Features

What Do We Know About Salaria Kea’s Irish Husband?

May 11, 2021
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What Do We Know About Salaria Kea’s Irish Husband?

Salaria Kea, the only woman among the close to 100 African American volunteers who left for Spain from the United States, married an Irish ambulance driver. Who was John O’Reilly?
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Posted in Features, Memory's Roster | 4 Comments »

Sydney Harris, UK-born Lincoln Vet

May 11, 2021
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Sydney Harris, UK-born Lincoln Vet

Born in Leeds, England, Syd Harris ended up in a Chicago orphanage when he was five. Fifteen years later, he volunteered for the Lincoln Battalion. After the war, as a well-known labor photographer and journalist, he was targeted by the FBI. A former boxer, he also acted as Paul Robeson’s personal bodyguard when the...
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What Happened to Maurice Wolf?

May 11, 2021
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What Happened to Maurice Wolf?

Colleen Darby never met her uncle, who died in Spain five years before she was born. A reconstruction of his life and the circumstances of his death.
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“There’s a Solid Bedrock of Violent Racism in the US”—Richard Sennett, Sociologist

May 11, 2021
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“There’s a Solid Bedrock of Violent Racism in the US”—Richard Sennett, Sociologist

Richard Sennett was in his late twenties when he found out his father had served in the International Brigades defending the Spanish Republic. So, it turned out, had his uncle.
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Never More Alive: Kate Mangan’s Spanish Memoir

February 4, 2021
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Never More Alive: Kate Mangan’s Spanish Memoir

One of the most compelling first-person accounts in English from the Spanish Civil War languished in the archives for more than 80 years. Artist and model Kate Mangan (1904-77) was a keen observer of character with a sharp nib on her pen. After traveling to Spain in 1936 in search of her lover, Jan...
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Voices from the Spanish Earth

Voices from the Spanish Earth

The Volunteer is proud to present these translated excerpts and images from Las voces de la tierra, a new book in which thirty-three writers pen brief texts about everyday objects recovered during the exhumations of the mass graves of Franco’s victims. The photographs are by the renowned photographer José Antonio Robés, who also curated...
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War in U.S. History Textbooks

February 4, 2021
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The Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the Spanish Civil War in U.S. History Textbooks

How do the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and the broader American response to the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 appear in introductory college-level United States history textbooks? A survey of a dozen highly regarded textbooks published in the past quarter century reveals a mixed picture. Some ignore altogether the American volunteers who fought alongside the...
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Poetry Feature Homage to the Spanish Flu: A Found Poem*

February 4, 2021
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<em>Poetry Feature</em> Homage to the Spanish Flu: A Found Poem*

I resented the world for having taken my mother away from me, explains journalist James Benét, who went to war to fight against fascism in Spain, and no doubt part of my radicalism was that, he says, proud having chosen the right target, the ills of society. I feel that everyone should feel that...
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Baltasar Garzón: “There’s Nothing More Dangerous Than Friendly Fire.”

February 4, 2021
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Baltasar Garzón: “There’s Nothing More Dangerous Than Friendly Fire.”

Judge Garzón, the crusading Spanish magistrate and first recipient of the ALBA/Puffin Award, looks back on his turbulent career. “The truth is that my ideas have not changed much.” No Spanish judge has had as many admirers around the world as Baltasar Garzón—the Spanish judge who helped bring about a world in which political...
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From Fundraisers to the Blacklist: Hollywood and the Republican Cause

November 14, 2020
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From Fundraisers to the Blacklist: Hollywood and the Republican Cause

After the outbreak of the Civil War in July 1936, not a week went by in Hollywood without a fundraiser for the Republican cause. The film colony was passionately on the side of the Loyalists—a position for which many paid a price in the years of McCarthyism. A look back on a remarkable chapter...
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