Radical Pacifism in Modern America: Egalitarianism and Protest 9780812202823

Table of contents :
Contents
Abbreviations
Introduction
Chapter 1. The War for Total Brotherhood
Chapter 2. The Peacemakers' Alternative Vision
Chapter 3. Familialism and the Struggle Against the Bomb
Chapter 4. Reviving the Compact of Brotherhood
Chapter 5. Reversing the Traditional Pattern
Chapter 6. No Bars to Manhood
Conclusion
Notes
Index
Acknowledgments

Citation preview

Radical Pacifism in Modern America

POLITICS AND CULTURE IN MODERN AMERICA Series Editors: Michael Kazin, Glenda Gilmore, Thomas]. Sugrue A complete list of titles in this series is available from the publisher

Radical Pacifism in Modern America Egalitarianism and Protest

MARIAN MOLLIN

PENN University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia

Copyright© 2006 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9

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Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Mollin, Marian. Radical pacifism in modem America : egalitarianism and protest I Marian Mollin. p. em. (Politics and culture in modern America) ISBN: 978-0-8122-0282-3

Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Social movements-United States. 2. Pacifism-United States. United States. I. Title. II. Series. HN65 .M575 2006 303.6'6--dc22

3. Radicalism-

2006046177

To my resister sisters and in memory of Mary Moylan, Ernest Bromley, and Philip Berrigan

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Contents

Illustrations follow page 96

List of Abbreviations Introduction

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1. The War for Total Brotherhood

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2. The Peacemakers' Alternative Vision

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3. Familialism and the Struggle Against the Bomb 4. Reviving the Compact of Brotherhood

5. Reversing the Traditional Pattern 6. No Bars to Manhood Conclusion Notes

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Index

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Acknowledgments

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Abbreviations

AEC

AFSC CCHR CND CNVA CNVR

co CORE CPF CPS FOR MOW NAACP NCCO NVAANW Q-W-G SANE SDS SNCC WILPF WRL WSP

Atomic Energy Commission American Friends Service Committee Cincinnati Committee on Human Relations Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Committee for Nonviolent Action Committee for Non-Violent Revolution conscientious objector Congress of Racial Equality Catholic Peace Fellowship Civilian Public Service Fellowship of Reconciliation March on Washington Movement National Association for the Advancement of Colored People National Committee on Conscientious Objectors Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy Students for a Democratic Society Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Women's International League for Peace and Freedom War Resisters League Women Strike for Peace

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Introduction

Radical Pacifism in Modern America tells a story of contradictions. Its subject, the members of the American radical pacifist movement from World War II through the Vietnam War era, is the militant activists who were committed to countercultural revolt but nonetheless mired in mainstream social and cultural values. These organizers and grassroots leaders preached the gospel of open-mindedness in their political pursuits; at the same time, they remained profoundly closed to self-criticism and change in their political practice and personal lives. Ardently egalitarian idealists, they nevertheless replicated many of the hierarchies of power they explicitly sought to undermine. Although they were willing to risk their freedom and their safety, they were unwilling to risk questioning the basic assumptions that defined their lives and their work. From 1940 to 1970, American radical pacifists stood at the cutting edge of a wide range of efforts for social and political change. Most of their work focused on campaigns against the broad sweep of American militarism: they refused to cooperate with conscription, they protested against war and U.S. military interventions overseas, and they resisted the development and deployment of nuclear weapons. Radical pacifists rejected war on an absolute and personal level, but as radicals who advocated a revolutionary transformation of American politics and society, their efforts went far beyond a purely pacifist agenda. The members of this movement dedicated themselves to the pursuit of social justice, a pursuit that they wed to the militant use of nonviolent Gandhian direct action. 1 Through their words and their deeds, American radical pacifists struggled to implement a far-reaching and egalitarian vision of social change to be achieved by working for civil rights, civil liberties, cooperative economics, and anti-imperialist struggles. Their commitment to change reached into the private dimensions of their highly politicized lives. Radical pacifists built communities of support, shared the burdens and risks of their organizing efforts, and challenged the cultural conventions that defined politics and identity in modern American life. Radical pacifists were a small and self-selected group whose influence far exceeded their numbers. The men and women who served as the

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movement's leaders and public spokespersons, activists such as A.]. Muste, Bayard Rustin, Barbara Deming, David Dellinger, and Daniel Berrigan, also stood at the vanguard of labor activism, the black civil rights movement, feminist pacifism, revolutionary nonviolence, and Catholic radicalism. These prominent activists carried the tactics and philosophy of radical pacifism's distinct style of nonviolent direct action into the broader currents of American dissent. At great personal and political risk, they experimented with tactics and strategies that other movement groups adopted only after their potential to galvanize people and capture public attention had been demonstrated. Their history as part of this vanguard highlights the extent of what it was possible to achieve during the three decades that followed the start of World War II. What they hoped to achieve was a world defined by their uniquely egalitarian and utopian vision. Radical pacifists ardently believed in what they called human "brotherhood" within the "family of man," a set of what were then gender-inclusive kin terms for relationships that deliberately disregarded differences based on race, class, ethnicity, religion, and nationality. This outlook framed their pacifism: in their eyes, violence against another human being was an unconscionable and immoral act akin to fratricide. Uprooting violence in all of its forms, including the myriad varieties of violence that generated, enforced, and resulted from social inequality, defined their political agenda. This was a comprehensive perspective that led radical pacifists to promote cooperative economics, radical trade unionism, socialism, and interracial justice alongside world peace. It was a commitment that informed everything that they did.

The Possibilities and Limits of Egalitarianism Like female activists in other explicitly egalitarian movements, including the radical abolitionists of the nineteenth century, communists and socialists of the early twentieth century, grassroots trade unionists of the early and mid-1900s, and civil rights workers from the Civil War through the present, the women of the radical pacifist movement took the language of equality to heart, believing that it referred to them in the same way as it did to their male counterparts in the struggle. 2 Women interpreted the rhetoric of "brotherhood" to mean that they deserved equal standing within their political movement, even if they could not achieve such equality within society at large. Defying the prevailing patterns of their time, radical pacifist women stood shoulder to shoulder with male activists on the front lines of protest, where they worked as courageous risk takers whose pluck and endurance at times exceeded anything

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demonstrated by men. Women simply assumed that this was where they belonged. Nevertheless, the activism promoted by the radical pacifist movement was a highly gendered phenomenon that shaped the experiences of women and men in different and unequal ways. Male activists actively promoted a definition of pacifist action that equated political militancy with a rough and rugged style of heroic manhood. In their hands, political protest became a way to defend and define their masculinity-a type of direct action identity politics disturbingly similar to that promoted by the culture of militarism, which identified self-sacrifice and courage as the primary markers of manly citizenship. In this ironic historical twist, antimilitarists found themselves and their protests profoundly shaped by the values of militarism itself, whether rooted in World War II, the Cold War, or the conflict in Vietnam. As a result, radical pacifist leaders overwhelmingly celebrated men as the movement's most valued heroes and cast women in supporting roles, imagining them as faithful and nurturing companions who provided succor and assistance to the male activists who put their freedom and safety on the line. Egalitarianism notwithstanding, no matter what women accomplished on behalf of their organizations or where they stood on the front lines of political protest, female activists were most visible as second-class members of the movement, when they were lucky enough not to have their presence entirely erased. 3 Periodic efforts at interracial cooperation for the advancement of civil rights revealed other limitations in radical pacifism's egalitarian philosophy. From its inception, the radical pacifist movement committed itself to the cause of racial justice. Its members, both black and white, believed that resistance to war and opposition to racism were integrally related in their struggle against violence and inequality. Indeed, pacifists led many early campaigns against segregation and other racist laws and practices, most notably in the 1940s during the formative years of the modern civil rights movement. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, radical pacifists across the nation quickly allied with the southern struggle and helped extend it into the North. Some of these activists remained relatively anonymous, nonviolent foot soldiers in the struggle for a better world. Others, especially the black pacifist Bayard Rustin, who worked as an assistant and adviser to two generations of civil rights leaders, gained national recognition for their prominent role in the freedom movement. The shared goal of social justice and a common allegiance to the tactics of nonviolent direct action made these two movements appear to be a natural fit, at least from the radical pacifists' perspective. Nevertheless, the relationship between these two causes was fraught with difficulties

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that proved almost impossible to overcome. Peace and freedom were not always compatible goals; white and black activists rarely saw the connections between goals, strategies, and tactics in the same ways. These differences, which could be covered over in abstract statements of principle, often hampered joint campaigns in practice. Most important, they undermined the ability of white radical pacifists to make lasting alliances with black activists devoted to the advancement of their race. Sadly, where issues that turned on egalitarianism were concerned, radical pacifists seemed to learn very little from their mistakes. This is not a story of gradual progress: neither gender relations nor race relations steadily improved over the three crucial decades covered in this book. Instead, moments of great promise in changing predominant patterns of interaction between female and male peace activists and between black and white advocates of nonviolence were followed by setbacks and stunning missteps that subverted the advances and alliances that activists had made. Women rose to prominence in the antinuclear movement of the late 1950s and early 1960s, only to be overshadowed several years later by male heroics in protests against the Vietnam War. White activists earnestly enlisted as pacifists in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s, yet made many of the same mistakes as had their predecessors fifteen to twenty years before. Only the rare alternative communities of black and white activists who shared their daily lives as well as political struggles, and who rooted themselves in specific localities during the worst period of political repression, sustained gender-integrated and racially egalitarian models of organizing that exemplified the "beloved community" and enabled pacifists to mount effective mass campaigns against racial segregation. But these were the exception, not the rule. Instead, the movement trapped itself within a maze of contradictions. It provided women with breathtaking possibilities for action, which women seized and expanded. But it also constrained women's opportunities for leadership and recognition, leaving them subordinate and marginalized despite years of service and militant risk taking. Male leaders, for the most part, failed to recognize that their culture of protest privileged men like themselves and rendered women invisible, and they repeatedly dismissed women's critiques of this culture. This predominantly white movement also failed to see how racial blinders impeded their work with black activist communities. White activists genuinely sought to ally their pacifist program with the black freedom struggle, but they frequently did so for transparently instrumentalist or naively abstract reasons. Certain that their view of the political and moral universe was more comprehensive than that of black radicals, elevating their interpretation of nonviolent direct action into holy writ, and detaching themselves as moral exemplars from the masses they sought to inspire,

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they came to seem irrelevant to a freedom movement bent on transforming relations of power. Well before black separatists determined to gain autonomy from white allies, radical pacifists had alienated themselves from the black freedom movement. These recurrent failures to put principles into practice and to learn from mistakes were not due to a simple lack of continuity in the movement. Radical pacifism's pioneering members remained in positions of influence from the early 1940s through the Vietnam War years and beyond, and they shepherded their movement through successive periods of growth and change. Pacifist leaders and longtime activists successfully passed on critical knowledge about using the techniques of nonviolent direct action as a tool for social change; this information allowed the movement to build on its experience and to develop increasingly effective forms of resistance. Veteran activists also acted as sources of inspiration, especially for the young people who entered the movement in the late 1950s and the 1960s. Yet, time and again, the movement repeated destructive patterns that reflected the limits of radical pacifism's egalitarian vision. More important, when activists did come to constructive conclusions based on their experiences, they failed to pass them on. Many left the movement and took their knowledge with them. Others kept quiet. The kind of social learning that would have promoted real movement toward gender equality and meaningful cooperation with civil rights efforts repeatedly failed to occur. The forces that led to these shortcomings were complex. Critiques of male chauvinism and white privilege were present in both the Old and the New Left, so a simple lack of consciousness is an unlikely explanation. How much this failure to learn and grow as a social movement was a consequence of powerful waves of political repression that prompted American radicals to assume a low profile is difficult to assess. Yet radical pacifists swam in a sea of sexism and racism, as well as militarism, and their most valiant efforts to forge a culture that would provide an alternative to the dominant powers in the United States were simultaneously corrupted from within and opposed from without.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words In this book I explore what radical pacifists discovered and then forgot, as well as what they remembered and passed on, by focusing on what activists did, rather than only, or even primarily, on what they wrote and said. Action was, above all else, the distinguishing feature of this movement. Radical pacifism drew its strength as a political force from the willingness of its adherents to put their bodies and their lives behind their rhetoric, often at great personal risk. Militant pacifists embraced

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the techniques of nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience. They believed, as longtime activist Dave Dellinger explained in the early 1960s, that "the power of a nonviolent movement stems from the actions it undertakes, not from its political statements or the private beliefs and associations of its participants." Engaging in nonviolent acts of resistance-climbing aboard nuclear submarines, picketing at segregated amusement parks, holding vigils at the Pentagon, or staging jailhouse hunger strikes-placed radical pacifists in direct confrontation with the state. Resistance was also a performance designed to influence public opinion. Actions, more than words, embodied activists' hopes for the future, their commitment to change, and their philosophical and political beliefs; they were a central part of the radical pacifist conception of politics and a vivid expression of the movement's culture and values. Actions were how radical pacifist leaders hoped to create a vanguard political culture that would challenge the most fundamental relations of power in public and private life. 4 I analyze the collective actions of the radical pacifist movement through a chronological series of case studies of critical protest campaigns, always keeping an eye on the dynamics of gender and race. The first chapter discusses the emergence of radical pacifism during the difficult years of World War II, highlighting the explicitly egalitarian rhetoric that defined this nascent movement as well as the distinctly masculine culture of resistance that rose to prominence at that time. Wartime, with its emphasis on a martial model of masculine citizenship, presented pressures that even the most principled of male pacifists found difficult to resist. This becomes evident when examining the gendered political culture that arose within the movement, which bore a striking resemblance to the gendered culture of military life. Chapters 2 through 5 examine the ways that radical pacifism and its culture of protest responded to changes in American society and politics through a peacetime profoundly marked by the Cold War and the escalating nuclear arms race: first, the early moment of peacetime possibilities, and then, all too quickly, the frighteningly repressive onset of the Cold War in the late 1940s; the apparently more stable "Father Knows Best" domesticity of the 1950s; and the ferment of the early 1960s, when youthful rebels emerged to challenge the containment, conformity, and consensus that had come to dominate postwar American life. The tug of masculine militancy, both as a personal stance and as a media performance, was ever present. Nevertheless, the movement's rhetorical commitment to egalitarianism and its willingness to engage in tactical experimentation led to the emergence of alternative models of resistance that simultaneously built on prevailing cultural values and increased women's power and influence. As the final chapter explains,

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the Vietnam War and the movement's concomitant return to more conventional forms of war resistance steered radical pacifism back to the wartime gender roles that cast men as militant heroes and women as stalwart supporters and secondary members of this radical political movement. It was a cycle from which the movement seemed unable to escape. Ideas about masculinity, femininity, and the power relationships of gender and race played out with vivid complexity in the concrete activities in which radical pacifists engaged. These actions, more than their rhetoric or their consciously articulated ideas, remain the most telling and compelling evidence of what these activists attempted, what they achieved, and where they fell short. Examining their actions as well as their words reveals underlying contradictions that plagued the history of this idealistic movement for social change, as well as that of the society that surrounded it. These contradictions were not only between ideology and practice but within them. The radical pacifist movement came close to challenging the fundamental relationships of power in twentieth-century American life, but not close enough. Some of its inability to root out the causes of injustice and war reflected forces beyond the power and control of movement activists. But internal decisions and cultural assumptions also constrained radical pacifism's influence. Egalitarianism only went so far, and not all displays of militancy were valued in the same way. Despite its best efforts to the contrary, this deliberately democratic and countercultural force of rebellion ultimately betrayed the same fault lines of inequality that divided American society at large.

