In 1999, Catherine Wigginton Greene won ALBA’s Watt Award with an essay on Salaria Kea, the only African American nurse to serve in the Spanish Civil War. Twenty-four years later, Wigginton is a successful novelist, filmmaker, and educational consultant whose work still focuses on the themes that drew her to Kea as an undergraduate...
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Sarah Watling is an award-winning author who recently published Tomorrow Perhaps the Future, in which she weaves together the stories of women whose lives were affected by the Spanish Civil War, including Martha Gellhorn, Josephine Herbst, Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, Jessica Mitford, Nancy Cunard, Virginia Woolf, Salaria Kea, and Gerda Taro. Your first...
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The Right’s culture war on schools, universities, and history teachers—thinly disguised as a crusade against straw men like “divisive concepts” and “critical race theory”—is showing no sign of letting up. According to a tracking project at the UCLA Law School, between September 2020 and July 2023, “a total of 214 local, state, and federal...
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Has fascism arrived in the United States? Will it soon? Or has it been living among us for many years? These are the questions that drive the twelve essays gathered in Fascism in America: Past and Present, a new collection edited by Gavriel Rosenfeld and Janet Ward, two prominent historians of the Holocaust.
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Stuart Christie, who died in August 2020, was best known as the 18-year-old Scottish anarchist who, in the summer 1964, was part of an attempt to assassinate General Francisco Franco. It was only the beginning of a long life dedicated to left-wing activism.
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The day after Franco’s troops entered Barcelona, Otília Castellví, a young seamstress, woke up to a city she could barely recognize.
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Lincoln veteran Hugo Heurich (1908-1982) was born in Germany and had emigrated to the US in 1929. He arrived in Spain in March 1937 and returned to the US in December 1938. In November 2020, his great-nephew, Armin Heurich, contacted ALBA in November 2020 looking for additional information to include in his great uncle’s oral history, These...
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After a yearslong campaign in the face of official resistance, a working-class Spanish soccer club can finally claim the cup they rightfully won during the civil war.
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Bruce Barthol, a fixture at the ALBA/VALB reunions, was the unapologetic, rebellious, musical heart of the Tony award-winning, never silent, always revolutionary San Francisco Mime Troupe. With sardonic wit, cutting sarcasm, a vast knowledge of history, and a broad understanding of everything political, Bruce Barthol wrote lyrics that outraged, broke hearts, and inspired. A...
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Few of songs in the antifascist repertoire became as popular as the “Song of the Peat Bog Soldiers,” written ninety years ago at the Börgermoor concentration camp. A history.
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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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My grandfather (Nana), Suresh, moved to the United States in 1959 as a young man on a student visa pursuing his master’s degree. His parents, my great grandparents, sought value in being ‘foreign educated’ and bringing his education home – to Mumbai, India to run their family business. 2 years after my Nana moved...
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Peter N. Carroll, a respected and prolific writer, poet, and US historian, died after a short illness on September 16, surrounded by his family. He was 80. Born in New York City in 1943 to a secular Jewish family, Peter grew up in the Bronx and Queens, where his father worked as a composer,...
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LA RÉPUBLIQUE -QUOTIDINEN DE COMBAT RADICAL ET SOCIALISTE, February 5, 1938 Foreign Volunteer Arrested On March 27 last, 29 North Americans were arrested on board the boat Sans-Pareil while they were attempting to reach the Spanish Coast. They were sentenced to a prison term for violating the decree of February 18, 1937 on the...
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The “Spanija” series translates selected autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatian or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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The Spanija series translates select autobiographical accounts by Yugoslavian and Montenegrin volunteers of their actions in the Spanish Civil War. Dr. Ray Hoff used Google Translate from Croatian to English and he edited the selections. As this is a machine translation, the idiomatic features of Croatioan or Serbian and the translation of names and...
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Peter Verburgh’s translation from the French Newpaper Le Journal about a group of 29 Americans arrested in France. “29 American Volunteers Arrested in Muret” Le Journal, 5 April 1937 Toulouse, 4 April- The Control services of the Non-Intervention Committee do not remain inactive, especially with the help of the French Police and Gendarmerie. Thus...
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ALBA Board Member Steve Birnbaum made the trek on Memorial Day to the Home of Eternity Cemetary in Oakland, California to pay tribute to ALB veteran Hans Joachim. Joachim was born in Berlin, Germany in 1906 and moved to the US in 1924. He served in Spain with the George Washington Battalion and later...
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Please find attached photos of my visits to the graves of Lester Rowlson and Tersil Obriot last weekend. I left a brigade flag and a fresh white rose at each. ,,, I was also proud to include aspects of my Clapton CFC scarf; you might have heard of this small football club in London that...
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Peter Verbergh translated this article from CeSoir describing the arrest of the Dallet-Nelson Group. “The Interrogation of the Passengers of the Sans-Pareil”, CeSoir, March 29, 1937 (From our Special Correspondent) Perpignan March 28 (By Telephone) Yesterday morning around 10am, The Coast Guard Vessel Cebère docked in the port of Port-Vendres alongside the torpedo boat...
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Only five veterans of the Spanish Civil War are known to be buried in Virginia outside of Arlington National Cemetery: two in Richmond, two in Norfolk, and one in Big Stone Gap. ALB Tribute visited the graves of Harry Edward Farris and Thomas Moore in Richmond as well as Manuel Lizarrago and Crawford Morgan...
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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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