Harry W. Randall, Jr., once the chief photographer of the special photographic unit of the Fifteenth Brigade during the Spanish Civil War, died at a care facility in Snowflake, Arizona on November 11. His vast collection of photographs—which included not only his own camera work but a large array of negatives, albums of prints,...
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After organizing three successful professional development programs for high school teachers this spring—in Seattle, Tampa, and Oberlin, Ohio—ALBA launched three more in the autumn term in Alameda County, California, New York City, and Bergen County, New Jersey. As in the past, teachers are welcoming the presentation of fresh historical source material from the ALBA...
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We know, of course, that he gave his talent as a writer to support the Republican side.
But there are at least two additional things Hemingway did that have attracted little attention.
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One of the last surviving veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Vernon Bown, died of pneumonia at a VA hospital in Martinez, California, on March 23, as reported by his son Ricardo. Born in rural Wisconsin, Bown went to Spain in 1937 and saw action with the MacKenzie-Papineau battalion until the volunteers were repatriated...
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Now in its fifth year, ALBA’s educational program aims to reach high school teachers of social studies and Spanish who will use archival sources related to the Spanish Civil War in their classrooms. Three separate programs filled the calendar during the spring term; three more are expected in the fall. Last March, ALBA board...
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As we begin the fifth year of ALBA’s teaching programs for high school instructors, we are detecting positive patterns in the anonymous evaluations each teacher is asked to complete at the end of the program. Last December in Chicago, for example, a male world history teacher indicated that he had begun the session with...
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Focusing a wide lens on the human rights agenda, ALBA hosted “Impugning Impunity: A Human Rights Documentary Film Series” at the Museum of the City of New York in November. The festival kicked off with Hollman Morris’ Impunity, a film about the victims of state-sponsored terrorism in Colombia and the truth commission that was...
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A new spirit of human rights activism ignited tremendous enthusiasm as 300-plus friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade commemorated the 75th anniversary of the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War at a reunion in New York on May 14. The day’s highlight was the presentation of the first annual ALBA-Puffin Award for Human Rights...
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The re-publication this month of my memoir, Keeping Time: Memory, Nostalgia & the Art of History (University of Georgia Press), may be of interest to those who wonder how and why I got involved in writing about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War. I’ll be discussing this background on Thursday January...
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While hiking in the Glass Mountains of Mono County, California, last year, Betty Brown of Kensington, California, came upon some carvings made on aspen trees, referring to the Spanish Civil War--and apparently cut by a Basque sheepherder with anti-fascist opinions.
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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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Manus O'Riordan, Ireland Secretary of the International Brigade Memorial Trust, writes about "The Radical Paul Robeson" and the Spanish Civil War in The Tribune. Read the article here.
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Since 2014, volunteers have visited the graves of Lincolns and honored them on Memorial Day by putting down a simple white rose and an International Brigades flag. This year, ALBA helped advertise this project through a link to the online version of the Volunteer Newsletter1. The response from that approach has been rewarding and...
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Due to the untiring work of Ray Hoff, ALBA’s volunteer data base now has three new photographs. Hoff who identified and contacted family members of Isadore “Jack” Ehrenberg, and Robert Gavin and his younger brother Eugene Victor Gavin. These families provided the photographs. Family members are encouraged to review the data entries and provide...
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Veteran Joe Brandt’s pamphlet Black Americans in the Spanish People’s War Against Fascism. 1936-1939 was published by the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigades in 1979. It was the first attempt to document the history of African American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War. The Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of African American History and...
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African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: “This Ain’t Ethiopia, but It’’ll Do” by Danny Duncan Collum was published in 1991. In the thirty years since the book was originally published researchers have identified additional African American volunteers and removed others added to the list in error. The updated names are listed below along...
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Volunteer for Liberty V. 1, No. 3, April 1938 Commander Douglas Earl Seacord by Doug Roach Half a world lies between the harbor of Provincetown, Massachusetts and the Jarama valley. Provincetown, first landing place of the Pilgrims in their search for liberty is – a summer resort frequented by artists, writers and professional people....
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I am searching for information about Morton ‘Vic’ Vicker. I have reason to believe he was in the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. I did not meet Vic until November of 1969 in Aguacate, Cuba, on the first Venceremos Brigade.* We bunked together, cut cane together, and spent a lot of time talking. I was...
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A preview of a Q&A with Robin D.G. Kelley that will appear in the December issue of The Volunteer.
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Guardian Newspapers has published two reviews of the new book by Giles Tremlett, ‘The International Brigades: Fascism, Freedom and the Spanish Civil War’. On Saturday 3 October, The Guardian’s review by Dan Hancox gave the following misleading impression: ‘The brigades drew an astonishing array of international literary figures – Orwell, Hemingway, Spender, Auden’. None of...
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The University of Washington’s Stroum Center for Jewish Studies added part of Dr. Joseph Butwin’s oral history project to its Digital Jewish Studies online collection in 2018. Butwin noted that “initiative” for the project came the “Vets themselves.” The web pages discuss the project’s history and offers individual pages on five veterans: George Watt,...
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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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