Chapter 1

The War for Total Brotherhood

It started off simply enough. Tired of complying with regulations that

mandated racial segregation in the dining halls, eighteen white prisoners at the Federal Correctional Institute in Danbury, Connecticut, all pacifists incarcerated for resisting the draft, went out on strike. Calling their protest "A Witness for Interracial Brotherhood," the men argued for the right of prison inmates to dine at tables of their own choosing, regardless of race. Officials immediately rewarded the protesters' refusal to work by placing the group in an isolated facility. There, under extremely punitive conditions and separated from the general prison population, the men managed to survive and even thrive. Mter 135 days, they had formed a viable, albeit contentious, community of solidarity whose connections to the outside world helped create enough pressure to force the warden to accede to their demands. By the time they were through, Danbury had become the first federal prison to abolish the practice of racial segregation. 1 Incarcerated war resisters in other institutions took note and, over the next several years, led similar protests against Jim Crow in federal prisons in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Virginia, Michigan, and Arizona, all the while expanding the scope of their demands. They began to complain about censorship within the prison system and the abridgement of First Amendment rights and basic civil liberties. And they began to explore the possibilities of fostering broader changes in politics and society. As they wrote to their allies on the outside, these prisoners hoped to do more upon their release than simply witness against war or stage strikes to integrate dining halls. They wanted to create nothing less than an expansive and popularly supported "non-violent revolutionary movement." 2 The year was 1943, hardly an auspicious time for "extreme pacifists," as they proudly called themselves, to inaugurate a radical new movement for social and political change. The United States was in the midst of World War II, one of the most widely supported wars in this nation's history. Unprecedented numbers of men had answered the call to combat, while millions of other Americans worked at home to support the

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soldiers overseas. In a climate like this, pacifism seemed to have no place in American life. During an era when most Americans believed that their primary duty as patriots was to work to win the war, such men were not only woefully outnumbered but bitterly despised. Labeled cowardly, treasonous, and un-American, conscientious objectors to war lived in a state of political and cultural exile. 3 Yet, as the story of the prison strikes suggests, opportunities for protest and sources of inspiration could be found even in the most inhospitable of political climates. These were prime times for those fighting to achieve racial equality in the United States. The black labor leader and head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, A. Philip Randolph, had threatened to organize a massive march on Washington to protest the unequal treatment of black workers in federally funded defense industries. Buckling under the pressure, President Franklin Roosevelt signed an Executive Order that banned racial discrimination in war industries and established the Fair Employment Practices Commission. At the same time, African Americans enlisted in large numbers in what became known as the "Double-V" campaign for victory over fascism overseas and racism at home. Observing masses of black people in struggle emboldened these antiracist objectors to war. So did the example of Mohandas Gandhi's direct action campaign against British colonial rule, which provided an inspiring model of protest well suited to those opposed to violence in any form. Even life behind prison bars, although oppressive and confining, could have surprisingly positive implications. In a prime example of the power of unintended consequences, the government's imprisonment of thousands of conscientious objectors (COs) during World War II created a concentration of an otherwise geographically dispersed group of men that fostered a sense of community. This community not only strengthened the men's resolve but pushed them to take their resistance even farther. United in their quest for "interracial brotherhood," pacifist resisters discovered the makings of an ongoing struggle for social and political change. 4

The Roots of Resistance The radical pacifism that emerged in the 1940s traced its roots to longstanding American traditions of Christian pacifism and radical protest. Its absolute opposition to war came straight out of the principled nonviolence of the historic peace churches; Quakers, Mennonites, and the Brethren had long equated pacifist witness with the refusal to participate in war and other acts of violence. For centuries, pacifism had been a religious rather than a political act, made most visible by individual COs who refused to go along with war. But many of the protesters in

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Danbury prison were not members of the historic peace churches; they were mainline Protestants, self-described anarchists, and radicals ofvarious stripes. Their pacifism reflected not just the traditional moral opposition to war but an American legacy of radical resistance to the power of big business and the state. These activists insisted that pacifism needed to move beyond acts of individual witness and a solely religious commitment to nonviolence. The abolition of war, they argued, could only be accomplished by addressing militarism's economic and political roots. And they could only do this by building a viable social and political movement organized to shape public opinion and government policy. 5 This merger of peace and justice concerns, and the consequent politicization of pacifist beliefs into a radical movement, initially developed in the aftermath of World War I. In the immediate postwar period, Protestant leaders and congregations, aroused by the Social Gospel's call for Christian service and social reform, adopted the cause of peace as part of their social and political agendas. Pacifism moved beyond the historic peace churches and into the mainstream, becoming closely tied to larger struggles for social change. Cultural forces, including a widespread and growing revulsion against war, amplified the power of the intellectual shifts within organized religion. Horrified by the wholesale slaughter and stalemate that had characterized World War I and the apparent pointlessness of so many millions of deaths, Americans snapped up antiwar novels, crowded into theaters to watch antiwar films, built monuments to peace, and carefully followed the Nye Committee's congressional investigation into the munitions industry and the way that war profiteering had led the nation into the war. Women's groups, flush from their recent victory in the fight for suffrage, took up the flag of antimilitarism as well. Drawing upon longstanding ideas about women as essentially peaceloving and concerned with extending the principles of virtue, morality, and order to society at large, former suffragists and experienced female social reformers argued that women had a unique interest in the fight against war and created powerful lobbying groups and organizations that linked the prevention of war to the advancement of women's rights. 6 The Great Depression-era radicalization of America's political culture also aided the development of a distinctly radical pacifist movement. In the midst of the economic upheaval and collapse of the early I930s, the American Left achieved an unprecedented degree of appeal, influence, and mass support. Positioning themselves as the voice of the multiracial working class, Socialists and Communists utilized organizing strategies that gave them reputations for militant and effective leadership that attracted idealists and pragmatists of all ages. Their work dovetailed with that of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO),

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whose successful union-organizing campaigns in the steel and auto industries epitomized the power of grassroots protest to generate concrete political gains. For many activists involved in these and allied organizations, it seemed only logical to move from fighting against capitalism to fighting against capitalist wars. And as political radicals adopted explicitly antiwar goals, their groups attracted growing numbers of principled pacifists for whom eliminating war was the critical step toward achieving a more just and egalitarian world. 7 The political journey of white minister and labor activist A. ]. Muste epitomized the merging of radicalism and religious pacifism during the interwar years. Muste was best known for his leadership in the postWorld War II antiwar movement, but he had joined the ranks of the pacifist cause during World War I. His primary affiliation at the time was with the nondenominational Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), a newly formed organization that quickly became the preeminent voice of Protestant antimilitarism. There he forged important relationships with a growing number of ministers who regularly used their pulpits to preach of peace. Like other Christian activists of his generation, Muste refused to separate the goals of peace and justice and insisted that social harmony could only occur when class conflict was resolved through economic justice. A talented and visionary political leader, Muste played a key role in the 1919 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and for the next twenty years worked in left-wing movements for social and political change. He directed the influential Brookwood Labor College for over a decade, chaired the Conference for Progressive Labor Action in the late 1920s and early 1930s, championed interracialism, and experimented with the tactic of the nonviolent sit-down strike. Although he temporarily abandoned both his Christian and his pacifist beliefs in favor of Marxism, a spiritual reawakening returned Muste to his nonviolent roots and to the FOR in 1936. Within a few years he had moved to the Fellowship's top leadership position, where he consistently pushed an agenda that linked working-class progress to the struggle against violence and war. As an indication of the great appeal of Muste's ideas about peace and justice, Time magazine publicly named him the "No. 1 U.S. Pacifist" in 1939.8 A younger generation of activists also worked during the 1930s to make the connection between political radicalism and an antiwar stance. As the depression deepened, student radicals organized to address the problems of poverty and joblessness which plagued a nation gripped by economic decline. Motivated by an intensely egalitarian ethos, college activists sent organized delegations to the mining regions of Kentucky and to impoverished inner-city neighborhoods, volunteered for unionorganizing drives, rallied for free speech rights on university campuses,

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and, believing that wars reflected the imperialist designs of capitalist nations, pushed the goal of world peace to the center of their political agenda. These youthful idealists believed that they could change the world. But they also feared that they would become cannon fodder in the next global conflagration. Students converted to pacifism and antimilitarism in unprecedented numbers, swelling the ranks of a small but active group of collegiate radicals and transforming it into the first mass student movement in U.S. history. Each year between 1933 and 1938, tens of thousands of young people took the Oxford Pledge, which renounced personal involvement in military conflicts of any kind, and organized student strikes against war on college campuses across the nation. Along with women and clergy, these students became the backbone of the 1930s antiwar movement. Although not all of these students were pacifists, this broad-based antiwar movement encouraged them to view pacifism as a vital stepping stone to political engagement and militant action. 9 David Dellinger's experiences as a college activist in the 1930s sparked a lifelong career as a leader in movements for nonviolent social change. Dellinger encountered radical Christianity in his first week as a student at Yale. Inspired by the action-oriented version of the Social Gospel he saw practiced and preached, Dellinger ventured from the privileged environs of the university campus to experience the world in life-changing ways. He volunteered to work with the poor in the neighborhoods of New Haven, Connecticut, enlisted in a number of unionorganizing efforts (including a stint with the Steel Workers Organizing Committee in southern New Jersey), and joined other student radicals seeking concrete solutions to the problems of joblessness and class conflict. These experiences convinced Dellinger that economic justice was central to the pursuit of social change. At the same time, his association with progressive campus Christians nurtured a growing commitment to pacifism that fed off the broader student antiwar movement. Like many of his fellow student radicals, Dellinger believed that economic exploitation and greed were among the primary causes of war; only by eradicating the first could one eliminate the second. 1o What distinguished Dellinger and Muste from many of their radical contemporaries was an aversion to violence that developed into a principled pacifist stance. What they shared with them was a commitment to an egalitarian vision of social change. For activists like Dellinger and Muste, egalitarianism and pacifism converged in an ethos of "brotherhood" that reflected their Left and Christian roots. This language of brotherhood harked back to the rhetoric of the labor movement and to traditions of working-class solidarity which had informed and influenced the work of numerous peace advocates during the interwar years,

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and echoed the ideals of the depression-era radical student movement. But this pacifist brotherhood also emphasized the work of Jesus, "who saw all men as brothers," and highlighted pacifism's roots in what one writer described as "the Jewish-Christian faith in the universal community." From this spiritual perspective, the principles of brotherhood united people across all boundaries of difference. One did not kill one's brother or inflict violence upon fellow members of what FOR staffers typically called "the human family." Such pacifists believed that everyone was an equal partner who related to others in the nonhierarchical style of "brothers and sisters." This rhetorical commitment to an egalitarian brotherhood, to the belief, as FOR leader A. J. Muste phrased it, that there was "a fundamental kinship among all men," pervaded all aspects of their organizing efforts. It quickly became their most powerful discourse of dissent. 11 This language of brotherhood as part of the family of man was meant to be universal and inclusive. In the parlance of the times, people assumed women and men to be equal partners in this "family of man." But it was very difficult to avoid the culture of male dominance which pervaded American society at that time. The idea of women being full members of the body politic was still relatively new. Female suffrage had been achieved only some twenty years before. As women struggled to gain acceptance as first-class citizens, they had to fight against a variety of masculinized political frameworks, including New Deal government programs that intentionally supported male breadwinners over women in need, and the impending threat of war, which elevated the masculine activity of soldiering into the ultimate of patriotic deeds. Egalitarian intentions notwithstanding, the pacifist rhetoric of brotherhood in the late 1930s could not help but carry gendered connotations that marginalized and excluded women. 12 Pacifists' primary concern, however, was with finding alternatives to violence and war. The widely publicized example of Mohandas Gandhi's nonviolent campaign for Indian independence from British colonial rule in the 1930s made this task easier. Gandhi's liberation struggle and his innovative methods of protest gained an attentive audience among those seeking new ways to challenge the structures and institutions of power. As David Dellinger later reflected, "for many, [it] made respectable the idea that there was a 'moral alternative' to war as a method of solving political problems." For the radical wing of the American peace movement, Gandhi's methods presented a new paradigm of political action: an example of how nonviolence could be used on a mass scale to achieve concrete social, economic, and political gains. No longer relegated to acts of religious witness and individual refusal, pacifism could now move into the realm of active and meaningful political resistance. Because

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Gandhi echoed Jesus' admonition to love one's enemies while relying on a spirit of sacrifice and redemption, activists believed that his otherwise foreign ideas could be readily transplanted onto American soil. As Bayard Rustin, a black Quaker and Youth Secretary at the FOR, confidently argued, Gandhian nonviolence provided "a workable and Christian technique for the righting of injustice and the solution of conflict. "13 The need for a "moral alternative" to violence intensified during the late 1930s when World War II erupted in Europe. Popular sentiments against war quickly evaporated in the face of the Nazi threat and Japanese military aggression-so much so that by the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the broad-based peace movement of the 1930s had collapsed. Most supporters of freedom and democracy saw no alternative to supporting the U.S. government in its fight to defeat fascism overseas. Military refusal and nonviolence seemed irrelevant at best. Activists who had worked as much for peace as they had for justice found themselves isolated and pushed to the political margins. As the United States entered the war, only a small remnant remained of what once had been a widespread and vital movement against war.

No ''Timid Milquetoast Characters": Militant Masculinity and Wartime Radical Pacifism World War II raised difficult questions for young pacifist men. They had to go against the tide of public opinion, and even against some of their former political allies, to decide to stick with their principles and refuse to fight. For many men, that decision was only the first of many they had to make. Some, like David Dellinger, by then a student at Union Theological Seminary in New York, viewed conscription as the first step toward totalitarianism as well as an affront to their pacifist beliefs. Their choice was simple: they refused to cooperate with Selective Service at all and, for their public protests, were rewarded with indictments and arrest. But most conscientious objectors chose a different route. The 1940 Selective Service and Training Act provided a number of options for religious objectors to war, including noncombat-related duty, such as serving in the medical corps, and, for the first time in U.S. history, alternative service in government-sanctioned Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps. Over twelve thousand COs in all chose the second option and left home as if drafted to do what the government and peace churches promoted as ''work of national importance" in the mostly rural and churchadministered camps. Many of these men initially saw CPS as a major breakthrough, although some soon came to rebel even against this new social and

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political experiment. To be sure, this was the first time that the government had officially recognized and accommodated the CO position by offering an option for service entirely outside the military domain, and many young idealists imagined that the isolated camps, populated by committed pacifists, could potentially sow the seeds for "the development of a whole new society." When these ideals were quickly shattered by meaningless labor assignments and harsh regulations within the camps themselves, however, many began to question whether they could comply with CPS and Selective Service at all. Numerous men walked out of the CPS camps in protest, leaving themselves open to criminal prosecution and jail. Whatever their path to resistance, the penalties for such actions were harsh. Federal judges regularly meted out two- to five-year prison sentences to noncooperating pacifists. The most principled resisters were not deterred. By the war's end, almost six thousand COs had spent time in jail. Of these absolute refusers, who comprised approximately one-sixth of the federal prison population, 25 percent came from the ranks of those self-styled radical pacifists who had chosen total resistance.I 4 Only men who could not live with themselves if they complied with the military were able to make choices like these and accept the consequences. Cooperation with Selective Service was not always easy, especially since serving in CPS required separation from family and friends and years of work without pay. Those who went to prison faced even greater difficulties. Ralph DiGia, a white radical pacifist CO, recalled that "going to jail in the 1940s was a stigma." But the reality was that simply being a pacifist during World War II tarnished one's public reputation. The war against fascism divided the world between "good" and "evil," and refusing to fight the evil of fascism made one suspect at best and reviled at worst. Even outside the context of the war, refusing martial duty carried intensely negative connotations. Service in the military, traditionally seen as one of the most basic responsibilities that a citizen owes to the state, has infused concepts of citizenship since the birth of this nation. Many Americans regarded the refusal to fight, no matter how noble the reason, as a potentially treasonous rejection of national duty. Judges and draft boards chastised pacifist objectors; neighbors and townspeople ostracized them as traitors. For their perceived disloyalty, COs faced harassment, threats, humiliation, and even assault. 15 For these reasons and more, resisting men faced formidable psychological challenges. Military service was not only linked to ideas about national loyalty and duty but also joined to concepts of masculine identity and behavior. War was where men were made. As one World War II veteran recalled, "this business about the Marine Corps builds men ... was something we believed." By refusing to fight, pacifists became more

