Christopher T. Brooks was a graduate student at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia, who planned to write a thesis on African Americans who fought in the Spanish Civil War. Having read the work of Danny Collum and Victor A. Berch, African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: "This Ain't Ethiopia but It'll Do," published under the auspices of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in 1992, he felt that there was still more information that could be collected concerning the lives and activities of these particular volunteers. In 1993, in an effort to obtain this information, he obtained lists of surviving American, British and Canadian volunteers of that conflict from veterans' organizations in each of these nations, hoping he would be able to jog their memories further for recollections of particular African-American fighters.
Brooks then sent out several general survey forms to each volunteer on these lists, along with requests for additional specific information regarding their recollections of African-American volunteers. He kept the originals and also made copies of all replies received, including research-related correspondence and enclosed photographs, compiling them into the two series of folders making up this collection. There is no evidence in the collection of what the ultimate product of this research was. At this writing Brooks is working on a comprehensive biographical database of all U.S. volunteers.
From the guide to the African Americans in the Spanish Civil War: Christopher Brooks Research Files, 1930-1994, (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)
