One of ALBA co-chairs was interviewed on National Public Radio’s Here and Now to talk about the exhumation, on October 24, of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen.
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Just Mercy, the bestselling memoir by ALBA/Puffin Award winner Bryan Stevenson, has inspired a film featuring Michael B. Jordan (who plays Stevenson), Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, an Alabama man on death row who appeals his murder conviction with...
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Robert Hale Merriman, the commander of the Lincoln Battalion who mysteriously disappeared during the Battle of Teruel in early April 1938, has been drawing attention. Milton Zerman, a history major at UC Berkeley, has been raising $1,000 to place a plaque commemorating Merriman and his wife, Marion, outside the Virginia Street apartment building where...
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This past October and November, ALBA staff have worked with high school teachers in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey, offering full-day workshops on “The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond.” In November, ALBA also offered two workshops for educators at the Conference on...
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Emilio Silva, the founder of the ALBA/Puffin Award-winning Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (ARMH), was back in New York City in October as part of a North-American tour. His New York visit included a screening of Bones of Contention, a documentary by Andrea Weiss about Spanish efforts to locate and exhume victims...
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After more than a year of work, the restoration of the largest United States monument dedicated to the volunteers who fought fascism in Spain, at the end of San Francisco’s Market Street, across the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building, is nearing completion. Designed by Walter Hood and Ann Chamberlain, the monument consists of 44...
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It’s late summer, a time when news used to be slow. It no longer is. On the Mediterranean, the fearless life-saving professionals of ProActiva Open Arms, led by the visionary Òscar Camps, are battling narrow-minded, xenophobic European governments for the right to help drowning African migrants safely reach the shores of Italy and Spain....
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Are you a middle or high school teacher? Do you know one? Spread the word about ALBA’s teaching institutes. This fall offers plenty of opportunities to join!
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We are thrilled to announce that ALBA has hired a new executive director. Mark Wallem is an accomplished human rights lawyer who comes to ALBA with more than 20 years of experience in international non-profit management and fundraising. Born and raised in Minnesota, Mark holds a BA in Political Science and JD. He has...
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Thank you very much to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives and the Puffin Foundation. I wanted to share the story of one father and daughter whom federal enforcement agents separated from each other at the border during the crisis this past summer. A father I will call “Hector” and his daughter fled their indigenous...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is an educational non-profit dedicated to promoting social activism and the defense of human rights. ALBA’s work is inspired by the American volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought fascism in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39). Learn more at our website or
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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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ALBA's project to provide a complete list of the more than 2,800 individuals who left from U.S. territory to fight with the Spanish Republic
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