Dear Friends, The three threads running through this issue are directly linked to ALBA’s mission and history. The first thread underscores how important it is to identify fascism wherever it shows up—and to face it head-on. We don’t have to explain to you why that is particularly important today. “We can no longer teach...
Read more »
The present is confusing because we don’t know what the future will look like. Still, some things are crystal clear.
Read more »
Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad. By Matthew F. Delmont. Viking, 2022, 374 pp.
Read more »
The fight against fascism, in all its guises, has always required broad alliances: networks of people and organizations who realize that the threat to democracy is dangerous enough to warrant collective action, even if not everyone sees eye to eye on everything. This is why, two years after Hitler’s rise to power, the Popular...
Read more »
Dear Friends, “There are now states in this country where this document cannot be taught,” a teacher remarked pointedly at one of the two workshops we taught in November. We were discussing a letter sent from civil-war Spain by Canute Frankson, a Jamaican-born mechanic who in April 1937 left his home in Detroit to...
Read more »
Sister Benedicta (aka Andrea Sender), daughter of the celebrated Spanish novelist Ramón J. Sender, who lived in exile in the United States from Franco’s fascist regime, died on June 11. Her parents—Ramón, the prize-winning novelist, and his wife, Amparo Barayón—were strong opponents of the uprising in 1936. At the outbreak of the war, her...
Read more »
Dear Friends, Putting together a quarterly magazine is a surefire way to make time fly. As this issue goes to print, your editors are already thinking about the next one, approaching authors, agreeing on word counts, setting deadlines—before we know it, another three months have passed. Since we last wrote, the US Supreme Court...
Read more »
"His Knee" and "The Spectrum"
Read more »
Mayday, the earth warms, greens, a trumpet on the car radio
bleeds, Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain, the drama of rebirth,
a staccato horn chases the bull in an arena, cycles of disorder.
Read more »
Given the source of our inspiration, it’s perhaps no surprise that we’ve become used to war-based metaphors when speaking about our work.
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