In the 1980s I began photographing members of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade at their annual reunions in the San Francisco Bay Area and in New York. Growing up I had heard little about them, except from reading Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. They were some of the nearly 3000 American volunteers who joined 40,000 people from all over the world to fight in Spain to save democracy and stop the rising fascist movement spreading across Europe in the 1930s.

General Francisco Franco had launched a military insurrection against the newly formed Spanish Republic. He was aided by Hitler and Mussolini. When the other democratic governments in Europe and the United States refused to aid the Spanish Republic, volunteers from over 50 countries defied their governments and created an International Brigade. About one third of the Americans who fought in Spain died. A few months after the Spanish Republic fell in 1938, Hitler invaded Poland, then Paris. World War II began.

When the American volunteers returned home, they formed the Volunteers of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade organization, dedicated to continuing the fight against fascism and for social justice. The vets were labeled “premature anti-fascists,” but in spite of FBI harassment and blacklisting, many became activists in the struggle for civil rights, the labor movement, and the anti-war movement.

The vets have now all passed away, but the progressive community they built continues. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives carries on their legacy with educational programs, a human rights award, and other activities. Currently I help organize their programs in the Bay Area.