A quarter century after being commissioned, a plaque dedicated to the New Hampshire Volunteers of the Lincoln Brigade was finally unveiled in a joyous celebration on Sunday, July 13 in Albany, NH. Initially commissioned in 2000 to be displayed in the New Hampshire statehouse, its unveiling was blocked by backlash from rightwing legislators. Thanks to...
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Save the Date: ALBA’s End-Of-Year Gathering On December 7, in the afternoon, ALBA will hold its annual end-of-year gathering at La Nacional on West 14th Street. More details to follow! ALBA at Socialism 2025 In July, ALBA Executive Assistant Dennis Meaney attended the Socialism...
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ALBA’s popular series of Spanish Civil War movie discussions continued with sessions covering For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Fallen Sparrow, both from 1943, led by Prof. Alex Vernon (Hendrix College) and Prof. Sebastiaan Faber (Oberlin College), respectively. On August 21, Prof. Gina...
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On August 3 in San Francisco, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, in collaboration with Veterans for Peace, hosted a powerful event featuring the documentary The Truth Be Told: Irving...
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ALBA Chair Aaron Retish sent a letter to Provincetown officials to protest a threat to the resting place of Douglas Roach, one of the 90 African Americans in the...
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Dear Friends, “There will be Brigades forming again,” John Garfield’s character says at the end of The Fallen Sparrow, the 1943 spy thriller in which he plays Kit McKittrick,...
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The African American veterans of the Lincoln Brigade who joined the US armed forces during World War II were demoralized and embittered by the gross inequalities and color lines they experienced daily. The purported stakes of World War II—crushing fascism and saving democracy—intensified their outrage, which turned into militancy.
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The Jewish Museum in New York City is presenting the first U.S. retrospective in nearly half a century dedicated to social realist artist and activist Ben Shahn (1898-1969). Curator Laura Katzman reflects on Shahn’s social justice work as it relates to the antifascist struggles...
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The graphic novelist Paco Roca was honored this summer with an exhibit at the Instituto Cervantes. His latest book tells the true story of a woman who goes in search of the remains of her father who was executed by the Franco regime and...
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As the government’s attempts to control and punish US universities and the media are conjuring up memories of McCarthyism, the New York Historical is hosting an exhibit, on view...
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On November 8, 1937, Salaria Kea, a 26-year-old African American nurse from Ohio, had been in Spain for seven months and one day. The country was in disarray. Half...
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In recent years, citizen groups in Leipzig and Madrid have fought to preserve the buildings that were backdrops in two of Robert Capa’s best-known photographs. Their steadfast dedication has...
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A Spy in the Footnotes: In Search of John Sherman By David Chambers There was his name in the very first footnote of Eric R. Smith’s 2013 book...
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The title of this new occasional feature of The Volunteer is the Esperanto word for “archive.” In it, we will present, translate, and contextualize iconic non-English language documents related...
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I. In the Beginning Second child, Bernard, born March 1, 1915 Older brother, my father, Jacob (Jack), born June 3, 1912 Younger sister, Roslyn, born (June 1, 1922)...
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Bob Caminiti, who passed away on June 26 at the age of 88, spent much of his life behind the scenes in the television business. Born to Italian immigrants...
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Jay Greenfield died peacefully on June 29, at the age of 92. Having grown up in Rockaway, Queens, Jay was a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Law School,...
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To the Editors: As a longtime supporter of VALB and ALBA—and as a 76-year-old “red diaper baby” having been brought up in a “Brigade-adjacent” family—I was excited to see...
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To the Editors: An article by Kathryn Everly in the March 2022 Volunteer on Salaria Kea’s life and her experiences in Spain focused on the fairness of comments found...
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Emilio Silva, Nébeda (Madrid: Alkibla, 2025), 212 pp.
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Elena Fortún, Celia in the Revolution, translated by Michael Ugarte (Chicago: Swan Isle Press, 2023), 278 pp.
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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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