Sylvia Hall Thompson (1924-2012) was born Sylvia Bernard in San Antonio, Texas. As a young woman, she joined the Communist Party and helped launch the Civil Rights Congress in Texas. In 1947, she traveled to North Carolina where she spent more than a year organizing electrical workers to join the union. It was there that she met her first husband, Sam Hall, a district organizer for the Party. The young couple moved to Birmingham, Alabama where, as open communists, they endured constant surveillance, threats and break-ins.

After Hall's death, Sylvia moved to New York City where she went to work for the State Party office and met her second husband, Robert G. Thompson in late 1957. Bob Thompson had been a battalion commander with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade in Spain, and went on to receive one of the highest medals for valor – the Distinguished Service Cross – for his heroic actions in the Pacific Theater in World War II.

When he died in 1965, Sylvia sought and received permission from the Army to have his ashes interred in Arlington National Cemetery. However, when publicity about Bob's previous imprisonment as a Smith Act defendant surfaced, the Army reversed itself and denied the widow's request. Sylvia contested the Army's decision and in 1968, a federal appeals court ordered the Army to inter Bob Thompson's ashes.

In subsequent years, Sylvia became a mainstay in the New York office of the Veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, working with veterans and organizing the annual reunions. Sylvia Thompson passed away in 2012.