On 22 January 1894, Claude Pringle, Black miner, veteran and Spanish Civil War fighter was born in Holston, Virginia.
Pringle moved to Logan City, West Virginia at a young age eventually serving in World War I. After seeing combat in France, he came back to the US to work as a coal miner in Bellaire, Ohio. Pringle was involved in the mine workers' strike of 1922.
Years following in 1931, he joined the Communist Party where he eventually came in arms with Spain to fight the Nationalists, joining in May 1937. While working as a volunteer aboard the Ciudad de Barcelona, a torpedo fired by fascist combatants sunk the ship. Pringle survived the attack and sinking later staying in Spain and serving with the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion helping fight against fascist forces in the Spanish civil war.
During combat in Teruel, Pringle was wounded, hospitalising him until March 1938 when the Nationalists launched an offensive attack on the Aragon Front. Fearing his comrades would be killed, Pringle left the infantry to return to battle.
He was one of the hundreds of volunteer soldiers captured making him a political prisoner at San Pedro Cardenas, a concentration camp for International Brigades volunteers. Conditions at San Pedro Cardenas were severely poor as hunger, cold weather, humiliation and punishment were frequent. Pringle was a survivor of San Pedro Cardenas and was one of the seventy-one POWs repatriated back to the US in May 1939.
Claude Pringle passed away March 28, 1959 at the age of 65. He was buried at the Riverside Cemetery in Rochester, New York. Claude is to be remembered as a veteran of multiple wars, being a fighter for workers' rights and against fascism as a Black communist in the early 1900s.
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