ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE ARCHIVES

In 1979, the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and a small group of scholars founded the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA). Their original goals were modest: to collect and preserve historical sources generated by the experiences of the American men and women who were among the first to fight the fascism that soon engulfed Europe. Since then, ALBA has grown into something much larger and more ambitious: a unique historical archive linked to an influential educational non-profit. The archive, housed at New York University’s Tamiment Library since 2000, now offers the largest U.S. collection of historical sources relating to the American involvement in the Spanish Civil War, including letters, diaries, public documents, photographs, posters, videos, and assorted memorabilia. Thousands of students, teachers, scholars, film-makers, and artists have consulted and studied its holdings to learn about the volunteers, the communities that supported them, and their lifelong commitment to the causes of social justice and democracy. ALBA is now the most visited archive at the Tamiment Library.

Meanwhile, ALBA has developed into a thriving educational non-profit, producing a wide range of educational and cultural programs designed to help Americans understand our nation’s progressive traditions and democratic political values. The ALBA Institute for Education uses the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives as a learning laboratory, educating high school teachers and students on the use of primary documents and multimedia resources to convey the experiences of the American volunteers in the context of the 1930s and to translate the ways in which the legacy of their “good fight” resonates with contemporary events.