I’m a collector of American left-wing protest pins. As a radical lefty lawyer, I’ve found it to be one way to be connected to the great social movements of my lifetime and before.
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Among the hundreds of thousands of Spanish refugees who ended up in French concentration camps was the graphic artist Josep Bartolí, who would later become a well-known artist in Mexico and New York. His dramatic drawings of the Civil War and life in the camps are featured in a new book by his nephew,...
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On returning to Canada from the Spanish Civil War, Jim Higgins was branded a communist, hounded by the RCMP, and welcomed by his Lincoln Battalion comrades when he sought refuge in New York. In his soon-to-be-published book, he writes, “It rained like hell but I was very happy.”
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Jack Mayerhofer is the newest member of the ALBA Board of Governors and its freshest face. A leading figure in the protection human rights and the development of education programs to prevent mass atrocities across the globe, Jack holds a B.S. in French and Applied Linguistics from Penn State University and an M.S. in...
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Lollie Butler is a Fellow in Literature, granted by the Arizona Commission for the Arts.
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What Lincoln vet Len Olson taught his daughter Hannah. “Think of all the work that was done to this thing by someone’s hands.”
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Among the thousands of Spanish workers who arrived in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century were many with radical traditions rooted in their homeland, which at the time boasted one of the world’s most vibrant anarchist movements. They created scores of cultural and mutual aid societies in cities and rural...
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Marina Ginestà became world-famous late in life when a stunning photograph taken at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War surfaced in a Spanish archive. With the help of Marina’s son, the journalist Yvonne Scholten uncovers new details of Ginestà’s adventurous life.
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Abe & Jack, Milt, Moe, Dave… They were not my family. They distrusted strangers. I could only approach them slowly, these Americans who had volunteered to fight fascists in the Spanish Civil War. They lost, bad guys won—they bore failure like primal sin or first love that comes and goes, never leaves....
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Twenty-five years ago, Len and Nancy Tsou made a ten-day trip to Spain tracing some of the battlefields where Chinese brigadistas had fought in the Spanish Civil War. Among other sites, they followed the trail of a Lincoln vet, Wen-Rao Chen of the XVth International Brigade, who lost his life in the battle of...
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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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Inspirational and courageous; that was the IWW. Click here then the forward arrow to listen as author Ahmed White talks with former ALBA board member Burt Cohen about White’s new book Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers on the podcast keepingdemocracyalive.com.
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Nobody remembers Lloyd Mallan. I came across his name while writing a book on poet- playwright Federico García Lorca’s iconic afterlife. Mallan’s piece on the poet’s assassination, published in 1939, was instrumental in spreading to the U.S. and Canada a highly embellished narrative of poetic martyrdom that helped shape the public image of Lorca....
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ALBA is proud to partner with the Spanish government in the publication of a 60-page curricular guide for high-school students and teachers in Spain as part of a government-sponsored series. Highlighting the experiences of U.S. volunteers in the International Brigades, the guide invites readers to use these stories as an inspiration to set...
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For an English translation of this article, see here.
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On May 30, 1937, the Republican freighter Ciudad de Barcelona was hit by a torpedo fired by a lurking Nationalist submarine. The torpedo tore a gaping hole in the ship and it rapidly sank. A Republican seaplane drove the submarine away with a depth charge attack, then landed and began rescuing men in the...
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Dr. Irving Busch (1896-1960), a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, volunteered to serve in Spain with the American Medical Bureau. In Spain, he served with the Republican Medical Services. Both before and after Spain Busch was an amateur photographer and he carried his camera along with him. After his death...
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The picture of a young man in a jaunty hat and a big smile stared out of the 1978 issue of The Volunteer. The photo was accompanied by a request for information about Sidney Lorraine who died in Spain during the course of The Retreats. There is no evidence of any replies. Sidney Hotchkiss...
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Many American veterans went on to serve in WWII and Korea. This list is a work in progress. Those marked with an “*” were killed during the war. Office of Strategic Services Aalto, William Oliver WWII US Army, joined December 1941 served as 1st SGT transfer to OSS April 12, 1942; Dismissed after he...
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Eddie O’Neill was born in the same County Tyrone neighborhood as the poet Charlie Donnelly (1914-1937), who was killed in action at Jarama while serving as a platoon leader with the James Connolly Section of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. Inspired by the sacrifice of his fellow countryman and fellow Irish Socialist Republican, Eddie set...
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“A prominent competitive player in the United States gave a series of lectures and played over famous games from the past. To hear him talking—in our squalid surroundings—with such knowledge about a game once played by Napoleon on the island of St. Helena, was an uplifting and inspiring experience.” In his memoir To...
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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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