Dr. Mona Hanna-Attisha, the pediatrician who gained national prominence by exposing the Flint, Michigan water crisis in 2015, presented ALBA’s annual Susman Lecture to a packed auditorium on the Wayne State campus in Detroit, Michigan on January 27.
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Dear Friends, We at ALBA would like to express solidarity with all those affected by the COVID crisis. When the brave men and women of the Lincoln Brigade departed on their odyssey for Spain, they were practicing the solidarity that has always been at the heart of our organization. If we wish to endure...
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The 2020 ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism goes to No More Deaths in support of its humanitarian efforts to alleviate the suffering and end the fatalities of those crossing the southern border of the United States. The award will be presented at ALBA's Live Online Gala on May 17 at 5 pm EDT.
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What you leave to friends and loved ones—and the causes you champion—are ways of expressing your hopes and dreams for the future. As you make your plans, please consider joining the Jarama Society by including ALBA in your will or living trust, or naming us as a beneficiary of your estate. ALBA accepts legacy...
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One of ALBA co-chairs was interviewed on National Public Radio’s Here and Now to talk about the exhumation, on October 24, of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco from his tomb at the Valley of the Fallen.
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Just Mercy, the bestselling memoir by ALBA/Puffin Award winner Bryan Stevenson, has inspired a film featuring Michael B. Jordan (who plays Stevenson), Jamie Foxx, Rob Morgan, Tim Blake Nelson, Rafe Spall, and Brie Larson. It tells the true story of Walter McMillian, an Alabama man on death row who appeals his murder conviction with...
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Robert Hale Merriman, the commander of the Lincoln Battalion who mysteriously disappeared during the Battle of Teruel in early April 1938, has been drawing attention. Milton Zerman, a history major at UC Berkeley, has been raising $1,000 to place a plaque commemorating Merriman and his wife, Marion, outside the Virginia Street apartment building where...
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Students from around the world once again applied to ALBA’s Watt Essay contest, which recognizes academic projects and essays about the Spanish Civil War. This year, five prizes were awarded.
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Spanish high schools often cover the Civil War and Francoism only sporadically and superficially. A new book with lesson plans based on graphic novels hopes to improve the situation. Was Francisco Franco a dictator? The question seems silly. Yet in the days following Franco’s exhumation from the Valley of the Fallen this fall, a...
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This past October and November, ALBA staff have worked with high school teachers in Ohio, New York, and New Jersey, offering full-day workshops on “The United States and World Fascism: Human Rights from the Spanish Civil War to Nuremberg and Beyond.” In November, ALBA also offered two workshops for educators at the Conference on...
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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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Teesside, an industrial region in Northeast England that in the nineteenth century grew to be a center of shipbuilding and iron and steel production, spawned no fewer than thirty International Brigade volunteers. Of the nine who were born in the borough of Stockton-on-Tees, moreover, six played leading roles in Spain: five rose to the rank of Lieutenant...
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The first thirty-six Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Phase IV were submitted December 30, 2024. Phase IV is intended to focus on volunteers on whom we have minimal information. At some point in the future, I plan to resubmit some volunteers who were returned as not found or on whom no information...
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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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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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