vww FOUNDED BY THE VETERANS OF THE ABRAHAM LINCOLN BRIGADE Vol. XXV, No. 3 September 2008 Members of the American Medical Bureau in Spain, 1937. James Neugass, author of War Is Beautiful, second row, right. See p. 8. ALBA Launches Summer Institute, p. 1 Paul Robeson in Spain, p. 11 ALBITA, a Teachers Tool, p. 4 Green Shirt of Fascism, p. 14 George Watt Awards, p. 6 Reviews, p. 17 In this issue, we’re pleased to announce the winners of From the Editor the 2008 ALBA/George Watt student essay contests. We also bring you the fourth installment of “Paul Robeson in This has been a prolific year—we’ve unveiled the San Spain” and reviews of DVDs and books. And we offer Francisco monument, organized museum exhibitions in sincere thanks for your continuing support. Spain and the U.S., produced an exciting book that will soon be in your local bookstore, and begun what is probably ALBA’s most important undertaking, a new ALBA Goes Electronic educational program in collaboration with high school The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives has launched a teachers. new monthly e-newsletter highlighting local and interna- For many years, we’ve lamented the fact that young tional events, top stories, and research related to the people seldom know about the Spanish Civil War and the Spanish Civil War. Written for our members, students, and Lincoln Brigade. “It’s not their fault,” someone would reply. others interested in our mission, the free newsletter is pro- “Nobody teaches them. Even their teachers are often duced by the ALBA staff and board. unfamiliar with those subjects.” To subscribe, visit www.alba-valb.org. Have questions? So we’ve decided to see if we could remedy the Call (212) 674-5398 or email [email protected]. knowledge gap. Thanks to support from Perry Rosenstein and the Puffin Foundation Ltd, last June we organized ALBA’s first summer institute for teachers in collaboration with NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human www.alba-valb.org Development, the Tamiment Library, and the King Juan Carlos I Center. The program introduces high school teachers of social studies and Spanish to the wealth of our archival sources and draws upon their professional The Volunteer expertise to guide the development of teaching programs founded by the based on those unique archives that can and will be used Veterans of the in classrooms. Abraham Lincoln Brigade James Fernández coordinated the project, and his letter an ALBA publication on page 1 reveals our optimism about the results. We hope 799 Broadway, Suite 341 to reach many more teachers in the years to come as these New York, NY 10003 teaching programs are made available through the internet. (212) 674-5398 To handle the expected traffic, we are putting a new face on Editorial Board our website and will include an e-newsletter to keep you Peter N. Carroll • Gina Herrmann posted more efficiently. Take a look and sign up at www. Fraser Ottanelli alba-valb.org. Book Review Editor Our new book, War is Beautiful: An American Ambulance Shirley Mangini Driver in the Spanish Civil War, was written by James Art Director-Graphic Designer Neugass during the war and then was lost for six decades. Richard Bermack Neugass was a well-known poet before he volunteered to drive for the American Medical Bureau to Save Spanish Editorial Assistance Nancy Van Zwalenburg Democracy in 1937. His day-by-day journal, due to be published for the first time by the New Press in October, Submission of Manuscripts reveals his extraordinary eye for detail and a spare but Please send manuscripts by E-mail or on disk. E-mail: [email protected] splendid literary style. It will be a featured title in the September issue of Library Journal. New Press will launch the book around the country in the fall. ALBA Launches Summer Institute for Teachers his summer, ALBA initiated its latest and most ambitious educational out- reach program to date: the ALBA Summer Institute for High School TTeachers. Thanks to the generous support of the Puffin Foundation, ALBA was able to bring together a group of 17 high school teachers from the New York area for a week of professional and curricular development that focused on teaching the Spanish Civil War. ALBA partnered with the King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center, Tamiment Library, and NYU’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development to maximize our impact. There were three objectives: (1) to identify and cultivate a group of talented and dedicated public school teachers by introducing them to the extraordinary documentary resources available in our archive; (2) to take advantage of the col- lective experience of these teachers in order to learn what materials in and around the archive might be of most interest to high school students