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than simply the antithesis of patriotic citizenry but the antithesis of manhood itself. Authorities openly spoke of COs as rebellious children, as if they were boys rather than thoughtful and respectable adults. Others called the men cowards, weaklings, or "yellow"-frequent insults that highlighted the accepted distinction between pacifist men and their counterparts in the armed forces. Even more biting were the implied charges of effeminacy, the result of longstanding associations between pacifism and femininity and of the public's memory of women's prominence in the peace movement of the interwar years. In the lexicon of wartime America, pacifists and COs were anything but "men. "16 War resisters consequently had to defend their manhood as well as their pacifist beliefs. For those who went to the CPS camps, the struggle was difficult but not impossible. CPS men, parodying government jargon, jokingly called their assigned tasks of digging ditches and smashing stones "work of national impotence," and they lived and worked within relatively self-contained communities of fellow COs who supported rather than attacked their decision not to go to war. The more militant objectors, who served multiyear prison sentences for their absolute refusal to register or to cooperate with Selective Service provisions, did not have that luxury. Thrown into the rough environment of the federal prison system, they faced hostile guards and truculent inmates. Some facilities-in Danbury, Connecticut; Ashland, Kentucky; Milan, Michigan; and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania-had sizable concentrations of warresisting inmates. But even such camaraderie could not necessarily protect young COs like Ralph DiGia, whom fellow inmates attacked one night for being a "fuckin' yellow coward." In the rough-and-tumble world of incarcerated men, young pacifists had to prove themselves as men to surviveJ? Some prisoners tried to live up to the standards of masculinity accepted by their fellow inmates, which many pacifists interpreted as the masculinity of the "criminal class." They attributed this phrase to the famed Socialist leader Eugene Debs, who ran for president in 1920 while imprisoned for opposing World War I. To these radical war resisters, prisoners were the most oppressed of the oppressed; joining them meant joining the ranks of the most authentic members of the embattled working class. For many, this required transcending their predominantly middle-class backgrounds and renouncing what they typically called "the illusory privileges of the upper classes." A good number, like Dave Dellinger, had already begun this process in the 1930s through their involvement in the labor and radical student movements. Jim Peck, another resolute war resister, rejected what he called his white "upperdog" Manhattan upbringing by dropping out of college, laboring as a shipmate aboard freighters, and then organizing for the National

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Maritime Union long before he joined forces with the radical peace movement. These experiences may not have been universally shared, but the sentiments were. Peck believed that, although "not more than 10 percent of the COs ... had been active in the labor movement, practically every CO ... was pro-labor in principle. "18 Allying oneself with the working class in prison was as much about style as it was about politics. Muscularity and physical prowess were essential. Fortunately for them, a good number of the pacifists were star athletes. Dellinger, who entered prison for the first time in 1940, was a prizewinning runner. Even more impressive was Dellinger's fellow seminarian, Don Benedict, whose legendary fastballs made him the star pitcher on the Danbury prison baseball team. As one resister recalled, the men's agility on the ballfield "helped to establish the 'divinity students' as a force in inmate life."19 Pacifists needed to act the "manly" part in other ways as well. Prison was no place for those whom Jim Peck derisively called "timid milquetoast characters." Instead, it was about talking tough and holding one's own in the dormitory "bull sessions" and sexually explicit banter that characterized prison life. It was about chain-smoking cigarettes and drinking hooch, the illicit beverage made from fermented sugar and fruit. Peck characteristically likened prison to a "ship that never hit port," an isolated, all-male, proletarian environment that required solidarity and resourcefulness for both collective and individual survival. Peck embraced the blue-collar machismo that he had learned on board ship with a fury, forging an identification with the working class and workingclass masculinity that was absolute and total. He cursed, he smoked, he drank. He palled around with the guys. In his eyes, upper-class privilege turned men soft and effeminate, while true masculinity could only be found within the orbit of the laboring masses. Even those resisters who could not live up to this model of masculinity seemed to admire it. As Lawrence Templin, a rather gentle white CO, later wrote, 'Jim Peck represented the tough, worldly, radical vision and discipline that ... seemed inherently right to me."20 Being seen as "tough" rested upon more than physical strength: being a "man" in prison meant living up to a code of honor that proved you were worthy of trust and respect. Dellinger, for example, described how he talked a group of belligerent prisoners out of attacking him by "using street language and drawing on things I had learned," a smart-talking tactic that not only saved him that night but earned him the inmates' grudging respect. He explained that "the one thing you can't do as a serious nonviolent activist, especially in prison, is to run away from threats or danger. If you do, the wrong reputation will follow you wherever you go." There were other unwritten rules of behavior. As one hardened

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inmate advised white CO Arthur Dole, "Never snitch. Never get a fellow felon in trouble. Don't pry into another convict's affairs." Following these rules, especially under conditions of duress, could bring surprising rewards. Ralph DiGia, for example, refused to "rat out" the men who attacked him one frightening night, and in doing so won the support of his otherwise hostile cellmates. Taking risks to help other prisoners when they were in trouble gained one valuable allies as well. In the prison environment, which encouraged self-serving and duplicitous behavior, such displays of self-sacrificing courage and integrity were the ultimate sign of manly honor.2 1 At its root, however, radical pacifism was about politics and resistance, and it was through their protests that resisting COs carved out altemative definitions of masculine bravery and strength. For these men, pacifism was anything but passive. As Dellinger explained, refusing to register was a way "to oppose the war actively." The Gandhian framework for action reinforced these beliefs by casting acts of risk taking and self-sacrifice as the forces that would lead to revolutionary change and by exalting prison as the true home for the committed resister. So, too, did the tradition of leftist activism in the United States. Pacifists proudly recalled how "the old-fashioned radical ... lived in continual expectation of going to prison," tuming incarceration into a radical rite of passage. Countering the prevailing view of pacifists as cowards and weaklings, imprisoned COs celebrated the courage it took to stand up against the strong tide of popular support for the war and to suffer the consequences. Within this context, white CO Larry Gara's statement that his own draft refusal was "the strongest stand a male youth could take against war" made perfect sense: it highlighted his belief in the power of nonviolent protest as well as his perception of himself as a young man of principle and courage.22 These men, a self-described "proud, stiff-necked lot," quickly transformed the prisons into laboratories for nonviolent action. For a number of "absolutists," their protests were first and foremost against the arbitrary powers of the govemment and the "federal prison regime." Probably the most renowned of these young rebels was the white CO Corbett Bishop, who stated upon his arrest that "the authorities have the power to seize my body; that is all they can do. My spirit will be free." With that, he relinquished control over his corporeal state. He refused to move, to eat, to leave his cot even to use the toilet. Bishop's total noncooperation confounded prison authorities and ultimately won him release less than a year after receiving a four-year sentence. Other incarcerated COs treated cooperation with prison institutions as "another form of conscription" and resisted in their own ways. This enduring refusal to submit was a dramatic act of defiance, especially within the

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confines of a prison system that relied so heavily upon instilling feelings of submission and helplessness in inmates. Officials accustomed to dealing with the normal prison population of murderers and thieves quickly became undone in the face of convicts like the pacifist anarchist Lowell Naeve, who, in his effort to live as a free spirit in jail, peacefully but openly defied every prison rule, mandate, request, and regulation he encountered. Guards bade farewell to more than one pacifist prisoner upon their release by saying, "Don't come back. We don't ever want to see you again."23 The issue of racial justice pushed the prisoners' protests, and their understanding of the power of militant pacifism, into another realm. By the mid-1940s, racism was both visible and contested, and pacifist activists were drawn directly into the black freedom struggle. James Farmer, an Mrican American on the FOR staff, wrote in 1942 that the racial system was "pregnant with violence, a veritable volcano of eruption beneath a thin crust of decency." Black Americans responded to World War II with a volatile mix of hope and frustration. The gains of the 1930s raised black people's expectations but did not end the degradations of day-today life. Racial discrimination and segregation continued. Mrican Americans were outraged that the rights for which they were sent to fight and die overseas were still denied them at home. Many white liberals, who believed that New Deal labor policies, union organizing efforts, and wartime prosperity had resolved the "labor question," now viewed racial tension as the major social problem that the nation needed to address. Although pacifists, particularly the staff and leadership of the FOR, had addressed issues of racial discrimination since the 1930s, in the early 1940s, like other liberals and progressives, they shifted their work for racial justice into high gear. Race now overshadowed class as the most pressing national concern. To remain consistent with their commitment to social justice, pacifists had to act.2 4 The rising racial militancy of the wartime years inspired imprisoned war resisters. They watched from behind bars as membership in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the nation's premier civil rights organization, increased ninefold over the course of the war, from 50,000 to 450,000 members. And they cheered A. Philip Randolph's threat to organize a massive march on Washington to protest racial discrimination in defense industries. Impressed by these courageous examples and inspired by Randolph's promotion of Gandhian nonviolence as a political tool, pacifists eagerly took up the issue.2 5 The struggle for racial justice seemed to fit perfectly into their broader struggle for universal brotherhood. A. ]. Muste publicly proclaimed in 1943 that "the notion that there is no integral connection between militarism and war on the one hand and on the other hand,

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economic exploitation, fascism, racism, Jim Crowism, is a superficial and false one." Strategic and spiritual concerns brought these issues together. "For Jesus, who saw all men as brothers," Muste wrote, "the worst sin is the denial of brotherhood by drawing lines that shut some in and others out." James Farmer believed that racial tensions threatened to tear "the human family" asunder. "Nowhere in America," another activist asserted, "is this brotherhood principle more flagrantly violated than in the field of Negro-white relationships. "26 Jim Crow was everywhere within the federal prison system: it ruled the dining halls and dormitories, even in institutions located in Connecticut, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. To many imprisoned COs, this intolerable "social evil" required a resistance equivalent to their opposition to war. The activist histories that these objectors brought with them to jail quickly moved them to take decisive action. Black COs such as Wally Nelson and Bayard Rustin refused to sit at segregated tables or to move from white-designated tables and rooms. White COs supported these actions and registered their own protests by refusing to eat and work until authorities abolished Jim Crow inside the prisons. By mid-1943, these jailhouse protests, which included prolonged work and hunger strikes, were running rampant through the penitentiaries that housed the militant COs. 27 Confrontations that began with black prisoners refusing to move from whites-only tables escalated into lengthy campaigns whose participants endured harsh repercussions. In Danbury, Connecticut, striking COs spent 135 days in administrative segregation as prison officials attempted to isolate the protesters from other prisoners, one another, and outside supporters. The tedium, loneliness, and isolation of solitary confinement were difficult to withstand. But instead of breaking the protest movement, isolation had the opposite effect. Separated from the general prison population, locked in their own wing of the prison, each in his own cell, the protesting pacifists found ways to boost their morale and sense of community. They took solace in Gandhi's exhortation to embrace prison with joy, believing that in suffering they would find power and strength. They drew upon their own resourcefulness and creativity to make the best of a difficult situation. Danbury prisoners designed inventive methods for group communication: they shouted through ventilators, talked through the spaces under the doors, and slid messages to one another with devices made of metal disks and string. The incorrigible Lowell Naeve, having graduated from individual to collective resistance, "published" a newsletter for the group on paper made by washing the ink off the pages of Life magazine. Supporters on the outside printed and distributed appeals from the prisoners, publicizing their plight. As CO Larry Gara recalls, the Danbury baseball team's need for

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its star pitcher, the protesting white CO Don Benedict, put enough pressure on prison officials to release all of the men from "the hole." Despite its institutional power, the prison system could not match the will of prisoners who believed that their consciences "could not tolerate undemocratic racist practices."28 These prison experiences served as the crucible for the forging of a distinctly radical and pacifist masculine identity. Combining the tough physicality of midcentury working-class manhood with the stoic ethos of Gandhian protest, resisting COs overcame the charges of effeminacy and weakness that acts of pacifist witness customarily aroused. By standing up to authority, the prisoners projected an image of strength and virility that even the most hardened felons could appreciate and respect. Their protests broke the back of Jim Crow in the federal prison system, a sure sign of their strength. Just as important was the power of these protests in shaping their understanding of who they were as men. Numerous participants described the prison strikes as rites of passage that restored them to "some semblance of Man." They overcame the feelings of disempowerment and helplessness that prisons were designed to instill. "More than war objectors or pacifists," said black CO Wally Nelson, they had transformed themselves into what Bayard Rustin called "revolutionized men." In their hands, Gandhian direct action had become not only a moral alternative to war but a manly alternative as well.29

'Trying to Take Care of the Guys": Women and the Wartime Radical Pacifist Struggle Outside the prisons, militant pacifists, women as well as men, were working on parallel efforts to "get the non-violent approach across in as many areas oflife as possible." Despite the emphasis on manly COs engaged in valiant resistance to war and to the state, numerous women viewed the radical pacifist nonviolent direct action movement as the most suitable platform for their political pursuits. The trick was to find ways to fit female activism into the prevailing cultural framework constructed by radical pacifism's primarily male leaders. The imperative for action, coupled with the unique opportunities afforded by the domestic impact of the war, suggested that almost anything was possible. 30 The struggle for racial justice became one key to building a mass movement. Leading activists were convinced that nonviolent action had to become relevant to other groups if the pacifist movement was to survive the hostile wartime climate. In society as in prison, all eyes looked toward the black freedom struggle. Rising in national prominence and open to tactical experimentation, the civil rights movement seemed to

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be the place where pacifists-white and black, male and female-could act effectively to uphold their vision of a nonviolent and egalitarian brotherhood. Radical pacifists played a leading role in the founding of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality, in 1942. Originally an interracial study group based in FOR's Chicago office, the men and women of CORE quickly became known for their action-oriented approach to challenging the problem ofJim Crow. CORE's innovative tactics, which included public sit-ins, walk-ins, and pickets, attracted publicity and then followers; men and women in other cities established local CORE chapters and conducted local demonstrations. The spread and popularity of what organizers called the "CORE approach" encouraged pacifists to believe that they had found a winning combination. As George Houser, a white FOR staff member and formerly imprisoned war resister, explained, CORE could use Gandhian techniques "to do something effective about discrimination on the one hand, and ... build up a nonviolent movement on the other. "31 CORE was, its leaders noted, "not exclusively a pacifist group," but its membership came in large number from the ranks of the radical pacifist movement, and these dedicated activists influenced the group to adopt the strict guidelines of nonviolence that militant pacifists promoted. Believing that the nonviolent approach is "a combination of both a spirit and a strategy," CORE required its members to act in "the spirit of understanding, mutual respect, and good will" and to follow a precise set of steps when planning a nonviolent direct action campaign. Activists based their protest strategies primarily on their studies of Krishnalal Shridharani's War Without Violence, which outlined and analyzed the strategies and tactics of Gandhi's nonviolent resistance movement. For CORE's members, War Without Violence became their instruction manual and direct action bible. In their hands, Shridharani's directives were a tool with which to shape a new culture ofprotest. 32 CORE organized its campaigns around discipline and deliberation, always militant but never reckless or hasty. Marjorie Swann, a young white pacifist who joined Chicago CORE as a charter member, recalled that "anytime you did anything ... there were certain rules. Nobody could do anything, even picket, without getting the training!" CORE's well-disciplined tactics and carefully planned protests were strikingly successful. Within a few years, local CORE chapters had integrated restaurants, opened skating rinks to African Americans, and attacked Jim Crow in movie theaters, barbershops, and amusement parks, primarily in the northern cities and border states where the organization had its greatest strength. Following Shridharani's outline for action, activists methodically worked their way through the steps of investigation, negotiation,

