The online exhibit Golden Bears in Spain: UC Berkeley’s Heroes in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) highlights the bravery of Robert Hale Merriman and sixteen other UC Berkeley students who travelled to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) on the side of the democratically elected government. They fought against fascism, and specifically a rebel army, the Nacionales (Nationalists), led by General Francisco Franco. Men and women from 48 states joined close to 40,000 volunteers from around the world, foreshadowing the larger conflicts of World War II and revealing the global struggle between democracy and totalitarianism. Draws primarily from original material held in the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, Bay Area Post Records, 1928-1995 collection in The Bancroft Library.
Approximately 2,800 volunteers from the U.S., many idealist leftists with little or no military experience, responded to the Republic’s cause. They would come to be known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, although in reality they joined the XV International Brigade, where they served in the Abraham Lincoln, George Washington, and Mackenzie-Papineau Battalions, Nearly half were Jewish and ninety of its members were African American. Among those were Robert Hale Merriman, a graduate student in economics, and his wife Marion who left UC Berkeley in January 1935 to do research in the Soviet Union before joining the war in Spain. Others from Cal who volunteered included the poet Ramón (Ray) Durem and Wade Rollins who later became a distinguished professor at the UC Davis School of Agriculture.
The launch of the exhibit coincides with a 3-day series of events on or near the UC Berkeley campus beginning on Thursday, November 5. The unveiling of the Robert H. Merriman Memorial Plaque is set for Friday, Nov. 6 at 2 p.m. on the Doe Memorial Library Terrace. A private reception will follow from 3–5 p.m. in Morrison Library. Other events, some requiring advanced registration, are listed on the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives’ website. Sponsored by the Department of Spanish & Portuguese with generous community and cross-campus support, the plaque was gifted to Berkeley by the University of Barcelona and was installed in June 2026 near Doe and Bancroft libraries and symbolically close to the Memorial Glade which honors UC Berkeley faculty, staff, and students who lost their lives in World War II. The Delegation of the Government of Catalonia and to the U.S. and Canada covered the shipping costs. The plaque recognizes the legacy of Merriman and the other Americans who volunteered, but also the academic and cultural collaboration between the two universities.
A short list of works consulted for this exhibition:
Bermack, Richard. The Front Lines of Social Change : Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Foreword by Peter N. Carroll. Berkeley, CA: Heyday Books, 2005.
Carroll, Peter N. The Odyssey of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade : Americans in the Spanish Civil War. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Hochschild, Adam. Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 . Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016.
Merriman, Marion, and Warren Lerude. American Commander in Spain: Robert Hale Merriman and the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. 2nd ed. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2020.