and teach- ers; and (3) to work with the teachers to develop lesson plans and supporting materials that will make the primary source materials in the archives easy to access and to use. Report to the Puffin Foundation The following brief, preliminary report incorporated into the lessons of the Theodore Cogswell ordered from a written by James D. Fernández, the coor- History and Spanish teachers that tailor in Barcelona in 1937. dinator of the institute, and addressed to were participating in the seminar. We We were all contemplating this Perry and Gladys Rosenstein of the Puffin were preparing the teachers for their lovely and insignificant object when Foundation, describes the first edition of first outing to the actual archives later one of the participants, a history ALBA’s educational initiative, a resound- that day. Toward the end of this pre- teacher, remarked: “But there is a way ing success. Our plan is to repeat the liminary exercise, I introduced an that the big picture gets captured even institute next year in New York and to example of my favorite kind of ALBA in this scrap of paper.” He went on: offer it in at least one additional site. archival material: the often mysterious “Notice how the printed form of During the next few months, the results of and seemingly random souvenirs or address ‘Sr. D’ [Mister Sir _______] the program—in the form of lesson plans pieces of memorabilia that Lincoln and curricula proposals—will be posted vets brought back with them from on ALBA’s expanded website (another Spain, and against all kinds of odds, work in progress). safeguarded for many years, until they wound up in the ALBA collec- Dear Perry and Gladys, tion. I told the seminar participants Toward the beginning of the first that these ephemeral objects that have full session of the ALBA Summer been safeguarded from the ravages of Institute for High School Teachers, I time can be particularly difficult to was leading a discussion of the kinds interpret, difficult to insert into any of materials that are available in the kind of overarching historical narra- ALBA collection. Using high-quality tive or ideological project, but there scans, we were talking about ALBA’s they were, relics of an individual and collections of posters and postcards, of a historical moment, stubbornly photographs and letters, artifacts and demanding and resisting interpreta- memorabilia, and about how these tion. As an example I showed a receipt kinds of materials might be for an overcoat that Lincoln volunteer Continued on page 2 THE VOLUNTEER September 2008 1 Institute Continued from page 1 has been crossed out, and in its place the tailor has written ‘El camarada Teodoro Cogswell.’ This speaks to the redefinition of social roles ushered in by the Spanish Republic and the onset of the war: the tailor addresses the col- lege-educated American volunteer as an equal, a comrade, a peer in the struggle against fascism.” Then one of the Spanish teachers chimed in: “There are also a couple of minor spelling mistakes in the tailor’s writ- ing—a couple of missing silent find innovative ways of incorporating Rossi (PhD candidate, Steinhardt h’s”—and her comment led to the different aspects of that history into School of Education). My diligent and speculation that the tailor may have our teaching of history, literature, lan- trustworthy research assistant, only recently become literate, which guage and culture. He later came back Mikaela Frissell, was also an impor- took us to a discussion of the to participate in another seminar ses- tant member of the team, as was Jill Republic’s ambitious project to banish sion and to offer his counsel to our Annitto, Director of Operations of illiteracy as a central part of their citi- high school teachers. Robby Cohen’s ALBA’s New York office. zen-building and educational engagement and generosity was in fact But it was the bright and enthusi- initiatives. At that point, with these typical of all of the seminar’s guests: astic participants—high school kinds of sharp perceptions and lucid Michael Nash gave us a wonderful teachers who had just completed an comments, I knew that the Institute private tour of the archives; Gail exhausting academic year—that made would be successful and rewarding. I Malmgreen opened up the ALBA this institute one of the most reward- was not disappointed. archives just for us on Saturday morn- ing teaching experiences I’ve ever had. Our friends at the Steinhardt ing, and the seminar participants were They came from a wide range of School helped us shape an extraordi- able to consult with her while they schools in four of the five boroughs; nary group of seventeen public high spent several hours handling individ- we had teachers of US history and school teachers from the New York ual collections from the archive.