The ALBA collection at NYU’s Tamiment Library is an extraordinary trove of documents, images, and artifacts chronicling the lives of the almost 3,000 American men and women who joined the Spanish Civil War. It collection represents about ten percent of these volunteers—a respectable sampling. But is it representative?
Read more »
ALBA has moved offices from one historical location to another one. Our new home is steeped in history and ripe with promise.
Read more »
ALBA’s Human Rights Film Festival shines a light on human rights abuses—and on those who try to stop them—wherever they may happen. The geography covered by this year’s Impugning Impunity is vast.
Read more »
La Prensa was a Spanish language daily that thoroughly covered the Spanish Civil War, including occasional stories, like the heartbreaking one translated here, about the Lincolns. Spanish-language journalism in the US is a largely untapped source for the study of American involvement in the Spanish Civil War. Tuesday, October 19, 1937 ********************** He was...
Read more »
James D. Fernandez, New York University Eighty years ago this week, in the Spanish North African enclave of Melilla, a group of right-wing generals staged a military coup, aimed at overthrowing Spain’s democratically elected government. The July 1936 uprising unleashed what would come to be known – somewhat inaccurately – as the Spanish Civil...
Read more »
The legacy of the Spanish Civil War played a crucial role in the lives of Lydia Cacho and Jeremy Scahill, the winners of the ALBA/Puffin Award. But how do we ensure its transmission to younger generations, whose life world is so different that they often have trouble even reading the Lincolns’ hand-written letters? ALBA’s...
Read more »
ALBA’s fifth annual Human Rights Film Festival featured 21 documentary films from 12 countries (four world premieres, 12 New York premieres). The Randall Award went to Among the Believers, about radical Islam and a charismatic cleric in Pakistan.
Read more »
On behalf of NYU’s Department of Spanish Literature and Portuguese, the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade...
Read more »
Some 114,000 Spaniards lay in unmarked mass graves strewn all over the Iberian Peninsula. Only Cambodia has more densely populated killing fields. These are not men and women killed at the front during the Spanish Civil War (1936-39); they are victims of systematic extrajudicial assassinations carried out by Francoist forces during and after that...
Read more »
On the 82 anniversary of the founding of the Spanish Republic, Appellate Court Judge, E.J. Salcines, tells a wonderful story about the Republican flag at Tampa’s Centro Asturiano. 14 April 2013, Salcines Park, West Tampa https://vimeo.com/64033205
Read more »
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
sign up to receive email updates from ALBA. Support ALBA through a tax-deductible gift! To inquire about a donation, please contact the ALBA office at info@alba-valb.org or 212-674-5398.
Inspirational and courageous; that was the IWW. Click here then the forward arrow to listen as author Ahmed White talks with former ALBA board member Burt Cohen about White’s new book Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers on the podcast keepingdemocracyalive.com.
Read more »
Nobody remembers Lloyd Mallan. I came across his name while writing a book on poet- playwright Federico García Lorca’s iconic afterlife. Mallan’s piece on the poet’s assassination, published in 1939, was instrumental in spreading to the U.S. and Canada a highly embellished narrative of poetic martyrdom that helped shape the public image of Lorca....
Read more »
ALBA is proud to partner with the Spanish government in the publication of a 60-page curricular guide for high-school students and teachers in Spain as part of a government-sponsored series. Highlighting the experiences of U.S. volunteers in the International Brigades, the guide invites readers to use these stories as an inspiration to set...
Read more »
For an English translation of this article, see here.
Read more »
On May 30, 1937, the Republican freighter Ciudad de Barcelona was hit by a torpedo fired by a lurking Nationalist submarine. The torpedo tore a gaping hole in the ship and it rapidly sank. A Republican seaplane drove the submarine away with a depth charge attack, then landed and began rescuing men in the...
Read more »
Dr. Irving Busch (1896-1960), a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, volunteered to serve in Spain with the American Medical Bureau. In Spain, he served with the Republican Medical Services. Both before and after Spain Busch was an amateur photographer and he carried his camera along with him. After his death...
Read more »
The picture of a young man in a jaunty hat and a big smile stared out of the 1978 issue of The Volunteer. The photo was accompanied by a request for information about Sidney Lorraine who died in Spain during the course of The Retreats. There is no evidence of any replies. Sidney Hotchkiss...
Read more »
Many American veterans went on to serve in WWII and Korea. This list is a work in progress. Those marked with an “*” were killed during the war. Office of Strategic Services Aalto, William Oliver WWII US Army, joined December 1941 served as 1st SGT transfer to OSS April 12, 1942; Dismissed after he...
Read more »
Eddie O’Neill was born in the same County Tyrone neighborhood as the poet Charlie Donnelly (1914-1937), who was killed in action at Jarama while serving as a platoon leader with the James Connolly Section of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Inspired by the sacrifice of his fellow countryman and fellow Irish Socialist Republican, Eddie set...
Read more »
“A prominent competitive player in the United States gave a series of lectures and played over famous games from the past. To hear him talking—in our squalid surroundings—with such knowledge about a game once played by Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, was an uplifting and inspiring experience.” In his memoir To...
Read more »
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
Search the Database