The Abraham Lincoln Brigade

ALB group photo

During the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), almost forty thousand men and women from fifty-two countries, including 2,800 Americans, traveled to Spain to join the International Brigades to help fight fight fascism. The U.S. volunteers served in various units (medical, combat and transportation) and came to be known collectively as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) is a non-profit educational organization dedicated to promoting public awareness, research, and discussion about the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the American volunteers who risked their lives to fight fascism in Spain. Using the continually expanding ALB archival collections at New York University's Tamiment Library, ALBA presents exhibitions, publications, performances, and educational programs related to the war and its historical, political, artistic, and biographical significance.  With these activities, ALBA preserves the legacy of progressive activism of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade as an inspiration for present and future generations.

Featuring...

ALBA Video: Matti Mattson, Citizen of Spain

 

October 16, 5pm: Save the Date

October 16, 5pm, A Special Evening of Music with Pete Seeger and Patti Smith, A Puffin Foundation Hosted Fundraiser at the Museum of the City of New York

Dear ALBA Community, we are in the final stages of organizing this incredibly special evening. Tickets will go on sale over the next several weeks. Please hold the date. We will post details when they are available.

Robeson in Spain

Robeson in Spain cover

ALBA's June 09 issue of its magazine, The Volunteer, published a comic titled Robeson in Spain, detailing Robeson's activism and dedication to the Spanish cause.  The Robeson in Spain Project includes the Volunteer comic, with additional materials for teachers and students, and new on-line Robeson in Spain Resources. Paul Robeson’s concerns about fascism in the 1930s—military aggression, racial injustice, civilian bombings, and forced population displacement—remain issues of our own times. 

donate

Recent publications

War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War. By James Neugass (edited by Peter N. Carroll & Peter Glazer)

NeugassThis nuanced and deeply poetic chronicle of James Neugass's service as an ambulance driver in the Spanish Civil War combines fast-paced accounts of darting onto battlefields to pick up the wounded with elegiac renderings of days spent "on alert" in an ever-changing series of sharply observed Spanish towns, enduring that most difficult of wartime activities: waiting. Reviewed in The Nation and the London Review of Books. Buy from Powell's

For more recent publications, visit the ALBA Bookstore at Powell's.

The Volunteer Online

Volunteer Online ALBA's quarterly, The Volunteer, is now a full-fledged online magazine, with longer articles, a frequently updated blog, videos, slide shows, and more.

In the June 2010 issue:

In the March 2010 issue:

  • an interview with renowned Spanish Civil War historian Helen Graham (including video);
  • news on With the Lincoln Brigade, the recently discovered Spanish Civil War documentary by Henri Cartier-Bresson, including a clip.