Joseph Brandt Scrapbooks
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Abstract
Joseph Brandt (1909-1997) fought in the Spanish Civil War as a member of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during 1937 and 1938. He was a dedicated member of the Communist Party throughout his life, joining the Young Communist League in 1926, working as an organizer in the 1930s, and later serving as a longtime member of the CPUSA national committee. He kept a number of scrapbooks in which he collected a broad range of materials relating to the Spanish Civil War, and especially American participation in the War. The scrapbooks consist of a widely diverse collection of correspondence, reports, clippings, photographs, flyers, pamphlets and typescript drafts of articles by Brandt and others. Materials documenting the role of African-Americans in the Lincoln Brigade were probably collected and used by Brandt for a pamphlet he produced on that subject in 1979.
Historical/Biographical Note
Born Sam Brustein in Poland in 1909, Joseph Brandt immigrated to New York City at the age of fifteen and joined the Young Communist League two or three years later. He was working in Ohio as an organizer for the Communist Party in 1937, but soon joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in response to the Communist International's appeal for volunteers. Brandt took part in several well-known engagements during the Spanish Civil War, including the attempt to warn Loyalist troops of the Gandesa-Batea fascist offensive in March of 1938 and the late-night covert operation in which Robert Merriman and David Doran lost their lives. Brandt himself was wounded by enemy fire twice, during the retreat from Gandesa and then in an offensive around the area of Quatro Camisos. He returned to the United States in December of 1938.
On his return, Brandt married Sylvia Opper, whom he had met during a Works Progress Administration (WPA) strike in Cleveland. He continued to organize for the Communist Party's District 6 in Ohio. During World War II, he served as a paratrooper in the joint U.S.-Canadian special forces unit known as the "Devils Brigade," carrying out commando missions behind Nazi lines in France. After the war, he remained active in the Communist Party and was forced to go underground to avoid prosecution under the Smith Act, but was eventually arrested by the FBI and served six months in jail. Brandt served on the national committee of the CPUSA for many years and remained an active member until his death in July of 1997 at the age of 87.
Brandt was especially concerned with documenting and publicizing the contributions of the African-Americans who fought in the International Brigades. In 1979, with the help of a group of Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (VALB) members and New Outlook Publishers, he produced a pamphlet titled Black Americans in the Spanish People's War against Fascism, 1936-1939.
Arrangement
The pages of each scrapbook occupy a separate folder. The folders, and materials within each folder, are organized according to the original sequence of scrapbooks, rather than chronologically or alphabetically.
The files are grouped into one series:
Missing Title
- I, Scrapbooks
Scope and Content Note
The 16 scrapbooks are not clearly organized with regard to chronology or subject, but a few have a discernible overall focus. Scrapbook 11 contains mostly material on Spanish Civil War prisoners in Spain, and Scrapbook 14 relates to the publication of Brandt's pamphlet on African-Americans in the Lincoln Brigade. The bulk of the collected material consists of clippings, printed ephemera and copies from books and periodical articles about the Spanish Civil War with emphasis on the International Brigades, some from the period and some later. Included is a wide range material giving biographical details of individual U.S. volunteers; notable are pamphlets, clippings and photocopies of confidential Party reports (addressed to John Williamson) relating to volunteers from Ohio, Brandt's home state (see Scrapbook 9). The scrapbooks also contain items concerning the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade's support for progressive forces in Nicaragua and VALB anniversary celebrations. There is a small selection of letters to Brandt, and some photographic prints (some unlabeled, others distributed in Spain by the International Brigades authorities).
In the detailed descriptions of individual scrapbooks below the contents are grouped in categories (letters, records, publications, photographs) within each scrapbook entry, rather than being listed in the order of their appearance in the scrapbook itself. The entries do not list every item in each scrapbook, but summarize notable material. Within each folder scrapbook contents are arranged in their original order. Scrapbooks have been dis-bound, but the covers, with typed labels by JB, have been retained.
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Access Restrictions
Materials are open to researchers. Please contact the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives for more information and to schedule an appointment, tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.
Use Restrictions
Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), were transferred to New York University in November 2000 by the ALBA Board of Governors. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. For more information, contact tamiment.wagner@nyu.edu or 212-998-2630.
Preferred Citation
Published citations should take the following form:
Identification of item, date; Collection name; Collection number; box number; folder number;
Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
New York, NY 10012, New York University Libraries.
Provenance
This collection came to New York University in January 2001 as part of the original acquisition of ALBA collections, formerly housed at Brandeis University.
