Black shirt

The Black shirt was ordinary workwear in Romagna before becoming the uniform of the Fascist soldier of revolution. Its prominent appearance at the September 1921 march on Ravenna gave clothing a political and organizational role: it marked the squads as a collective force and made their military presentation visible, even as the movement remained divided among competing factions.

From workwear to uniform

In September 1921, Italo Balbo organized a march on Ravenna involving 3,000 men from the squads of Ferrara and Bologna, with representatives from Reggio. The men advanced in two columns of 1,500, subdivided into companies and platoons under captains. At this mobilization, the black shirt made its first major appearance as a military uniform. The garment had ordinarily been worn by workers in Romagna; it was now identified with the soldier of the revolution.

That change joined an existing form of clothing to a new political use. The shirt was not described as an invention for the squads: its significance lay in its adoption as a uniform at an operation arranged through ranks and units. The march thus made the black shirt a visible expression of the squads’ military organization.

A uniform within a divided movement

At the National Congress of the Fasci di Combattimento in Rome, the assembly was visibly divided into factions gathered around their leaders. The account depicts the fascists as a mass in spiked boots, while identifying militant divisions from several regions and singling out Florence’s Disperata by its distinctive insignia: a red lily, flames at the collar, and a white skull on a black field. The scene places the black shirt within a broader culture of uniforms and squad insignia, but also shows that uniformed appearance did not mean political unity.

The contrast matters. At Ravenna, the black shirt helped present a mobilization as an organized revolutionary force; in Rome, the gathering’s factions remained distinct despite their shared militant appearance. The garment could make collective identity legible without settling disputes over who would direct the movement or what its political course would be.

Political meaning and limits

The black shirt’s significance in these scenes comes from its transition between settings and roles: from ordinary workwear in Romagna to the uniform of organized squads. Its association with columns, companies, platoons, and captains made it part of a military presentation of Fascist action, rather than merely an item of dress.

That symbolism should not be mistaken for evidence of a fully unified organization. The Rome congress was marked by competing groups, and the account gives a separate visual identity to the Disperata. The black shirt signaled a shared revolutionary image, while the movement’s internal divisions remained plainly visible.