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outreach, education-and, finally, as a last resort, direct action. This was a time-consuming process. A campaign to desegregate one restaurant in Chicago went through ten months of research, negotiations, and picketing before activists staged the sit-in that eventually brought them a successful outcome. Moving slowly, however, guaranteed neither positive nor peaceful outcomes. The harsh responses that CORE's activists periodically encountered indicated that nonviolent action, as organized as it may have been, was not for the faint ofheart. 33 Like their war-resisting counterparts in prison, the pacifists of CORE defined their nonviolence in terms that defied any hint of passivity or weakness. CORE activists trumpeted their successes, highlighting the power of innovative actions that stepped beyond the range of expected militant protest. Mirroring the masculinist imagery deployed by imprisoned COs and drawing upon a strain of rhetoric within the black community that equated activism with dignified manhood, CORE's members regularly described their efforts in ways that conveyed qualities of male vigor and strength. Black activist and FOR staffer James Farmer, who with Houser helped lay the groundwork for CORE, typically described his plans for a nonviolent campaign against racial injustice as a "virile and comprehensive program" that would require rigor and discipline. Bayard Rustin, the black war resister who eventually replaced Farmer as one of CORE's key staffers, applauded the tactics of militant nonviolent resistance, noting their superiority to the effeminate "pink tea social methods" advocated by moderate white pacifists, which he and other black activists derided. Highlighting this perceived link between ineffectiveness and femininity, CORE activists applauded the forceful working-class masculinity of black civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph, who asserted that the violent racism of the United States could be overcome by "non-violent, good-will direct action" and endorsed the work of CORE.34 In practice, despite this equation of militancy with masculinity, CORE was a strikingly egalitarian association that afforded women as well as men ample opportunities for action. As Wally Nelson, the black CO who eventually became a CORE staff member, explained, the group operated under the assumption that "there's one race, the human race." These words echoed radical pacifism's discourse of brotherhood, which embraced women and men as well as blacks and whites. CORE turned these words into more than a rhetorical trope. In contrast to the FOR, which subsidized the salaries of CORE's staff members during the organization's early years, CORE's paid organizers were racially balanced teams. Although men dominated these paid positions, CORE's women held their own in ways not possible in the strictly pacifist movement. Of CORE's fifty charter members, twenty-two were women and twenty-eight

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were men. Women often spearheaded local chapters and played key roles on CORE's national committees, which were divided fairly evenly by sex. Within the FOR, by contrast, female leaders were few and far between, and men regularly made up over 75 percent of the group's National and Executive Committees. Rather than being relegated to office and editorial positions as they often were in the FOR, women in CORE played prominent roles in the organization's direct action campaigns: they organized demonstrations, led the picket lines, and even risked arrest in the nonviolent battle against Jim Crow. Masculinist rhetoric notwithstanding, CORE appeared to be amenable to female participation. 35 CORE, and the women of CORE, clearly benefitted from the joining of several distinct political cultures within the framework of this organization. Radical pacifism brought flexibility and innovation to CORE's efforts. Although activists often tied militancy to masculinity, there was some room for female resistance as well. Indeed, the prevalent assumption that women were peaceful by nature made women appear to be perfect candidates for membership in CORE's nonviolent protest teams. The highly organized and disciplined nature of CORE's direct action approach, taken largely from the group's study of Gandhi, boded well for female participation since women's political activism had long been predicated on ideas about women's responsibility to create and maintain social order. Equally important, the black freedom struggle had a long history of women and men working as partners to advance the cause of their race. Acting not just in allegiance but in concert with black-organized civil rights efforts, CORE was influenced by the attitudes held by the Mrican American activist community in ways not likely to occur within white-dominated organizations like the FOR that supported the freedom struggle but rarely worked shoulder-to-shoulder with black activists. Little wonder that women fared better in CORE than they did in its purely pacifist counterpart. 36 Black women's experiences, in particular, highlighted the opportunities that nonviolent protest provided for women to model a kind of activist femininity that was both effective and militant, one that stood in stark contrast to the "pink tea social methods" criticized by Rustin. Drawing on definitions of black womanhood that emphasized determination, strength, and self-confidence over genteel frailty and subservience, Mrican American women took the lead in a CORE-inspired series of pickets and sit-ins near Howard University in 1943. The protest began when Juanita Morrow, a Howard undergraduate and Correspondence Secretary of the university's NAACP Civil Rights Committee, and two other coeds were denied service at a neighborhood lunch counter and then arrested and carted off to jail. Immediately afterward, a group of predominantly female students, with Morrow at the helm, came together

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to organize a direct action desegregation campaign. Aided by Pauli Murray, a law student at Howard and an active member of the FOR, the group crafted a strategy for protest that not coincidentally mirrored CORE's direct action efforts. Carrying signs that proclaimed, "Our Boys, Our Bonds, Our Brothers Are Fighting for YOU! Why Can't We Eat Here?" and ''We Die Together. Why Can't We Eat Together?", small groups of disciplined students began sitting in and picketing at restaurants and cafeterias in the university's vicinity. Although their slogans focused on the wartime sacrifices made by black men, women acted as the primary leaders and participants in this small protest movement. Fullfledged members of the Double-V campaign, these women proudly fought for freedom at home in a way that complemented black soldiers' fight for freedom overseas. The fact that they won their campaign after what one newspaper called a "4-day siege" gave notice that women could lead a serious protest movement. 37 These women saw themselves as political actors who were equal to men. Although the rhetoric of masculine militancy seemed to exclude women from this nonviolent movement for racial equality, black women's experiences with the daily humiliation of racial discrimination and their strong sense of community obligation propelled them to the center of protest and to the cutting edge of social change. Pauli Murray, for example, had already made a name for herself as a fighter. In the late 1930s she applied for admission to the University of North Carolina, despite the school's policy of admitting only whites. Not long after, she refused to abide by segregated seating arrangements in a public bus, an act of defiance that led to her arrest and several days in jail. In 1941, she challenged the boundaries of sex by entering Howard Law School, where she graduated as the only woman in her class. Murray and her young counterparts such as Morrow embodied the qualities of the adventurous, ambitious, and educated black women who stood at the forefront of the black freedom struggle. CORE's style of nonviolent protest provided the structure for them to act in innovative and powerful ways. 38 The gendered dynamics of wartime facilitated these women's efforts. As Murray recalled, "the fact that an accident of gender exempted me from military service ... made me feel an extra responsibility to carry on the integration battle." The war challenged black women at home to take up the cause of freedom as actively as black soldiers shipped overseas, propelling these women to the front lines of protest. What Murray characterized as "the wartime thinning of the ranks of male students" helps to explain women's prominent role in the Howard protests. But it is likely that the absence of men did not as much compel the women to action as it gave them increased opportunities to rise to leadership positions. Strong women became stronger. Murray noted in retrospect

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that "the fact that we were doing something creative about our racial plight was exhilarating and increased our self-esteem."39 The emerging radical pacifist movement provided a place for white women to gain expertise and confidence as well. Some of these women came from the organized women's peace movement and groups like the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WlLPF) which had flourished during the interwar years. Many more were depressionera student activists who carried forward a tradition of militancy, class struggle, and the quest for egalitarian social relations. Rather than joining WlLPF, which many younger women regarded as timid in its political stance, these female antimilitarists joined forces with the like-minded radical male resisters of their generation. The radical pacifist movement quickly became their primary base of operations. 40 Marjorie Swann, a young white pacifist, exemplified this strain of a gender-inclusive and militant pacifism. The product of a Chicago working-class family, Swann entered Northwestern University in the late 1930s as a principled pacifist and a Social Gospel Christian. She immediately threw herself into the whirl of activity inspired by the campus's peace and radical movements. The egalitarian impulses of the 1930s student Left and the emerging language of pacifist brotherhood, which explicitly included both "brothers" and "sisters" in its vision of a universal human family, fueled the hopes of women like Swann. Committed to the ideals of peace and justice, Swann found ways to act upon her convictions within mixed-gendered groups that provided opportunities for female participation and leadership. Swann openly cast her lot in support of war-resisting COs within a student Christian fellowship; she became a charter member of Chicago CORE in 1942; and when she moved to Washington, D.C., shortly thereafter, she took a leading role in a local union-organizing campaign, worked on the cutting edge of CORE and its nonviolent protests, and increased her commitment to militant pacifist campaigns. Swann resisted the war as directly as she could and embraced nonviolent action as her favored form of political expression. 41 The militant pacifism of the wartime years created unprecedented opportunities for women to act according to their beliefs. The political climate was hostile to pacifists of both sexes. Committed pacifist women, like men, found themselves cut off from the mainstream of American life and suffered through the same isolation and derision as did war-resisting men. According to Swann, the 1940s were "the hardest time to be a pacifist ... in my life." Nevertheless, her status as a woman never came under attack within the pacifist and radical groups that she considered her home. Instead, in the alternative political culture of nonviolent action and dissent, she encountered an array of liberating possibilities that

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paralleled the various openings in the public sphere of politics and work that had become available to other American women of that time. 42 Many young women shared Swann's orientation toward activism. Calling themselves "female COs," approximately two thousand young pacifist women volunteered to work at the Civilian Public Service (CPS) camps, where they provided "moral and material support" for the thousands of male objectors who chose alternative service over military duty. Others assisted the young men who chose prison over cooperation with the draft by writing to them, corresponding with public officials on their behalf, raising money, and publicizing their jailhouse protests. This work was demanding but exciting and fun. Laboring on behalf of imprisoned COs allowed women to put themselves on the front lines of Gandhian struggle. An antimilitarist alternative to working for the USO or in military canteens, living and working near the camps offered opportunities for travel and adventure to young and single women who had never lived away from home. Even in camps organized by the more socially conservative denominations of the historic peace churches, women's experiences with CPS helped sustain what historian Rachel Goossen describes as "cultures of nonconformity. "43 Activism allowed women to reshape assumptions about women's place in the political sphere. Paralleling the development of the new radical pacifist masculinity, the activist womanhood of militant female pacifists drew upon prevailing norms of modern femininity even as it subverted them. The "female COs" were disciplined, competent, andreliable. Marjorie Swann thoroughly enjoyed visiting the CPS camps that were located within driving distance of Washington, D.C., where she socialized with the young men and provided them with critically necessary outside support. But her work was about more than cultivating male companions. Not content to keep her politics as a sideline to her life, she sought and gained employment as the Washington Secretary for the National Committee on Conscientious Objectors (NCCO), an organization focused on assisting imprisoned resisters. The group initially assigned her to do the typical ''women's work" of typing and filing, but after the organization's male leaders departed for prison and CPS camps, Swann became NCCO's de facto director. "I was doing the newsletter," she explained, "and I was dealing with the U.S. Parole Board." While "there were volunteers that were helping to put pressure on [the government]" on behalf of imprisoned COs, Swann proudly recalled that "I had to engineer in Washington because I was the one with the contacts."44 Swann's militancy aimed toward fulfilling a universal, nongendered definition of radical protest. In the spring of 1943, Swann joined a group of several dozen young men and women who staged a public

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demonstration against war near the Capitol. The march raised the ire of moderate peace organizations such as WILPF as well as that of the D.C. police, who forcibly stopped the march and then tore up the demonstrators' signs. Several months later, she joined one of the first civil disobedience campaigns organized specifically to further the radical pacifist cause: an ongoing protest outside the British Consulate in Washington, D.C., demanding that the British release Mohandas Gandhi from prison. On her designated day, Swann and two others stood at the gate of the embassy in violation of federal law. Authorities arrested Swann for refusing to leave the embassy grounds and incarcerated her in the Women's Detention Center for over a week before bringing her to trial. The court released Swann on probation, giving her credit for time served, but ten days in prison had proved her mettle. Within a movement modeled on the Gandhian mode of protest, taking such risks was an emblem of political maturity and commitment. Swann had earned this credential not as a woman but as a resister who could make sacrifices equivalent to those embraced by men who refused the draft. 45 Actions such as these challenged the gendered wartime trope ofwhat Jean Bethke Elshtain calls the "Beautiful Soul," the passive, weak, and self-sacrificing woman who symbolizes the home and requires the protection of men, soldiers whom society considers the true heroes of war. Given the powerful cultural dynamics of the war and wartime resistance, it was difficult to break completely free of this stereotype. Within their movement's emerging culture of protest, and despite the direct action experiences of women like Swann, radical pacifist women regularly assumed secondary rather than primary positions. As Esther Eichel, a prominent white woman whose husband and son refused to cooperate with the draft, proudly exclaimed, "the most important role women played in the resistance to World War II was to stand behind the imprisoned CO members." Motivated by concerns as a loving spouse and parent, as well as by a desire to sustain the pacifist movement during difficult times, Eichel considered support work the natural and logical course of action. Erna Harris, a black pacifist from the West Coast, explained how much of her and other women's efforts similarly revolved around helping resisting objectors. "Women were raising money for bond," she recounted, "keeping in touch, ... pulling cases together, stuff like that. ... The ones that typed well," she added, "typed for the boys." White attorney Frieda Lazarus, a legal advocate for the War Resisters League, steadfastly worked to gain the release of imprisoned resisters, including her son. Others formed what CO Jim Peck called "strike auxiliaries" to support and publicize the work of protesting prisoners during their protests against Jim Crow. Harris recalled that "what we women were mostly doing was trying to take care of the guys. "46

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Significantly, assuming the identity of "supporter" rather than "star" allowed women to take on tasks not traditionally considered part of the feminine domain. Swann acted as NCCO's official liaison between imprisoned COs and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, and operated under what was then the powerful title of Washington Secretary. Harris, who based much of her work around supporting COs, similarly described how she considered herself an activist in her own right and did everything she could to oppose the war. Nevertheless, by embracing this active but supporting role, women and men unconsciously perpetuated the gendered stereotypes that characterized men's and women's participation not only in war but in resistance to war. The women were neither passive nor dependent. Yet much of their work within the pacifist movement reinforced longstanding ideas about women as peaceable supporters of heroic warrior men and therefore subordinate members of the body politic. As valued supporters, women made important contributions to the radical pacifist cause. But their work underscored the idea that the primary political actors-the true ''warriors"-were the selfsacrificing war-resisting men exiled in CPS camps and locked behind prison bars. 47 In retrospect, it is clear that the war years were propitious for women's political work. In venues as varied as the Democratic Party, the labor movement, and the Communist Party, women found opportunities for activism and leadership that many used to their full potential and then tried to carry with them into the postwar era. Within the civil rights movement as well, so visibly dominated by notable men such as A. Philip Randolph and by highly publicized images of masculine militancy, women established themselves as effective and skillful political players. But effectiveness rarely translated into status, value, or a permanent hold on power. Pauli Murray clearly understood that the protesting female students at Howard gained prominence as leaders and organizers because the demands of war had depleted the numbers of male students left behind. With the men gone, women could take their place but, as they discovered to their dismay, only "for the duration." Even Marj Swann, who passionately and efficiently filled the gap left by NCCO's incarcerated male leaders, made it known that "being devoted to the work of this organization, she would be quite ready to resign" once men were released from prison and ready to return to work. Like Rosie the Riveter and other home-front women, militant female pacifists and direct actionists took advantage of the opportunities the war provided to prove themselves as committed and productive political citizens. Radical pacifism's commitment to egalitarianism allowed these women to participate actively on the front lines of change, but their activism reinforced rather than dislodged men's now-normative position as the ultimate self-sacrificing heroes. 48

