Racist experiences added insult to injury. In April 1933, while attending a conference on civil rights activism in Washington, D.C., Price was refused service at the Hamilton Hotel, where she and other attendees had planned to grab a meal. White delegates at the conference left the hotel in defiance of the act of discrimination; Price’s reaction went unrecorded.
Through the 1930s, Price continued to change schools, searching for the best job as economic times were getting more difficult. During the Great Depression, when many Black Americans fought to survive under constrained circumstances, she expanded her social activism by taking up human rights issues such as quality health care and better education for all. To that end, she aligned herself with the Young Women’s Christian Association and the oldest Black Greek-letter sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha (AKA).
Price’s social work with the AKAs provided a vital platform for the young teacher to advance human rights activism. In the absence of formal organizations explicitly committed to human rights, groups like the AKAs offered a medium for Black women to advance universal rights for all people, regardless of citizenship status.
This was especially evident during and after the Second Italo-Ethiopian War. In 1935, Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini’s troops invaded Ethiopia, one of only two African nations that had not yet been colonized. The invasion lit a fire among Black activists across the U.S. and in other parts of the globe and helped to illuminate the links between racism and fascism abroad.
Black writers and editors openly denounced Italy’s actions, and ordinary citizens created numerous groups to provide support for Ethiopian refugees. For Black women in the U.S., the Italo-Ethiopian War provided the impetus for a renewed interest in global affairs, spurred attempts to strengthen transnational political collaborations and above all encouraged a desire to advocate for human rights.
Black American activists during the 1930s pointed to the connections between Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia and Francisco Franco’s 1936 military coup in Spain as evidence of the unbridled rise of fascism. Price joined the Negro People’s Committee to Aid Spanish Refugees, which worked diligently to aid the thousands of Spanish and Ethiopian people who had been displaced.
For Price and others, supporting these refugees also represented a challenge to fascism and imperialism in Europe. Their stance was a bold one, and it contrasted the official position of the U.S. Indeed, when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, American officials maintained a neutral position.
Price and her colleagues’ involvement bolstered the efforts of an estimated 3,000 Americans who volunteered during the Spanish Civil War, many of whom served in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Drawn from major cities in the U.S., including New York City, many of the men who fought to defend the Republic of Spain were industrial workers and children of recent immigrants. Of those who volunteered from the U.S., around 90 were Black men, including Harry Haywood, a leading figure in the Communist Party.