John Hovan, one of the first veterans of the Lincoln Brigade to take advantage of the Spanish law granting citizenship to foreign volunteers of the International Brigades, died in Providence, Rhode Island, on March 27. He was 97.
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Racial equality and civil rights live at the core of the Lincoln Brigade. About 90 African Americans volunteered to serve in the ranks—as soldiers, drivers, mechanics, nurses, doctors, journalists, and social workers. The only prominent entertainer who visited the U.S. volunteers in Spain was Paul Robeson.
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Carl Geiser, political commissar of the Lincoln Battalion, prisoner of war held in Spain until 1939, and author of Prisoners of the Good Fight, left the letters he wrote to his family to the ALBA collection. The complete letters, edited by Peter N. Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli, have just published by Kent State University...
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The new Common Core Standards provide ALBA with an opportunity to help more high school teachers introduce the Spanish Civil War into their classes. Students will study history not by rote or memorization, but by confronting directly original primary documents.
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Hurricane Sandy swamped the schools of Bergen County, New Jersey last November, forcing postponement of ALBA’s teaching institute, but the spring term brought an exciting revival as 22 Spanish language and social studies high school educators attended a lively one-day session at the Bergen County Academies, organized by administrator Tim Casperson, in Hackensack.
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Jim Benét, lifelong journalist and veteran of the American Regiment de Tren (Transport) in the International Brigades, died in December near his home in northern California of a blood infection. He was 98. Born in New York to a literary family on both sides—his father was William Rose Benét, a poet; his uncle, Stephen...
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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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