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Building a Nonviolent Revolutionary Movement Men assumed that they would remain in the limelight once the war came to an end, even as they grappled with questions about what radical pacifists should do in the postwar world. Building on the communities of resistance forged behind prison walls, COs debated how to fight what Dave Dellinger, in the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan, called "the war for total brotherhood." They did not intend to create an exclusively male political environment, and a number of women, female veterans of wartime protests as well as new recruits, joined the struggle to create a peacetime pacifist movement. But the former COs never questioned that, as the heroic male warriors of wartime pacifist resistance, they should assume the vanguard position in the movement's postwar endeavors. The "brotherhood" they had created was a literal one, a political fraternity. By building upon the framework they had developed during their prison protests, they ensured that the movement they formed would have a decidedly masculine tone. 49 Pacifists agreed that nonviolent action should be at the center of their movement and insisted that opposition to war was not enough. Activists, they argued, had to work for "revolutionary changes in all areas of social and economic life"-in Bayard Rustin's words, to shift "from pacifism to a program of positive social goals." But what did this mean? Would race or peace be at the top of their list? Where would the struggle for economic justice fit into their plans? What did initiating what Dellinger called "a nonviolent war carried on by methods worthy of the ideals we seek to serve" entail? 50 A number of former CPS and prison inmates believed that the postwar period required them to start something completely new. By early 1946, they had formed their own group, the Committee for Non-Violent Revolution (CNVR), and had begun staging demonstrations based on their socialist, anarchist, and pacifist goals. Using the techniques of militant nonviolence honed during their prison protests against Jim Crow, CNVR members marched at the United Nations, distributed leaflets to workers at May Day celebrations, publicly burned their draft cards in front of the White House, and held amnesty demonstrations for imprisoned COs complete with black-and-white striped prison costumes. Participants celebrated these daring "guerrilla tactics," which quickly became the hallmark of the group and the most visible manifestation of CNVR's militant stance. 5 1 CNVR provided a home, a place of friendship and solidarity, for recently released prisoners struggling to come to terms with life in the postwar world. It also provided an alternative to the more moderate programs of the established pacifist movement, not only through its

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commitment to militant action but also through its decidedly leftist and anticapitalist thrust. The group picketed in industrial areas and on the docks, urging workers "to take control of the factories," advocating "equal income for all," and opposing "all war and all nationalism." For this coterie of self-described "revolutionary pacifists," community was the way toward peace and capitalism was the enemy of "the people," the root of life-threatening economic and military strife. Such declarations did not bring significant numbers of working-class recruits into CNVR. The war had already alienated militant pacifists from their former left-wing allies. Still, CNVR continued to assert that there was a causal relationship between the capitalist pursuit of wealth and the perpetuation of international conflict and war. 52 The group's most notable characteristic, however, was barely discussed at all: its overwhelmingly male composition and the masculine tone of its activities. Almost all of CNVR's members were men, and those few women who joined tended to have romantic connections to the men involved. Since the group's recruits came largely from the ranks of formerly imprisoned COs, CNVR carried on the cultural values and styles of protest that war-resisting men had honed in the all-male and hypermasculine prison environment. The group's open identification with the working class was thus as much a matter of masculine style as it was a left-wing political stance, an aping of the physical, assertive qualities of the factory worker or street tough that had served pacifist men so well in jail. The "in-your-face" public militancy of the group, which a few members ventured to criticize, perpetuated the model of masculine militancy that favored high-drama risk taking as the way to prove one's manhood. To the men of CNVR, nonviolent resistance was, in the words of one leaflet, the antidote to the emasculating condition of being "bossed around your whole life." Convinced of their place on the cutting edge of American radicalism, the men of CNVR cast themselves as "commandos of the spirit" and the newest generation of manly and heroic nonviolent warriors for peace. 53

Another Option: The journey of Reconciliation The activists of CORE also dreamed of sparking a powerful nonviolent movement in postwar America. George Houser, from his position on the FOR/CORE staff, began circulating proposals for creating such a movement in 1944, even before the war's end. Houser's letters and memos called for a disciplined and coordinated assault on Jim Crow led by a vanguard of activists willing to make a full-time commitment to the struggle. "If this experiment were a success after being tried by migrating nonviolenteers in various localities," he argued, "the pattern of the mass

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non-violent approach would take hold in localities on a more permanent basis." CORE's Executive Committee greeted Houser's plan with enthusiasm, as did valuable allies such as A. Philip Randolph and A. ]. Muste. As a pacifist, Muste thrilled to the idea of a program based on nonviolent direct action. "I think," he wrote encouragingly to Houser, "the idea of trying to put on a larger and more systematic n.v.d.a. campaign is ... the logical next step. "54 A window of opportunity opened in June 1946 when the Supreme Court, in the case of Irene Morgan v. the Commonwealth of Virginia, declared racial segregation in interstate travel unconstitutional. Mrican American leaders hailed the ruling as a first step toward the abolition of Jim Crow. But southern bus and railroad executives resisted, and their determination, as Rustin described it, "to ignore and frustrate the court's decision" tempered the optimism of civil rights activists and allies. The possibilities for action that the Supreme Court's ruling presented fired the imagination of CORE's radical pacifist leadership. Public buses and trains were sites of daily humiliation for Mrican Americans. Attacking segregation in public transportation promised to give CORE and its white pacifist allies the relevance and visibility they yearned to achieve. Not only was it a "natural" target for CORE, but, as Houser explained, ''we felt it was a winnable issue."55 By September 1946, CORE's Executive Committee and the RacialIndustrial Committee of the FOR were formulating a joint program to implement the Morgan decision. Their plan of action was simple and to the point. "The responsibility for change," explained Bayard Rustin, by then a key CORE strategist, ''will fall upon disciplined Negroes and whites who can enter busses and, without resort to violence, resist by sitting where they choose and refusing to move, no matter the cost." CORE's leaders did not expect "to get the masses of people to resist Jim Crow practices wholesale on buses and trains," but they believed that if they could gather a small group of dedicated activists, willing to test and publicize the Supreme Court's ruling by traveling as interracial teams through the South, they would "strik[e] a raw nerve ... [and] get public· attention. "56 Rustin and Houser began organizing what came to be called the Journey of Reconciliation, with the first task of gathering recruits willing to embark on the Journey and risk arrest, imprisonment, or worse. Black Journey participant Wally Nelson tellingly recalled that volunteers for the trip were "not exactly banging down the door." Nevertheless, the Journey's organizers were not willing to accept just anyone who came along. They wanted a racially balanced team in order to reflect their interracial goals. They also hoped to recruit at least a few members from the South, believing that they would give the project greater legitimacy

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along its southern route. Volunteers also had to be presentable and articulate, since leaders planned to use public talks to community and church groups and to the media as their primary means of publicity. Finally, such a risky nonviolent action required a rare combination of discipline and courage. It took Houser and Rustin several months of hard work to find the sixteen men, eight black and eight white, who were ready, willing, and qualified to make the Journey. 57 Not surprisingly, a significant proportion of these recruits came from the radical pacifist movement, particularly from the ranks of war resisters and COs who had actively challenged racial segregation within the federal prison system. Some arrived fresh from these wartime struggles. Nelson, a CO with experience in both left-wing labor and civil rights activities, joined the trip almost immediately after his release from prison. Jim Peck, a veteran of the Danbury protests against Jim Crow, "discovered and joined CORE just a few months before" the Journey began. Twelve out of the sixteen members of the group came from the radical pacifist movement. Their predominance among the recruits suggests not only how attractive this project was to those committed to serious nonviolent action but also how difficult it was to find recruits outside militant pacifist circles. 58 The obvious possibility that the Journey of Reconciliation would meet violence at the hands of white racists must have deterred some participants. CORE's limited experience in the North indicated that, despite the calm and courteous behavior of nonviolent protesters, stalwart segregationists would hold their ground and resort to physical intimidation and force. Marjorie Swann remembered "getting bounced around by police" and having opponents spit in her face when she tried to integrate restaurants in both Chicago and D.C.; it was "a pretty scary situation." Many feared that challenging segregation in the solid South, with its well-deserved reputation for lynching, would be even more dangerous. White and black southerners who joined the Journey knew that they would become targets for vicious attack once they returned home. Indeed, only a few southerners joined the project at all. Danger and anxiety kept all but the most stalwart at bay. 59 Houser and Rustin tried to mitigate these risks by limiting the Journey's route. Organizers had originally planned to travel from Baltimore to New Orleans. But "believing that to extend the protests into Mississippi, Alabama, or other Deep South states would invite certain violence," they scaled down their itinerary and confined the project to the Upper South: Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. "To penetrate the Deep South at that time," Jim Peck reflected, "would simply have meant immediate arrests of all participants, an end to the trip-and possibly us. As a Negro told us on the

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first lap, 'Some bus drivers are crazy; and the farther south you go, the crazier they get.' "Without a solid base of support in the Deep South, it would have been suicidal to go there. 60 As the Journey team members soon discovered, they faced serious dangers even on the more northerly route. The trip began in Washington, D.C., with an intensive training session in nonviolence. From there, the volunteers headed south in interracial pairs, sometimes testing parallel Greyhound and Trailways bus routes, sometimes testing train lines, and usually spread out within the buses and train cars. The Journey members arranged their seats so that both white and black activists could effectively challenge segregationist norms. They generally traveled with at least one black rider near the front and at least one white rider toward the back. ''We were not obviously traveling as a group," recounted George Houser. "It was only when an incident took place, when the issue arose, that it became obvious that there was a group involved." Most of the trips were uneventful. Project members often rode undisturbed or encountered only perfunctory challenges to their presence. Nevertheless, on several occasions, the riders faced very real physical threats. The most notable incident occurred in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, when a gang of angry white taxi drivers assaulted Jim Peck and chased the entire group and a supportive local white minister out of town. More frequent were the whispered warnings and loudly spoken jeers. And, of course, there were periodic arrests. By the end of their two-week trip, twelve Journey members had been arrested on six occasions, all for violating Jim Crow seating arrangements on southern buses and trains. 61 The members of the Journey used these incidents to showcase the strengths of their emerging direct action movement. They trusted one another enough to rely on "individual discretion," and at the same time developed an uncanny ability to act and think in sync, to communicate, as one member described it, "almost psychically." When authorities would arrest one pair of riders for violating segregated seating regulations, another pair would appear almost magically to take their place. Other team members casually struck up conversations about the arrests with anxious and irritated bus passengers, hoping to raise the consciousness and understanding of the people on board. Such behavior required a "taut morale," discipline, and a strong sense of group solidarity. 62 No one on the Journey expected defiance of Jim Crow to go unchallenged, and the anticipation of conflict and arrest must have provoked deep anxiety. A black team member's refusal to move to the back of the bus could precipitate a long delay that generated irate responses not only from bus passengers but also from bus drivers and arresting

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officers. Even on segments of the trip where no arrests occurred, "there was no escaping the tension." The sight of a black man in the front of the bus audibly jangled the nerves of many passengers, white and black. While traveling in North Carolina, a white South Carolinian, sitting next to white pacifist Ernest Bromley, loudly remarked about a black Journey member seated toward the front that "in my state he would either move or be killed." On several occasions, fearful black passengers seated in the rear vocally deplored the Journey's challenge to Jim Crow and "urged the resisters in very emotional terms to comply with the [local segregation] law." Without training and commitment, the men on the Journey would have found it impossible to follow their trip through to the end. 63 Outside support played a critical role. Journey participants generated publicity by inviting reporters who traveled with the group and then filed reports about the trip in the national black press. Local publicity came through the speaking engagements that Houser and Rustin lined up along the project's route. Meeting with church, NAACP, and college groups, Journey members spread the word about their project and generated valuable grassroots support. Spontaneous words of encouragement and offers of assistance from fellow passengers also heartened the small band of travelers. In Oxford, North Carolina, a black man threatened to sue the bus company for the delay caused when Bayard Rustin refused to move to the rear. On several other occasions, female passengers gave their names and addresses to Journey participants in case they were needed to serve as witnesses in court. The group rarely felt alone. 64 These public responses helped convince the group that their project was a success. In the evaluation they conducted after the Journey ended, organizers admitted that their efforts did not eliminate segregation, but they took solace in what they saw as a softening of racist attitudes. One assessment applauded the fact that although arrests and attacks occurred, "a white passenger [never] threaten[ed] a Negro for sitting 'out of his place.' " Houser and others attributed this breakthrough to their nonviolent tactics and believed they had demonstrated that Gandhian direct action could be used as an effective political tool. They even viewed their arrests in a positive light, treating the white and black men sentenced to time on segregated chain gangs as heroes worthy of emulation. To them, the Journey proved that putting their bodies on the line was the most promising strategy in the struggle for social change. "It is our belief," they concluded, "that without direct action on the part of groups and individuals, the Jim Crow pattern in the South can not be broken down." In their eyes, the Journey became a model for future action and protest. 65

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The Limits of Egalitarianism: Radical Pacifism, Civil Rights, and Gender Despite this positive assessment, Journey organizers quickly discovered that overcoming the strategic and tactical differences that separated social movements from one another could be as difficult as breaking down the barriers that divided Americans by race. Although an interracial project, the Journey of Reconciliation was marked by the fact that it emerged in large part from the predominantly white pacifist movement, which was committed to a race-blind "brotherhood of man" but not yet sure how to make concrete contributions to the struggle for civil rights. Even the best of intentions could not guarantee a harmonious relationship between pacifist direct actionists and the diverse black activist community. Nor could a commitment to nonviolence ensure widespread pacifist cooperation. Without a broad base of black, or white, support, Journey members found it difficult to spark an organized and widespread challenge to Jim Crow. Ironically, the Journey's greatest source of strength-its radical pacifist roots-was also its greatest liability. There is little doubt that radical pacifist participation in the Journey played an integral role in its success. Nevertheless, not everyone in CORE or on the Journey embraced the pacifists with open arms. Longtime CORE member Bernice Fisher, a white labor activist, vociferously opposed "combining the efforts of CORE, FOR and MOW [A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement] .... There are numerous others," she asserted, ''who would rebel at the pacifist tag. To combine efforts with pacifist groups might well spell the end of dnva [direct nonviolent action] in the race struggle." CORE's organizers realistically feared alienating potential support, particularly during the postwar period when the public overwhelmingly viewed COs and pacifists as traitors to the national cause. Even ex-CO George Houser feared that the pacifist label would limit CORE's appeal. "I feel," he wrote to A. J. Muste, "that we need to get some more national people other than ministers and pacifists if this is to be a success." Although Houser held a dual role as CORE's Executive Secretary and cosecretary of FOR's Racial and Industrial Department, he diligently worked to keep the organizations separate. "As far as the connection between CORE and the FOR is concerned," he asserted, "it exists only as some members of CORE are also FOR members. "66 This claim, while politically important, was not entirely true. FOR both directly and indirectly subsidized CORE by providing free office space for the fledgling organization and, more important, by lending FOR staffers James Farmer, George Houser, and Bayard Rustin to CORE's projects and campaigns. Some members of the FOR expressed

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discomfort with this relationship. A number of older and more moderate pacifists feared that CORE's hard-hitting tactics pushed pacifist action far beyond what they considered acceptable. Ernest Bromley, a white Journey member and former FOR staffer, recalled that "there were lots of people on that [FOR] board who were not in favor of direct action. That was thought to be unbecoming to pacifists." Others complained forcefully about the amount of time that Houser and Rustin spent on CORE projects. Indeed, just before the launch of the Journey, Muste threatened to cut off FOR's financial support of CORE. The message was clear: racial issues were not the FOR's top priority; the real priority was working for peace. 67 The radical pacifist movement's concern with racial justice was genuine, but white activists did not consider it central to their struggle for a nonviolent world. From World War I onward, the modern American peace movement had linked the cause of justice to its effort to end war. But activists did not believe that all justice struggles were equally relevant to the cause of peace. A good number of radical pacifists premised their involvement in the labor movement on the belief that economic inequality and the capitalist concentration of power led directly to violence and war. As A]. Muste, the leader of the FOR, fervently insisted, ''we cannot eliminate war if we cling to our exploiting economic order." The discourse on racism, however, was qualitatively different. Like so many other concerned activists of the 1940s, white pacifists regularly characterized racial inequality as a grievous injustice that hindered their pursuit of the "oneness of the human family." They regarded racism as an example of social violence and a serious problem that needed to be resolved, but they did not believe that it led to war. Mrican Americans, in contrast, were well aware that the American racial order, especially the regime of white supremacy in the South, was erected and enforced by violence. They understood that living under Jim Crow was akin to living in a battle zone. But their white pacifist allies viewed combating racism as a sideline to working for international peace. 68 The civil rights organizations that supported the Journey of Reconciliation had their own political differences with the project and its organizers. Indeed, the formation of CORE was a direct challenge to the NAACP, not so much because of its pacifism as because of its militancy. CORE's pronouncements and activities often offended the NAACP's powerful national officers. As historians August Meier and Elliot Rudwick note, "CORE leaders like Bayard Rustin ... sought in nonviolent direct action a program that would provide an alternative to what they deemed the ineffectual NAACP." Rustin railed against the cautious legalistic approach of the NAACP and "those who question the use of nonviolent direct action by Negroes in protesting discrimination, on the grounds

