People, Locations, Episodes

Ray Durem, Poet, and Activist born

Ray Durem

*Ray Durem was born on this date in 1914. He was a Black activist and poet.

Ramón Durem was born in Seattle, Washington, of mixed heritage.  Leaving home at fourteen, he briefly served in the U.S. Navy before suffering a leg injury that forced his discharge.  He then worked as a laborer until enrolling at the University of California in Berkeley.  He joined the Communist Party in 1931 and volunteered to join the Loyalist cause in Spain.

Durem left the United States in March 1937 and was wounded in the Brunete Offensive of that year.  During his long recovery at the American hospital in Villa Paz, Durem met and married a Brooklyn nurse named Rebecca Schulman.  Durem returned to the front in 1938 and participated in the Ebro Offensive.  In October, around the same time Rebecca was having their first child (Dolores for La Pasionaria) in New York, he marched in Barcelona’s farewell parade.  He was expatriated in December. The Durem family moved to Los Angeles and had two more daughters while he became an active union organizer.

Durem left the Communist Party after World War II when, as he later wrote, he “discovered that even the white radicals were not interested in a radical solution to the Negro Question.”  He divorced Rebecca, married a Black woman, and moved to Mexico.  It was during this period that Durem wrote the poetry for which he is best remembered.  Durem spent the last years of his life in Los Angeles and died of cancer in December 1963. Writing as “Ray Durem,” his poetry’s strident tone attracted the attention of Black Nationalist Robert Williams and writer Langston Hughes.  Published in several newspapers, literary journals, and poetry anthologies, he is known especially for the volume 'Take No Prisoners' released posthumously in 1971.

Ray Durem’s work was very important to the Black Power movement, serving as both a political compass and cultural inspiration.

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