The Abraham Lincoln Brigade
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 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.
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ALBA announces 2012 Teaching Institutes
- March 17, 2012: Professional development day in Seattle, co-hosted by the Center for Spanish Studies and the Division of Spanish and Portuguese of the University of Washington, with Anthony Geist, Peter Carroll, and James D. Fernández. More information: contact.
- May 15, 2012: Professional development day in Tampa, Florida, co-hosted by the University of Central Florida, with Peter Carroll and Fraser Ottanelli. More information: contact.
- June 17-22, 2012: Six-day workshop in Oberlin, Ohio, co-hosted by Oberlin College and co-sponsored by the Ohio Humanities Council. With Sebastiaan Faber, Peter Carroll, James D. Fernández, and Geoff Pingree. More information, including application forms, here.
- November 6, 2012: Professional development day in New York City, co-hosted by NYU, with James D. Fernández and Peter Carroll. More information: contact.
- November, 2012 (date TBA): Professional development day in New Jersey.
ALBA on PBS
Watch A Father's Forgotten Tribute in a Spanish Civil War Eulogy on PBS. See more from History Detectives.
Featuring...
To purchase tickets click here
Bay Area Annual celebration: Sunday, May 27, 2012, Freight & Salvage, 2pm
Guest speaker Kate Doyle, 2012 recipient of the ALBA/Puffin Human Rights Award, discusses genocide and justice in Guatemala. The program also includes an update on former Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón, an outspoken champion of human rights. Musicians Bruce Barthol, Velina Brown, Randy Craig, Tony Marcus, and Barrett Nelson perform songs of the Spanish Civil War. More information here, buy tickets here.
ALBA announces 2012 Human Rights Awards
(Read the full press release here. En castellano.) On May 13, 2012, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives will present the Second ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism, in the amount of $100,000, to Fredy Peccerelli, Executive Director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, and Kate Doyle, Senior Analyst of U.S. policy in Latin America at the National Security Archive. The award ceremony will take place at the Museum of the City of New York.
“Both Doyle and Peccerelli are indefatigable defenders of human rights who have played a seminal role in the fight against impunity in Latin America,” said Sebastiaan Faber, Chair of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA).
A determined and creative researcher-activist, Doyle has spent twenty years working tirelessly with Latin American human rights organizations and truth commissions — in Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Peru— to obtain the declassification of U.S. government archives in support of their investigations.
Peccerelli is an innovative forensic anthropologist whose work has been instrumental to the first-ever conviction of Guatemalan military forces for crimes against humanity. As founding director of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation (FAFG), Peccerelli leads a team that, over the past fifteen years, has exhumed hundreds of mass graves filled with victims of Guatemala’s civil war.
Read the full press release here. (En castellano.)
Also on the site...
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The ALBA Digital Library featuring four collections from the ALB Archives at NYU |
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ALBA's Robeson in Spain comic book by Josh Brown and Peter Carroll (purchasing info here) |
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Online lessons plans for middle and high school teachers, written by ALBA Staff |
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ALBA Institute for Education, programs for teachers and students |
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Links to Spanish Civil War archives around the world |
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ALBA's own online exhibits and bookstore |
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Recent book reviews and archived issues of our publication, The Volunteer |
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Brief histories of the Spanish Civil War and ALBA/VALB |
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ALBA's Volunteer Database, featuring entries for Brigade Volunteers |
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Archived queries and discussions on the ALBA listserv |
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Sign up for the ALBA mailing list |
ALBA Video
Embattled Spanish Judge receives ALBA-Puffin Human Rights Award
Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish magistrate who has headed the effort to identify human rights violations during the Spanish Civil War and the subsequent Franco dictatorship, received the first ALBA-Puffin International Award for Human Rights Activism at the ALBA annual reunion in New York City on May 14. (Click here for Garzón's speech, event videos, and press coverage (New Yorker, Nation, Democracy Now, Reuters, Spanish-language media) “Judge Garzón’s exceptional courage in defense of human rights and his commitment to the recovery of historical memory regarding crimes against humanity make him especially worthy of this honor,” said Peter N. Carroll, chair emeritus of ALBA’s Board of Governors.
This award is given jointly by ALBA and the Puffin Foundation, which provides an endowed fund exclusively for this annual honor. “The award is designed,” said Puffin Foundation President Perry Rosenstein, “to give public recognition, support, and encouragement to individuals or groups whose work has an exceptionally positive impact on the advancement and/or defense of human rights. It is intended to help educate students and the general public about the importance of defending human rights against arbitrary powers that violate democratic principles.” Read more...
Featured Veteran: Doug Roach
Douglas Roach, the subject of a segment of this season's History Detectives (view 18-minute video segment here) was born in Provincetown, Massachusetts in 1900. He completed high school in Provincetown and later attended the Massachusetts Agricultural College at Amherst. There, although barely five feet tall, he achieved notice as a star wrestler. Roach joined the Communist Party in 1932. Upon completion of his studies, Roach became a part-time organizer and supported himself by working occasionally as a professional wrestler. Roach departed for Europe, aboard the SS Paris, on January 6, 1937. In Spain, Roach was assigned to the Lincoln Battalion and served in a machine gun company. Roach fought with the battalion at Jarama and during the Brunete Offensive and attained the rank of Gun Commander. Late in the Brunete Campaign Roach received a severe shoulder wound. In the fall of 1937, unable to continue fighting, he was sent back to the United States, where he went to work organizing for the seamen's union. Returning veterans formed the VALB late in 1937 and ... | Read More | Search the archive
Recent publications
War Is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Driver in the Spanish Civil War. By James Neugass (edited by Peter N. Carroll & Peter Glazer)
This 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.
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The 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 September 2011 issue:
- Paul Preston on the Spanish Holocaust
- ALBA co-sponsors Centelles exhibit
- Garzón accepts ALBA/Puffin Award for Human Rights Activism
- Gabriel Jackson on Angel Viñas's masterly SCW trilogy
- Pete Seeger and Patti Smith sing for ALBA
- The Ghost of Gerda Taro
- Picasso, Louis Delaprée, and the Bombing of Civilians
- ALBA & Puffin announce Human Rights Award;
- an interview with Gabriel Jackson (video);
- Trisha Ziff on Collective Memory in Spain and Northern Ireland.
- Amy Goodman speaks at ALBA event (video);
- the death of Oliver Law;
- an interview with Helen Graham (including video);
- the discovery of With the Lincoln Brigade, by Henri Cartier-Bresson (clip).