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that this method will kindle hitherto dormant racial feeling." Not unexpectedly, the NAACP hesitated in expressing its support for CORE. The influential Thurgood Marshall, Rustin noted, publicly "'cautioned' Negroes in the South to avoid nonviolent resistance tactics ... [and] added that a 'disobedience movement on the part of Negroes and their white allies ... would result in wholesale slaughter with no good achieved.' " Their divergent viewpoints and strategies for action meant that the two organizations had an ambivalent relationship.69 Just the same, CORE organizers rightly recognized the importance of cooperating with the NAACP and, in the months before the Journey, worked to smooth relations between the two organizations and to reach out to the larger Mrican American community. CORE and FOR members arranged for reporters from the Pittsburgh Courier and the Baltimore Afro-American to observe and accompany the Journey. Rustin and Houser managed to drum up support from civil rights attorneys Spottswood Robinson and Charles Houston, prominent black leaders such as Mary McLeod Bethune, and, ultimately, even gained the qualified support of Marshall. Nevertheless, it was clear to all concerned that the 'journey was not backed by the national NAACP office, whose policy was to stick to legal cases and education and to shun nonviolent action." 70 Despite this lack of enthusiasm for direct action, the NAACP provided Journey organizers with invaluable assistance, most notably a list of key NAACP contacts and lawyers in cities along the project's route. Houser and Rustin used this list to line up speaking engagements, meetings, and hospitality for the riders as they journeyed south. Support was more forthcoming at the local level, reflecting a broader grassroots interest in Gandhian direct action methods than was articulated by the national office. "[Local] NAACP attorneys ... were prepared to defend us in the event of arrest," recalled Jim Peck, and "NAACP members were ready to take us into their homes during our stopovers." This local and concrete cooperation proved crucial to the Journey's success. 71 The limitations of the national NAACP's support of the Journey of Reconciliation became apparent as the project's legal challenges slowly wended their way through the courts. Volunteer lawyers quickly resolved almost all of the cases in favor of the defendants, but one set of cases, stemming from the arrests in Chapel Hill, dragged on for several years. With local supporters unable to provide the ongoing aid that the Journey's defendants needed, CORE and FOR leaders became desperate. "Our problem," George Houser wrote to the North Carolina NAACP in an urgent request for help, "is that we are not a legal defense organization .... Groups like the NAACP have that as their first task." But defending Journey of Reconciliation members was not an NAACP priority. Despite the constitutional issues involved in these

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arrests, the national NAACP showed little interest in pursuing the case; local branches could not cover the legal expenses incurred from multiple appeals to county and state superior courts. Although some members of the Journey wanted to appeal their cases all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, they could not do so without financial and legal backing. The North Carolina Supreme Court upheld the verdicts in the Chapel Hill case and the chain-gang sentences imposed on the four who were found guilty. CORE's organizers still considered the Journey of Reconciliation a success, but it was clear that other black activists did not give the project their unqualified support. 72 Gender inequities compounded the difficulties that arose from differing priorities. All of those chosen to participate in the Journey were men, even though, as George Houser recalled, "there were a good many women who were active in CORE and on our National Committee who wanted to go." Wally Nelson, one of the black members of the project, strongly believed that the Journey should act out CORE's vision of an egalitarian and integrated society. As Nelson remembered, "I was one of the people who said ... , 'You've got to have women on this .... This is what we believe!'" His wife, Juanita Morrow Nelson, an activist in her own right who had helped catalyze the 1943 Howard University protests, concurred. "I knew what was going on because I was active in CORE at the time," she recalled. "As a matter of fact, I was very upset because I thought it should be an integrated Journey, ... that women should be on it." But the Nelsons were in the minority. Although notes from meetings indicate that "the original idea assumed women as well as men would participate in the Journey," organizers ultimately limited the project to men. 73 Having racially mixed groups of men and women disrupt Jim Crow seating arrangements would have been a dangerous undertaking indeed. The sexual politics of race in America, even in the 1940s, prohibited the association of black men with white women. Built upon the stereotype of the dangerous, hypersexualized black male who threatened the purity of white womanhood, these social mores linked racial and sexual oppression in the pursuit ofwhite male supremacy. In the Jim Crow South, violating these codes could provoke a catastrophically violent reaction. The Journey of Reconciliation's organizers clearly recognized this fact. The leaders believed that "mixing the races and sexes would possibly exacerbate an already volatile situation," leading to violence and even death. Disrupting racially segregated seating, they argued, was a big enough battle to wage without adding the explosive ingredient of sex. Journey organizers were willing to cross some lines, but not all. 74 They seemed, at first, willing to explore other options. Journey leaders promised to set up a similar project for interested women, although

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Houser later recalled that "we were a little vague on that." Both CORE and FOR "considered carefully" the proposal for "a team of girls" to embark on a follow-up Journey in the months subsequent to the original expedition. Members of both groups "held several enthusiastic discussions on the possibility of another interracial Southern bus trip," and many supporters "felt it was a good project." It likely would have been less provocative to send an all-female group down South than to have sent an interracial group of women and men. The time seemed right, since a number of women emphatically wanted to extend what the Journey had begun, and even to increase its level of resistance. As one woman who hoped to join an all-female Journey wrote to the CORE office, "I have a strong feeling that the time to take the lines a little further south is now while the men's trip hasn't been forgotten." Nevertheless, CORE's key staff and organizers seemed unwilling to devote the time and resources necessary to get this second project off the ground. ''We discussed a possible Female Journey," Catharine Raymond, George Houser's secretary, apologetically explained to one woman who wanted to continue the project, "but decided against sponsoring one this year, because all the cases from last spring's trip are still unsettled, and so we still have the expenses of all those trials to face." Follow-up on the men's project was given a higher priority than organizing a women's challenge to Jim Crow. CORE passed the project over to FOR's Racial-Industrial Department, but it reached a dead end there as weli.75 While it is relatively easy to explain women's exclusion from the original Journey, it is more difficult to explain why CORE never developed an all-female project. CORE's and FOR's lack of support for a women's Journey can in part be attributed to the prevailing cultural attitudes of the time. Across the nation, women were forced to relinquish the gains they had made during World War II as soon as the war ended. Displaced from jobs and political posts by soldiers returning from the front, women found themselves pushed back into the domestic realm and out of the public sphere. Although some women, particularly unionists, resisted this trend, historian Karen Anderson notes that the war marked only "a temporary retreat from the prevailing notions of women's capabilities and proper roles." That radical pacifists should follow such trends was to be expected: these developments played out across the broad spectrum of American politics and life. 76 The female activists in CORE, FOR, and the pacifist direct action movement did not subscribe to these limited expectations regarding gender roles and women's place. A number of women, including the well-respected black NAACP organizer Ella Baker, who had years of experience traveling alone throughout the South, attended the planning and decision-making meetings for the Journey of Reconciliation, voiced

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their concern about women's exclusion, and expressed a desire to participate in the project. Others recruited female riders on their own and raised money to cover the expenses of an all-female Journey. They were, in their own words, "counting on being able to go." When they couldn't, they complained loudly. Juanita Nelson, by then a veteran CORE organizer, recalled being "hopping mad" about not being able to participate in this pathbreaking project. She was outspoken enough to have given several male staffers and volunteers a piece of her mind. Women in the movement did not retreat without a fight. 77 Just the same, their angry protests at being excluded carried little weight. Marj Swann's recollections highlight the limits offemale agency and authority at the time: "there just wasn't enough approval for us to participate. The men just put their collective feet down." In a movement founded upon the egalitarian principle that all human beings were, in the words of A. J. Muste, "children of God, ... essentially brothers and sisters," the unequal balance of power between women and men was particularly striking. But as the politics of the Journey of Reconciliation suggest, in 1947 radical pacifism's commitment to brotherhood was not just a figure of speech. 78 Women's exclusion from the Journey reflected the unspoken dynamics of gender which had begun to define radical pacifist politics during the jailhouse protests of World War II. The movement's "war" was a nonviolent one, but the implications were the same as far as gender roles were concerned. The old trope of the self-sacrificing woman who stayed behind as men left home to fight prevailed, even when women acted on the front lines of militant protest. In contrast to the image of the "Beautiful Soul," masses of women in the 1940s marched on the front lines, risking arrest and imprisonment, not to mention hecklers and street fights, as they protested against racial inequality, militarism, and the draft. Their presence and numbers were, in fact, vital to the success of an unpopular movement that had few recruits and diminishing support during the wartime and postwar years. Rather than celebrating women's heroic risk taking actions, however, written reports overwhelmingly described women as "natural" pacifiers, passive resisters whose mere presence alone could calm potentially explosive situations. FOR's predominantly male Racial-Industrial Department asserted, for example, when discussing the dynamics of including women in direct action projects, that "there is less likelihood of violence if women happen to be present." When the threat of violence did appear, men often took it upon themselves to stand by protectively as women participated in protests and pickets. Little did these men realize that they were engaging in the kind of chivalric behavior that white men still used to sustain racial and sexual supremacy. Instead, true to type, men

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championed women as pacifiers in volatile situations and, more important, as stalwart supporters. Organizers of the Journey of Reconciliation proudly recounted how women on the buses were more willing than men to assist the Journey's efforts. It was women, they argued, who most readily wrote their names and phone numbers down on cards in case they needed to be called as courtroom witnesses and who most vocally expressed support for the activists' open defiance of the Jim Crow laws. Women's achievements brought acclaim, but only in secondary roles. 79 Women who insisted on primary participation in the movement were perceived as an anomaly and a threat. Not only did men in the movement use gender to code their militancy masculine, they also explicitly defined this militancy by contrasting it to a devalued feminine identity. Femininity, from their perspective, represented weakness, dishonor, and an inability to perform as leading actors within the public sphere. Men acted to prove themselves as men, as pacifist activists who were as masculine as soldiers, who were stronger and more powerful than women, and who were thus worthy of political respect. Women could act as well, but they did so within a framework that ensured their accomplishments would not overshadow those of movement men. The concept of a female Journey, especially one that might push the project deeper into the South than the original all-male group had gone, must have been anathema to the men of FOR and CORE. While these men revealed little through the words they left behind, their actions indicate just how minimally they supported the idea of independent female organizing efforts. Its egalitarian principles notwithstanding, the radical pacifist movement was not yet ready to accept the full implications of gender equality in its actions for social change. In the months that followed the Journey of Reconciliation, actlVIsts waited in vain for a nonviolent mass movement to rise up in its wake. Despite the belief of CORE and FOR members that "if an organized, interracial group set an example" other people would follow, the reality was that other people didn't. "The masses were not yet ready to enter into active struggle," Bayard Rustin later reflected, although he insisted that "their sympathies were with us." Even activists within the NAACP had not fully come to the project's aid. These miscalculations failed to diminish the project's impact on the coterie of radical pacifists. As historians August Meier and Elliot Rudwick note, for these diehard supporters of nonviolent direct action, the Journey "functioned as a dramatic high point and source of inspiration ... for years to come. "80 Although radical pacifists hadn't yet built a nonviolent revolutionary movement, they had certainly laid the foundation for a militant and action-oriented movement identity. Nonviolence was key: their ability to

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transplant Gandhian direct action to American soil made the pacifists useful to broader struggles for social change, even though they were not yet fully accepted by mainstream Americans or their erstwhile allies on the Left. If it was impossible for the radical pacifists to create an international brotherhood through peace, they could at least take steps toward an interracial brotherhood at home. The Journey proved that nonviolence had survived the onslaught of World War II as a viable political force. The culture of brotherhood survived as well, as the efforts of the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution and the Journey of Reconciliation highlighted in the most literal sense. Despite their egalitarian rhetoric, radical pacifists reified and perpetuated the relationship between masculinity and militancy that resisting COs had established in their wartime prison protests. Gender inequality-as a problem rather than a presumptionbarely registered on their cultural radar. And, although women participated in this gendered construction of protest, they were dissatisfied with the result. Even the men of CNVR were not satisfied with the direction that the movement had taken. An August 1947 conference entitled ''Where Radicalism in the Next 5 Years?" confirmed that militant pacifists still saw themselves as at the cutting edge of radical social change. Now they wanted to take American radicalism, shaped by their understanding of Gandhian nonviolence, one step farther. Traditional forms of protest seemed futile. The possibility of creating a mass movement seemed futile as well. As one member maintained, "to hope for mass action in the near future is ... an illusion." Instead, many of them argued that if they were going to create revolutionary change, they would have to lead revolutionary lives, to serve, in David Dellinger's words, "as examples of alternatives to the existing social set-up. "81

Chapter 2

The Peacemakers' AlternativeVision

By 1952, white pacifist Marion Coddington Bromley was well on her way to realizing the revolutionary vision outlined by radical activists five years before. Her marriage four years earlier to the Rev. Ernest Bromley, a former Fellowship of Reconciliation staffer and Journey of Reconciliation team member, had given her personal life a decidedly political tinge. Marion's married life revolved around activist pursuits, and so did the communal household that she and her husband formed with another young activist couple, black pacifists Juanita Morrow and Wally Nelson. With the support of her husband and her housemates, Bromley found ways to engage in militant nonviolent action, even with a growing brood of young children. When protests against racial segregation erupted at the popular Coney Island amusement park near her home in Cincinnati, Marion was poised to take a leading role. That summer, Marion Bromley was arrested with the Nelsons for blocking traffic to protest Coney Island's policy of refusing admission to black patrons. The three activists adopted a determined stance of resistance and noncooperation modeled on radical pacifism's wartime protests for racial justice: they staged nonviolent pickets and blockades in front of the park; once arrested, they refused to eat while being held in jail; and, when brought before a judge, they stood mute in the courtroom. By the time of their court hearing, Bromley's nine-day hunger strike had taken its toll. Supporters reported that she emerged from prison "so weak she had to be helped downstairs by two women and taken to the car in a wheel chair." But physical deprivation only seemed to strengthen the power of her protests. Her husband Ernest picketed outside the jailhouse with the couple's two young children, holding a sign that proclaimed, "My Wife Is in Jail." Fellow activists trumpeted Marion's feats as a prime example of the daring, dedicated militancy that the work of social change required. She was, in their eyes, a true American, fighting for the principles of liberty and freedom in the face of repression and reaction. By courageously resisting coercion and actively demanding racial justice, she became a heroic and celebrated model for pacifist protest. 1

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Like Marjorie Swann, Marion Bromley could trace her political roots back to childhood teachings on the Social Gospel at her family's church. With other youth of her generation, she adopted the antiwar message of the 1930s as her own. Marion brought a sense of fun and adventure, which played itself out through athletics and flying, to her political activism; her flair for challenging social conventions became visible in her spirited style of protest. Marion held onto her pacifist beliefs even as World War II approached and large numbers of her contemporaries "swung around," as she described it, "to a full support position." She worked with the Council for Peace Action in her hometown of Akron, Ohio, and in 1942, in the wake of Pearl Harbor, she quit her secretarial job, left her family's home, and moved to New York City to work in the main office of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. 2 Marion Coddington Bromley's time at the FOR marked her maturation as a committed and effective activist. The hubbub of activity that swirled around the Fellowship's national office quickly drew her into a vibrant and radical pacifist community. Bromley met Ernest during those years and forged close friendships with her political colleagues. She lived in community for the first time, sharing an apartment with a group of five like-minded friends and coworkers. Her peers played an important role in her political development, and her growing professional duties as A.]. Muste's personal secretary provided her with an unparalleled education in the theory and practice of nonviolent dissent. Marion regularly participated in street meetings and picket lines organized by the FOR and other New York pacifist groups. She relished being in the thick of excitement and of what she happily called "trouble"; by 1948, she had been arrested several times. At the same time that she took her place on the front lines of confrontation, she became a key behind-the-scenes player in New York City's radical pacifist circles. This potent combination of repeated engagement in direct action and sustained organizational work arose from her desire to put her principles into practice in all parts of her life. Marriage deepened and supported her commitment to militant action. Theirs was more than a partnership of love; Marion and Ernest were partners in the struggle against racism, violence, and war. 3 The approach to activism that Marion Bromley embraced and exemplified was remarkable both at the time and in retrospect. In contrast to the celebration of masculine militancy that had dominated the radical pacifist movement during wartime and prevailed during the immediate postwar era, the culture of dissent in the late 1940s and early 1950s made room for models of protest that allowed women like Bromley to stand proudly in the limelight. The principled nonviolence that she practiced was based on an equal partnership of husband and wife, a

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commitment to interracial solidarity that extended from her communal household to her organizational work, and broad-based community networks. When Bromley took the lead, the isolation, fear, and sense of powerlessness that paralyzed peace activists vanished. As they made their way through the shifting cultural and political alignments that accompanied America's entry into the Cold War, activists like Marion challenged ordinary Americans as well as their own smaller circle of political comrades to redefine their understandings of patriotism, militancy, and radical dissent.

