Williams’ journal The Crusader and Langston Hughes.
- Ramón remarried and relocated to Guadalajara to avoid FBI harassment. You can read his 312 page FBI case file: archive.org/details/fbey... In 1963, at the age of forty-eight, Durem died of cancer in Los Angeles. Durem's poetry Take No Prisoners (1971) was published in London posthumously.
