Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives
Volunteers
Albert Edward Chisholm
ALB Archival Materials
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Chisolm, artist for Brigade Bulletin. December 1937 (ALBA Collection).
Full Database Record
| Last Name | Chisholm |
| First/Middle Name | Albert |
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Biography
Albert Chisholm was born in Spokane, Washington, in 1913 while his father was serving in the U.S. Army. Later the family moved to Seattle.
As a teenager Chisholm worked as a bellhop on Pacific passenger ships. He became one of the first black members of the Marine Cook's and Steward's Union. He joined the YCL in 1933 and the Communist party a year later.
Chisholm saw a connection between Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia and his own subsequent participation in the antifascist fight in Spain. "I wanted to go [to Ethiopia] to fight against the Fascists," he once said, "but then shortly after that the Spanish issue surfaced, and I saw there would be my best chance."
Chisholm left New York, on the SS Aquitania, on August 4, 1937. After a brief period of training, he was sent to Belchite to join the Lincoln-Washington Battalion. Chisholm served on the staff of the Brigade Headquarters where his skills as a cartoonist were put to work on the Brigade's paper. While in Spain, Chisholm met Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson, and Ernest Hemingway on their visits to the front. During the first day of the Ebro Offensive, Chisholm and fellow volunteer, Sam Zakman, took shelter in the hills during an air attack on the bridgehead. Both men were picked up as stragglers by a Spanish unit and spent the rest of the campaign attached to it. Chisholm traveled back to the United States aboard the SS Ausonia on December 20, 1938.
Upon his return to Seattle, local people who thought that he had been fighting as a mercenary and was now wealthy besieged Chisholm. This, of course, was not the case, and after a brief rest, Chisholm returned to sea. During World War II he served in the Merchant Marine and made numerous dangerous runs. On one trip to Murmansk, his ship was torpedoed and sunk in the North Sea. He continued this work until 1971, when his union membership was revoked apparently for political reasons.
Chisholm died on March 25, 1998.