"A Small But Bothersome Conscience": Radical Pacifists in the Early Cold War Years The difficulties that militant pacifists and other radical activists encountered during the late 1940s and early 1950s came as a complete surprise to them. Americans committed to social change initially viewed the postwar era through an optimistic lens. Labor radicals stood in what appeared to be a position of strength as World War II drew to an end. Other activists noted hopefully that wartime struggles had increased opportunities for Mrican Americans and women. Why shouldn't they trust that the momentum of such achievements would carry over into the future? Even radical pacifists, feeling less besieged now that the war was over, looked forward to bringing their message of nonviolence to Americans in peacetime. 4 Government policies quickly contradicted this view of postwar possibility. The declaration of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 and congressional approval of the Marshall Plan established a policy of containment that marked the formal beginnings of the Cold War. Political leaders cast the Soviet Union and, by extension, the American Communist Party as dangerous enemies that threatened national security from without and within. As activists soon learned, this was not a world at peace. Nor was their nation open to progressive currents of social and political change. President Truman inaugurated the federal loyalty oath program in 1947; states and municipalities soon followed suit. The Taft-Hartley Act effectively required labor unions to expel actual or suspected Communists from leadership positions. The U.S. Attorney General began drawing up an extensive list of "subversive" organizations for surveillance and prosecution, while the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) targeted alleged Communist Party members and fellow travelers. By 1948-1949, the government's persecution of dissenters had reached a fevered pitch, climaxing in 1950 with the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the arrests of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg for atomic espionage. The criminalization of the Communist Party and the

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growing equation of all forms of dissent with Communist subversion quickly contracted the boundaries of acceptable political debate. 5 Radical pacifists were shielded from the most direct consequences of the domestic anticommunist crusades. Despite their openly leftist political orientation, radical pacifists were obviously and avowedly not Communists. A long history of sectarian distrust between Communist and noncommunist radicals had estranged activists such as A. J. Muste, David Dellinger, Wally Nelson, and Jim Peck from CP-led political programs. The distance between absolute pacifists and potential Communist allies only increased after Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 when, after years of spearheading antiwar activities in the United States, the CP suddenly trumpeted the call to join the war against fascism. Radical pacifists still refused to jump onto the anticommunist bandwagon, believing that it threatened the civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution to all dissenters. But they also made sure to highlight the differences between their goals and those of the Communist Party. 'That there be no misunderstanding of our position and purpose," they typically explained, "we emphasize that we ... condemn and oppose ... war preparation in Russia ... no less than in the United States."6 This position had been a liability in wartime, but in the context of postwar anticommunist hysteria it was an asset. At a time when the American public increasingly thought of the Communist Party as a secretive and violent sect that slavishly followed the directives of its Soviet leaders, radical pacifists prided themselves on their honesty, openness, and political independence. Unlike many other radicals who found themselves caught up in the anticommunist snares of loyalty oaths, HUAC, and McCarthyism, radical pacifists had little to lose by principled noncooperation with the Red Scare. By the late 1940s, they were accustomed to operating on the political margins. They had also acquired a taste for living on the edge of financial insecurity. Most militant pacifists viewed the capitalist system as yet another example of violence in action. They withdrew from it as much as possible, doing odd jobs to get by, establishing small cooperative businesses, or working for organizations like the FOR or the WRL at subsistence wages. This strategy turned the prospect of being blacklisted for their political beliefs into a hollow threat. Finally, since prison was a badge of honor in their eyes, the threat of government prosecution was as much an invitation as a deterrent. By living their lives as close to their beliefs as possible, radical pacifists attained a degree of immunity from the risks most other progressive Americans faced. 7 Radical pacifism remained highly suspect in American political culture. Public skepticism about pacifists' loyalty and courage continued to hold sway as the nation shifted from a hot to a cold war. The generally

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accepted equation between nonviolence and appeasement endured, staining antiwar activism with an un-American, even treasonous, tinge. Neither could pacifists escape the new meaning of "un-Americanism" promoted by the federal government in its anticommunist campaigns. Explicitly pro-Soviet peace initiatives, such as the American Peace Crusade, which identified the United States as the greatest threat to world peace, were construed as conflating peace with Communism as opposed to Americanism. Historian Robbie Lieberman notes that "pacifists were attacked for serving Communist interests," their vocal anticommunism notwithstanding. The internationalist 1950 Stockholm Peace Petition, a campaign that collected over one million signatures in the United States calling for an end to the development and threatened use of nuclear arms, actions that would have minimized the U.S. lead in nuclear weapons production, made pacifist efforts seem more dangerous than before. Even if individuals didn't believe the propaganda, the government crackdown on radicalism made many afraid to ally themselves with a movement that was branded subversive. 8 Antiwar activists clearly recognized the limitations of their politics of witness at this perilous historical moment. They consoled themselves by comparing their endeavors, in the words of one leading pacifist, "to a sharp pebble in the shoe of society, a small but bothersome conscience to the body politic." Sentiments like this highlight the degree to which pacifists thought of themselves as voices crying in the wilderness, principled and resolute prophets acting almost alone to resist the militarism that seemed to escalate from wartime into peacetime. Militant pacifists realized that their isolation limited their influence. A 1948 conference report astutely observed that "ours is a minority movement.... On the other hand, we do not want to be an isolated sect." Pacifists still hoped to spark the nonviolent revolution they had dreamed of during World War II, and at the onset of the Cold War they struggled to find a way to set it off.9 Radical pacifists were fortunate that their powerlessness and isolation protected their small movement from the worst of government harassment and repression, giving them room to organize and maneuver. In contrast to the CP, which the government believed posed a genuine threat, since its influence over organized labor gave it critical leverage to disrupt the nation's manufacturing sector, radical pacifists were not viewed as presenting any danger to national security or political consensus, no matter how annoying and objectionable they might be. This official indifference must have frustrated activists at the time, but it also minimized the attention paid to them by the most oppressive of government forces. FBI records indicate that pacifists didn't entirely duck under the radar of intelligence-gathering officials, but their low profile

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meant they were not rounded up like Communist Party leaders were. Although radical pacifists operated in an environment heavily influenced by anticommunism, they found an unexpected degree of latitude and freedom for experimentation, in large part due to official and popular indifference. 10 This complex environment shaped the spring 1948 gathering of peace activists that founded the Peacemakers movement. An effort to push pacifism to what its founders characteristically called a more "revolutionary" stage, Peacemakers came to embody the possibilities for militant nonviolence in the early Cold War years. Its members chose the action-oriented name "Peacemakers" to set themselves apart from the "peace-talkers" and "peace-hopers" they believed dominated existing pacifist organizations. Founders hoped the new group would provide a more comprehensive approach to peacemaking. As Marion Bromley, who played a central role in these discussions, recalled, "many of those who had resisted World War II ... began to think that what was required was commitment to a way of life that expressed nonviolence in all areas." Peacemakers combined the tactics of nonviolent action with an alternative lifestyle that placed "building community" at its center, redefining both the substance and the style of resistance. In the chilly political climate that prevailed at the onset of the Cold War, this plan of action struck a responsive chord. Organizers expected only fifty to seventy-five people to attend the movement's founding conference, yet more than three hundred activists arrived to chart this new political course. David Dellinger proclaimed it "the first real sign of hope in ten years, ... the beginnings of a real movement. "11

"It Is Contrary to Our Manhood": Peacemakers Resist the Draft The founding of Peacemakers provided the political and organizational framework for radical pacifism's next campaign, a program to resist the imposition of a peacetime draft. The movement's efforts featured a series of public demonstrations, calls to encourage young men to refuse to register, and the establishment of draft counseling and support services for those subject to conscription. These activities paralleled those organized during the war, but activists displayed new flexibility and breadth in their definition of pacifist militancy during the early Cold War years. 12 The continuities with the past were most obvious in the group's campaign against military conscription. Given the personal histories of Peacemakers' leading members, draft resistance was a logical and compelling choice. Draft resistance had provided a crucial training ground for the men and women now setting the movement's postwar political

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agenda. Not only was military refusal the most direct way they knew to say "no" to war, but during World War II it had highlighted the power of nonviolent action to foment change and had enabled activists to make concrete links between the antiwar and civil rights struggles. Although under the provisions of the 1948 draft act most of Peacemakers' male members were just old enough not to be at risk of being called up themselves, the group saw the new law as the fulcrum around which to organize their movement. Resisting the draft was what these activists knew how to do best. Resistance to conscription offered radical pacifists another opportunity to ally with the black freedom struggle, which by 1947 was directly challenging segregation within the armed forces. The contradiction between fighting racism abroad and practicing Jim Crow at home underlay the first successes of Mrican Americans' long campaign against the second-class status of black soldiers. A. Philip Randolph's March on Washington Movement had demanded integration of the armed forces as well as the end of racist hiring practices in war industries. When, in 1947, President Truman proposed a peacetime draft with no guarantees against racial discrimination, Randolph gathered his forces and founded the Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, and then the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation. This second group caught the attention of pacifist activists A. J. Muste and Bayard Rustin, who viewed Randolph's campaign as a means to popularize the feasibility of nonviolent action and to strengthen the ties between peace and civil rights. When Randolph threatened to mobilize black youth in a mass movement of nonviolent resistance to the draft, the radical pacifists eagerly signed on. 13 The unresolved tensions that had plagued the relationship between peace and civil rights in such organizations as CORE and on such projects as the Journey of Reconciliation quickly reappeared as Randolph's campaign took hold. Black activists embraced the use of Gandhian tactics but made it clear that they based their protests against the draft solely on opposition to Jim Crow. Their nonviolence was a matter of strategy rather than principle. Randolph welcomed the resources and assistance that radical pacifists provided; both Muste and Rustin, paid FOR staffers, devoted a great deal of time and energy to this project. Still, Randolph wondered out loud how these allies would reconcile their absolute opposition to the draft with Mrican Americans' determined drive to be included in the military as equal citizens. Randolph recognized the imperfect fit between the radical pacifist and black freedom struggles. Yet, in pursuit of an integrated nonviolent mass movement against conscription, radical pacifists were willing, at least temporarily, to disregard the fact that the project's ultimate goal was not

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eradicating the military itself. They believed that fostering a Gandhianstyle struggle would, in the long run, benefit their own, less popular radical pacifist goals. The two groups of activists worked together in a state that historianjo Ann Ooiman Robinson calls "reciprocal wariness": they supported each other, yet remained on guard. 14 This alliance shattered in july 1948 when President Truman, responding to the pressure generated by Randolph's threatened protests, issued Executive Order 9981 mandating "equality of treatment" for all members of the U.S. armed forces. This victory prompted Randolph to call off his campaign of resistance just a month before military registration was to begin. The pacifists, most notably Rustin, sputtered at being left high and dry on the eve of what they had hoped would be a massive campaign of nonviolent protest. Rustin, Muste, and other members of Peacemakers decided to continue the resistance on their own, but not before alienating Randolph by issuing a series of caustic public statements that criticized him for backing down. Randolph, in turn, charged his pacifist former allies with using the campaign for what he labeled "ulterior purposes" by being more concerned about building their own movement than with working toward the goal of civil rights. Pacifists may have believed that their antimilitarist goals were inextricably linked to the fight for black freedom, and they genuinely struggled to make those connections real, but, as before, they found it difficult to understand the limitations of their perspective. 15 Peacemakers went ahead with its campaign against the peacetime draft. Utilizing the strategies and tactics that had characterized radical pacifist protest during the war years, activists distributed leaflets and organized local demonstrations and pickets timed to coincide with the August 30 start date for military registration. In cities as varied as Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Chicago, and Columbus, Ohio, members of Peacemakers worked effectively to make their position known. Much of the news coverage criticized the pacifists' efforts. Yet activists viewed even negative publicity as better than none, for it gave notice that it was possible to view U.S. foreign policy in an alternative, nonmilitaristic light.I 6 The Resist Conscription campaign echoed earlier protests in its gender as well as racial exclusivity, most notably through a rhetoric and style that emphasized the connection between pacifist action and masculine identity. "Sex is here to stay," one Peacemakers leaflet boldly proclaimed, "and so is opposition to war." This headline was intended to shock and amuse the audience enough to capture their attention, but Peacemakers also meant to reassure men on the street that antimilitarism and virility could go hand in hand. Other leaflets and pronouncements went even farther, arguing that it was militarism, rather

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than the oft-maligned pacifist impulse, that threatened the nation's masculinity. A.J. Muste thundered in one widely circulated essay that acceding to the Cold War's military buildup "doomed" Americans to a state of "moral impotence." Only by standing up to the war planners in what Peacemakers called "a new type of bravery" could young men prove themselves as men. A quotation from Gandhi, which prefaced the movement's "Call to a Conference on Non-Violent Civil Disobedience to the Draft," made the pacifist equation between militancy and masculinity patently clear: "It is contrary to our manhood if we obey laws repugnant to our conscience." 17 The style in which activists defied such laws echoed the culture of bravado and tough physicality that had permeated the radical pacifist movement during World War II. Pamphlets lauded the courage of young men who were "on the front line of the struggle against war and conscription" and counterposed them against "girl friends, sisters, mothers, fathers, pastors, and fellow church-members"-who were valuable supporters but certainly could never be models of manly resistance. Even those men who no longer faced the specter of conscription could demonstrate their manhood by staging dramatic pickets, "poster parades," and streetcorner meetings. All the better if they risked arrest in the process. The media reinforced this masculine mystique by focusing on images of protesting men. Draft-resisting veterans like Jim Peck, by then an active member of New York City Peacemakers, were elevated to heroic status. Peck, who vocally insisted that "the only real stand of opposition to the draft is ... defiance of it," quickly became an icon of militant manhood as he repeatedly suffered arrest and physical attacks. He and his peers proudly wore such experiences on their sleeves as badges of honor and courage. 1B Just as activists argued that pacifism could be understood within an alternate model of masculinity, they continued to highlight its relevance to alternative definitions of patriotism and national duty. Radical pacifists insisted that the military and conscription into the armed forces posed grave threats to individual liberty and freedom. They expanded these World War 11-vintage arguments to take the concerns of the Cold War into account. Like the government, radical pacifists vowed to defend national security, but they countered the official view by asserting that a nuclear buildup and the threat of military force would only increase insecurity. "Registration means war," Peacemakers' picket signs declared, asking the public to recall the fierce battles of World War II but to reverse their perspective on their consequences. In their view, preparations for war threatened to undermine the very foundations of American life. As one Call to Action explained, "the adoption of war policy by the United States ... [represents] the same turning-point in

