Vernon Snow was killed in action at Fuentes de Ebro during a Nationalist air raid on October 18, 1937. Snow was serving in the Lincoln-Washington Transmissions section when he was killed. Pat Read his section leader recalled Snow as “a comrade with a loveable personality, calm courage and plenty of ability. (“A Life for Every...
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The University of Arkansas Libraries Special Collections completed a project on October 31, 2017 to digitize the run of the Commonwealth College Fortnightly online. The issues begin with volume 2, number 1 (January 1, 1926) and end with volume 14, number 5 (March 15, 1938). The paper was written, edited, typeset and printed...
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Rob Waters kindly allowed The Volunteer blog to reprint his interview with Reuben Barr, originally published in The Tenderloin Times, June 1984, v. 8, no. 5, pp. 4 and 8. When Reuben Barr was, as he says, “pinched” last summer blockading outside the Lawrence Livermore Lab, it was not his first brush with the...
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Shortly after the publication of the blog post Seven American Volunteers Refused Permission to Land in France, Paul Hofmann the son of volunteer Albert Hofmann, sent an email correcting and clarifying some of the information in the article. The most important correction was to the...
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The Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History records on U.S. and Canadian volunteers deepens the available insight into the organization and employment of the International Brigades (IB) during the Spanish Civil War. From these records, it is evident that the IB Command was interested in documenting the background of the volunteers. Two documents prepared...
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For the Cleveland workshop on October 10, register here. For the Bowling Green workshop on October 12, register here. A FREE professional development workshop for middle and high school teachers of social studies and/or Spanish Maltz Museum for Jewish Heritage, Cleveland October 10, 2017, 9am-4pm Bowling Green State University October 12, 2017, 9 am–4:30...
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On April 4, 1937, French authorities arrested American John William Tylus, along with thirteen volunteers of various nationalities, near Prats de Mollo, Pyrénées, Orientales. The group was described as being “in poor shape” after being lost in the Pyrenees mountains for several days....
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A group from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands has created a website to share and exchange information about the maritime workers who supported the Spanish Republic and who continued the fight against fascism after the International Brigades were withdrawn. The organizers of the website emphasize that the SCW must not be seen as an...
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If you have ever attended VALB reunions or latest ALBA’s celebrations, you won’t forget Velina Brown, whose singing of Spanish Civil War songs has grabbed her audience’s hearts and brought tears to their eyes. Now she is starring in “Walls”, a new musical as the 58th-season production by the award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe....
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The flow of American volunteers to Spain during the first months of 1937, prompted the United States State Department (State Department) to request the assistance of the French government in dissuading American volunteers from crossing France and entering Spain. French efforts were somewhat half-hearted with officials often turning a blind eye to American travelers...
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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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Leon Bibel, a New-York-based painter, printmaker, and teacher who worked with the WPA and was only discovered by the public years after his death in 1995, was primed from birth to identify with the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.
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Can conservation be a revolutionary practice? In his new book, The Monument of Tomorrow, Miguel Caballero shows that it certainly can. The story it tells is also the story of the Madrid that the Abraham Lincoln Brigade encountered—and helped shape—during the war.
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Few political leaders of modern Spain have been as maligned as Prime Minister Juan Negrín, who died in exile in 1956. But his personal papers, which have been only open to researchers since 2014, challenge long-standing portrayals of Negrín advanced by anti-Communist critics on both the left and right.
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The war in Spain was barely over, but the scramble to define the legacy of the International Brigades was on. Were they valiant antifascists, or had they been agents, victims, or dupes of world communism? In pre-1945 US popular culture, the brigadistas were often portrayed as heroic antifascists. At the same time, there were...
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China was entangled in multiple local and global crises when this image was published on the back cover of a Shanghai-based magazine.
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The Republic’s fight against fascism was not limited to the trenches. There was also a quieter, though no less vital front—the judiciary—where the Republic fought to preserve legality, due process, and democratic norms.
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Major US films and series about the Spanish Civil War have been few and far between. Why has Hollywood shied away from a topic that, on the face of it, presents such a trove of compelling stories?
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Close to 35 years after serving as a head nurse in the Spanish Civil War, Fredericka Martin, by then an accomplished author, returned to Spain to revisit the hospital sites where she had her fellow volunteers had saved hundreds of lives. Another half century later, Gina Benavidez, a doctoral candidate, followed Martin’s trail.
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Although this text by Ivens is little known—and has never been translated before—it offers an eye-opening reflection on the power of his filmmaking.
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Antifascism has long been synonymous with American values. In 1934, student activists at New York’s City College arguably understood this better than many do today.
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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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