Oliver Law, the first Black American to command white troops in battle, was appointed on July 5, 1937 as commander of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion. According to eyewitness accounts of men under his command, Law died a hero’s death leading a charge against Francoist forces on Mosquito Hill at the Battle of Brunete on...
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In a stirring Memorial Day afternoon of speakers, songs, and socializing, the San Francisco Bay Area friends of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade paid homage to the living history of the vets and honored the work of Spain’s Judge Baltasar Garzón who has aroused political passions by advocating the recovery of historical memory, specifically unearthing...
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An audience of almost five hundred saw Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! receive the ALBA Activist Award at the 74th reunion of the Volunteers for Liberty, held on May 2 at the Museo del Barrio in New York City. In an impassioned half-hour address (video), Goodman talked about the importance of an independent,...
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This past July, around the 73rd anniversary of the outbreak of the Civil War and 11 days after the opening of a large Robert Capa exhibit at the Catalan National Museum of Art, the Barcelona news paper El Periódico de Catalunya published what was billed as a stun ning revelation: Capa’s legendary photograph of...
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NYC’s 74th Reunion of the Volunteers of Liberty Lincoln Brigade’s “Legacy of Activism” Award to Honor Amy Goodman, acclaimed broadcast journalist, host of Democracy Now! May 2, 4:30 pm Museo del Barrio, 104th Street and 5th Avenue Order tickets online at www.alba-valb.org by clicking on “NEW YORK REUNION 2010” For information, write info@alba-valb.org or...
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Carl Geiser, a key political leader in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and author of a pioneering book, Prisoners of the Good Fight, died November 28 in Corvallis, Oregon.
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Charlie Fors was a Detroit automobile worker who volunteered to go to Spain to join the International Brigades. He had volunteered to drive a truck when it was told to the volunteers that there were trucks available, but no drivers for them. He was assigned to drive a truck on the Cordoba front, Pozo...
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La Batalla Del Jarama, by Jesús González de Miguel, and Los Internacionales: English Speaking Volunteers in the Spanish Civil War, edited by Antonio R. Celada, Manuel González de la Aleja, and Daniel Pastor García.
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Max Aub was a novelist and playwright of remarkable originality who spent his live chronicling the conflict that had torn his country apart and catapulted him into exile. Almost forty years after his death, Verso has published Field of Honour, the first of Aub's 6-volume Civil War cycle.
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The Madrid-based Flamenco group Noche Flamenca celebrated its 16th season in New York with a a riveting, emotional tribute to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. “ALBA” begins with a passionate lament expressed by two guitars and two male voices, Manuel Gago (tenor) and Miguel Rosendo (baritone). The dancers enter the low-lit stage led by...
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A year ago, film researcher Juan Salas made the startling discovery that a 16mm print of documentary footage in the ALBA Collection of the Tamiment Library was the long lost film made by Henri Cartier-Bresson during the Spanish Civil War, titled With the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain. The discovery prompted the decision to...
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In late summer 1937, former editor of the journal New Theater, Herbert Kline, traveled to Spain with French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson and cameraman Jacques Lemare to shoot a documentary about the sanitary services of the American Medical Bureau, an organization created in the United States to aid...
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Who is the young black International Brigadier in doughboy gear whose portrait the Spanish government hopes to give to Barack Obama? In November the Spanish press put out a worldwide call for help in identifying the man on this stunning photo by Agustí Centelles. It was a challenge we could not pass up....
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On a Sunday evening in January Helen Graham, one of the most prominent English-speaking historians of twentieth-century Spain today, sat down to discuss her life-long fascination with the war, Spain’s attempts at “recovering” its historical memory, and the skewed way in which the war is still viewed by many U.S. scholars and intellectuals.
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After holding successful week-long institutes for high-school teachers in New York City and Tampa, Florida, last year, ALBA is proud to announce its first institute in the Midwest, entitled “Ohio and the Spanish Civil War.” Co-sponsored by the Ohio Humanities Council, Oberlin College, and the Puffin Foundation, this interdisciplinary institute will allow 20 Ohio...
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Matti Mattson received a standing ovation after addressing the graduates of Fitchburg State College in his hometown in Massachusetts on January 29, 2010. College President Robert V. Antonucci presented the President’s Medal to the veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade before more than 200 new graduates, family, and community. The attentive audience heard Mattson recall...
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To the Editor: I was a member of a delegation, headed by former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, that went to Spain early in 1964 to act as observers at the trial of the Carabanchel Ten, who had been arrested and were later convicted for trying to organize unions in Franco Spain.
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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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The family of Paul Andrew Mooney (1910-1961) is searching for documentation to substantiate information he provided to his family about serving in the International Brigades. Paul Mooney was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated from Hughes High School in 1929 and attended the University of Cincinnati in 1929, 1935 and 1936. In...
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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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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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