Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives vol06 (Page 13)

THE VOLUNTEER, WINTER 1997-98 13

`Shouts' at Hamilton College in NY

by Maurice Isserman

he Emerson Gallery of Hamilton
College was host to the ALBA

exhibition Shouts from The Wall,
from September 7 through October
19, 1997. The exhibition program,
organized by Lise Holst, director of
the gallery, included a panel discus-
sion with two veterans of the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade -- Abe
Osheroff and Saul Wellman -- lec-
tures by visiting historians and liter-
ary critics, and a film series.

Hamilton is a liberal arts college

of about 1,500 students located in
Clinton, New York, a small town 10
miles south of Utica. Although the
college's alumni include such figures
a s S N C C a c t i v i s t B o b M o s e s ,
Hamilton has never been known as a
hot-bed of radical activism. None of
the college's graduates fought in the
Spanish Civil War, and most current
Hamilton students, it is probably
safe to assume, knew little about the
Abraham Lincoln Brigade before
this fall.

Nevertheless, the Shouts exhibit

proved a great success. A hundred
and twenty students, faculty mem-
bers, and visitors from the community
turned out for the opening of the exhi-
bition in September, which featured a
panel discussion with ALB veterans
Abe Osheroff and Saul Wellman,
moderated by ALBA chair, and
Shouts co-curator Peter Carroll. The
following afternoon over 80 people
attended a showing of the Dore-Sills-
Buckner film, The Good Fight, and a
few hours later over 60 came to hear
Carroll and me speak on the Legend
and Legacy of the Abraham Lincoln
Brigade.

Over the next month, there were

screenings of four films related to the
Spanish Civil War. They were Alain
Resnais' Guernica and the Ivens /
Hemingway classic Spanish Earth
one evening, followed the next by For
Whom the Bell Tolls, and Seeing Red.

The high point of the film series
proved to be a 1941 pro-Franco propa-
ganda film entitled Raza, which had
long been suppressed by the fascist
regime because it featured footage of
Franco and Hitler in happy embrace,
as well as carrying insulting remarks
about Americans.

Small college, large interest

In late September, Professor

C a r y N e l s o n , c o - c u r a t o r o f t h e
Shouts exhibit, came to Hamilton
a n d d e l i v e r e d a l e c t u r e o n A r t ,
Literature, and the Spanish Civil

War. In mid-October, at a concluding
event, Hamilton College Professor of
Music G. Robert Kolb directed a pro-
gram of songs and readings entitled
Voices of Resistance: Letters and
Music from the Spanish Civil War.
An audience of over 150 were at this
affair. According to Emerson gallery
records, nearly 1,500 people attend-
ed one or another of the events, or
visited the gallery on their own dur-
ing the Shouts exhibition. For a
small, relatively isolated, and rela-
tively non-political school, that's
quite a record.

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Maurice Isserman is Professor

of History at Hamilton College and a
member of the ALBA Board of
Governors. He is at work on a biogra-
phy of Michael Harrington.

AL FRONT! (To the Front!) by Carles Fontseré (circa 1936), from

Shouts from the Wall.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives/Brandeis University Library

Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives - vol06 (Page 13)