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American development as was the advent of Hitler to power in Germany. It is the surrender to totalitarianism and degradation." Activists used this notion that the draft was the first step toward authoritarian tyranny repeatedly, drawing on the popular understanding of Nazi oppression. In one demonstration, activists marched in front of the White House dressed as goose-stepping Uncle Sams. At another they distributed fliers with a Nuremberg-inspired photograph of rows of helmeted soldiers superimposed over a map of the United States. Activists brought this analogy into the courtroom as well: one young draft refuser commented dryly during his sentencing hearing that "the army is not a democratic institution."19 Within the emerging culture of the Cold War, where any form of political dissent carried the taint of disloyalty and subversion, such criticisms had to be carefully framed. Leaflets insisted that draft resistance was a patriotic action that allowed men to "serve" their country's "real interest." To counter the charges that dissent and protest were alien, unAmerican practices, activists argued that "civil disobedience is a peculiarly American custom," part of a political tradition established by such patriotic icons as the participants in the Boston Tea Party and Henry David Thoreau. "Conscription is Un-American," their placards proclaimed. By using slogans such as 'The Draft is the Hitler-Stalin Way" and by repeatedly stressing their noncommunist political beliefs, radical pacifists worked hard to create an image of themselves as loyal citizens who held no allegiance to the political forces that many Americans feared. Thus, although these activists consistently refused to red-bait other radicals, they wanted Americans to understand that pacifists and Soviet sympathizers were not one and the same. In ways that they did not fully recognize at the time, radical pacifists adopted the framework of the Cold War even as they struggled to redefine its basic terms. 20 Operating within this framework allowed pacifists more latitude and flexibility than even the predominantly male founders of Peacemakers initially imagined. As the draft resistance campaign continued, countercurrents to the masculinist definition of pacifist militancy as the direct refusal of military conscription circulated within and spread beyond Peacemakers communities. Radical pacifists rightly understood that they had to convince those taking the risks of resistance that, in the words of one New York Peacemakers leaflet, "you are not the only one." This was a difficult task, given the reality of how few young men had refused to comply with the new registration law; by late 1949, Peacemakers' list of refusers barely topped forty, a number that paled in comparison to the thousands of young pacifists who served in Civilian Public Service or were imprisoned during World War II. Activists worked creatively to overcome these limits, using community as an essential tool.

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They found inspiration in the movement's networks of support, maintaining contact through a periodic newsletter that publicized recent and upcoming actions. The Yellow Springs, Ohio, Peacemakers cell implemented a "Mutual Security" plan, which promised financial assistance to the families of imprisoned resisters. Others spearheaded visible demonstrations of support by packing courtrooms when defendants appeared for trial, picketing registration and induction centers, and publicizing the plight of imprisoned resisters. "This will show the authorities," they maintained, "that the non-registrants do not stand alone, and will bolster the morale of the men on trial." The few nonregistrants who came forward clearly appreciated these efforts. "Peacemakers cells ... are the foundation of the whole Peacemaker movement," wrote one grateful resister. "It will be stimulating to know that there are living and active cells going on with the work while we are in prison."2 1 This model of resistance, which used community as the basis for protest, challenged the gendered framework of radical pacifist militancy. Within Peacemakers' innovative framework, draft-age young men were not alone on the front lines of the struggle. Numerous Peacemakers argued that it was morally imperative for those not subject to the draft-older men and women of all ages-to find an equivalent way to take a stand against war. The group organizing the Resist Conscription campaign proclaimed that "to advocate a revolutionary course for teenage boys, where penalties could be exacted, without ourselves taking a similar revolutionary course, where penalties might also be exacted, would seem unfair and hypocritical." The 1948 conscription act, which defined advising others to refuse the draft as a violation of the law, enabled activists to dissolve the distinction between the small number of young male draft resisters and the larger group of Peacemakers either of the wrong sex or too old to be subject to registration requirements. The men and women of the Yellow Springs Peacemakers cell, for example, publicly advocated that young men refuse to register and encouraged Peacemakers elsewhere to do the same, a statement that placed all of them in violation of federal law. Although activists acknowledged that they faced minimal risks, in early 1949, federal authorities did indict and convict pacifist Larry Gara for counseling a young nonregistrant. His eighteen-month prison sentence, served only a few years after his two long prison terms for resisting World War II, made the shared risk taking entailed in this expanded definition of resistance concrete and consequential. 22 Pacifist leaders still characterized militancy in masculine terms, but, as Marion Bromley explained, women put themselves "in jeopardy of the law" by "advocating disobedience" on the part of young men. With their history of activism, women like Bromley found ways to be more than

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"girlfriends, sisters, mothers," even though one widely circulated Peacemakers' pamphlet described them in that way. They walked picket lines, exhorted young men not to cooperate with the draft, and were occasionally arrested. Attorney Frieda Lazarus, who worked with the War Resisters League, adamantly "referred to her activities in aiding COs as direct action" that undermined conscription as effectively as the act of draft resistance itself. Bromley, never liking to take a back seat, placed herself at the center of organizing for Peacemakers' Resist Conscription campaign and spearheaded discussions about how older activists of both sexes could take on the risks of resistance. The Gara case demonstrated that this was not simply a theoretical concern. Mter publicly declaring their support for Gara, Marion and her husband, Ernest, found themselves summoned to an interview with the FBI. By emphasizing community as a form of resistance, radical pacifists made it possible for women to take on roles commensurate with those traditionally occupied by men. 23 Alternative Communities: Transforming Private and Public Life Acknowledging the isolation and hostility that radical pacifists experienced in 1948, A. J. Muste suggested that "a person who moves among people who disagree with him profoundly must have a group to which he returns often for guidance, help, strength, and fellowship." But the alternative communities that Peacemakers created did more than sustain men through difficult battles with fearsome foes by offering them a domestic refuge with like-minded fellows and supportive women. They empowered women to venture forth into the political domain with the support of husbands and comrades. Just as important, they highlighted the possibilities for collective dissent during a time increasingly defined by conformity and isolation.2 4 What scholars refer to as the culture of the Cold War did not fall into place immediately. Although the effects of government campaigns to root out so-called Communist subversion were clearly visible by 1947 and 1948, historian Ellen Schrecker notes that it took years of careful cultivation for the nation's policymakers to convince Americans that dissent itself posed a potent threat to their way of life. The emphasis on conformity and domesticity that prevailed by the mid-1950s established itself gradually, in a partial, uneven, and often contradictory set of developments that reached well beyond matters that people overtly regarded as political. The late 1940s and early 1950s was a time of anxious uncertainty rather than an era of enforced consensus.25 During the immediate postwar years, relationships between women and men, and cultural definitions of femininity and masculinity, remained in

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flux. Many women workers resisted the push back to the household that followed the war, and a large number shifted into "pink-collar" office jobs rather than settle for full-time domesticity. The generation of vibrant young men who had shown courage and daring on the battlefield was not instantly transformed into the docile figure that cultural critic Sloan Wilson called "the man in the gray flannel suit." Key elements of Cold War culture were being promoted by the popular media, but the privatized suburbs populated by consumer-oriented nuclear families were still under construction. 26 Social arrangements and cultural definitions maintained their fluidity within the radical pacifist movement as well. Realizing that their personal lives and the future of their movement required basic changes in the nature of their resistance, activists embarked on a focused reevaluation of their political strategy. Radical pacifists sought to protect and sustain their movement and to increase its power and support, difficult undertakings in the inhospitable political climate of the Cold War years. The still-unsettled currents of cultural and social change offered room for experimentation and enabled the members of Peacemakers to develop new forms of action that redefined the nature of protest and resistance. What was at stake for Peacemakers, as for American radicalism writ large, went well beyond politics as it was previously understood; Cold War culture challenged, disrupted, and transformed the fundamental connections between public and private life on which political mobilization traditionally had been based. Popular culture promoted private familialism under the guise of advancing individualism and enhancing marital intimacy. This trend had serious negative consequences for women and for society overall. The flexibility of women's roles and the prospects for real equality between women and men were clearly on the decline, as were the social and political connections between individuals and their communities. 27 Indeed, the growing isolation of nuclear families and the disempowerment of women were deeply intertwined. Despite traumatic memories afflicting military veterans of World War II and freed military resisters, and despite the losses and disruptions suffered by women and families at home, the war years had been a time of remarkable social solidarity. In the postwar period, however, a strong impulse toward privatization accompanied the triumphal return to "normal" life, marked by the breakup of urban communities where work and residence were closely linked, the construction of residential suburbs and the decentralization of employment, and the penetration of consumer products into the most personal aspects of daily life. The changing labor market, geographic mobility, housing patterns, and rising consumer prices imposed isolation and anxiety on newly formed nuclear families. The ideology of

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female domesticity, male breadwinning, and cultural conformity that the media so deliberately promoted and that social policy constructed rested upon a foundation of male insecurity about employment, earnings, and benefits, female "supplemental" wage earning, and a cult of appearances that fostered a combination of competition and dissembling that undermined social bonds. This pattern of privatization was profoundly isolating, even immobilizing. The dismemberment of extended family, organizational, and community supports, which had blurred the lines between home and work, supported women's sense of solidarity and belonging, created structures of financial security, and laid the foundation for collective action, left individuals and families adrift in a sea of cars, commodities, and political repression. 28 Or so, at least, those who remembered and aspired to a richer and more socially committed life believed. "Community" became Peacemakers' new strategy of choice. In the history of progressive political movements, community is usually defined in terms of geographic vicinity and ethnic, racial, and class identities: black communities, immigrant and ethnic communities, and working-class communities are conceptualized as collective affiliations that arise as a result of common cultures and languages, shared experiences of oppression, and neighborhood interaction. Activists have long celebrated these organic bonds of solidarity, viewing them as an important foundation of the American radical tradition that is reinforced by militant action and shared risk taking. Peacemakers' notion of community drew on this historical legacy but turned key aspects of it around. Bound by a common set of political beliefs, radical pacifists worked to create communities where none had existed before, establishing structured networks of support and communal living arrangements. Peacemakers believed that these intentional communities would allow them to put their ideals into practice, at least within their personal relations, and help sustain their public activism over the long haul. Within this innovative framework, community became more than an outgrowth of shared political perspectives; it became the seedbed for militant action itself.29 Overcoming isolation was at the center of this alternative approach to radical politics. The need for emotional as well as political support motivated Peacemakers' community-building efforts. Mirroring the growing politicization of home and family life that saw each properly configured nuclear family as a bulwark against deviance and dissent, but challenging the model of domestic containment that came to prevail in Cold War culture, radical pacifists chose to highlight the political potential of personal relations by stressing the value of community in their struggles to resist the forces of war. In Jim Peck's recollections of his own postwar experiences, such communities, deliberately organized around shared

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political ideologies, provided the friendships and energy necessary to sustain the work of protest and resistance. Peacemakers called these groupings "cells," a borrowed term that reflected the movement's radical heritage but concealed the close personal bonds that many forged. 30 These radical pacifists, accustomed to living on the edge of what American culture would tolerate, saw more clearly than most what was at stake in the growing familial isolation and competitive individualism of postwar American life: the basic conditions that enabled and sustained collective political mobilization. They responded to these conditions in much the same way as had the radical abolitionists, feminists, and socialists of the early nineteenth century who formed alternative and utopian communities as a response to the initial onslaught of industrial capitalism. Like their antebellum predecessors in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, Rochester, Boston, and New York City who set up communal, often interracial, households sustained by religious faith and animated by political convictions, Peacemakers strove to erect and embody an alternative to the privatized cultural impulses that they believed undermined their own efforts at collective action, as well as those of the society at large. 31 Peacemakers' concept of community had an important subversive edge, inverting key cultural prescriptions regarding family, politics, and dissent. In contrast to the government's hope that family responsibilities would foster political conformity, radical pacifists believed that the alternative communities they created, their extended "families" of choice, would provide the necessary foundation for ongoing dissent. Activists came together, as couples and as families, to share a house or live on the same property, to work on common projects and in cooperative businesses, and to pool their resources in order to make ends meet. The Bromleys and the Nelsons formed one collective household just outside Cincinnati. A group of former COs and their families, including David Dellinger and Ralph DiGia, lived in another communal arrangement in Glen Gardner, New Jersey. Other activists followed suit, merging the personal and the political in the most quotidian of ways. The benefits seemed obvious, especially as the now not-so-young resisters began having children. Sharing the labor of domestic and paid work made it easier for couples to support themselves physically and emotionally during difficult times. David Dellinger's wife Elizabeth explained to other pacifist families struggling to sustain activism on their own that "a group of sincere individuals striving to work out many of their living problems together can find greater security, thus freeing themselves for more creative and radical activity." Anything but contained, Peacemaker households and social networks propelled their members-male and female alike-into political protest. 32

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Peacemakers' commitment to community, when put into daily practice, enabled and elevated the contributions of women, contributing to a culture of protest more appreciative of female participation than that which existed during radical pacifism's earlier years. Emphasizing the private face of the movement gave the traditionally female-oriented realm of personal relations as much value as the public, more masculinized face of militant protest.

"None of the Spirit of a Moral Blackjack": Pacifist Militancy and the Nuclear Threat As the draft resistance campaign drew to a close, it became clear even to the most committed proponents of pacifist resistance that fewer and fewer people were willing to commit to Peacemakers' vision of social change and political action. Roy Kepler, a member of Peacemakers and an organizer for the New York-based War Resisters League, observed radical pacifism's decline while making a cross-country trip in the spring of 1949. Despite what he reported as "a keen sense of urgency, and a flurry of activity" inspired by the anticonscription campaign, the movement no longer had the vitality that had characterized it just a year before. Kepler attributed this downturn pardy to the unwillingness of pacifist sympathizers "to change the routine of their lives in order to give more time and effort personally and sacrificially." Perhaps radical pacifism seemed like an impossible quest. Popular support continued to be sparse, and public attitudes toward dissent were growing increasingly hostile. Worse still, revolutionary pacifism had lost some of its intellectual appeal. "One thing is clear," Kepler concluded in despair: "American pacifists are making no clearcut contribution to American thought at the present time."33 These were desperate times. The threat of global conflagration had increased dramatically since the end of World War II. With the introduction of nuclear weapons into the U.S. military arsenal, the nature of warfare had changed fundamentally. The government's commitment to a nuclear-based military strategy in order to maintain its superpower position became evident as the nation built up its nuclear stockpile and improved its long-range weapons delivery systems. The Soviet Union's explosion of its own atomic device in September 1949 gave added impetus to the U.S. drive to attain unchallenged superiority. By January 1950, when President Truman announced a national program to develop the hydrogen bomb, the United States had firmly committed itself to a program based on bigger and better bombs that were intended to deter a Soviet attack. The nation had embarked on a course whose central policy was MAD: Mutually Assured Destruction. 34

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The American public reacted to U.S. entry into the atomic age with mixed emotions. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 initially brought a sense of relief: World War II had ended victoriously, and many people credited dropping the atomic bomb with saving the lives of untold thousands of American soldiers. Nevertheless, what Alan Winkler calls "the ominous potential of the new bomb" incited widespread apprehension, revulsion, and fear. Rather than paralyzing the public, however, this sentiment at first offered a sense of hope. For a few years, it seemed possible to imagine that the United States and the other nations of the world would unite to ensure that such weapons of mass destruction would never be used again. American scientists took the lead in the push to establish mechanisms of "lasting security," launching the Federation of Atomic Scientists in November 1945 and calling for the international control of nuclear weapons. 35 The new World Government movement augmented these efforts by moving beyond the goal of arms control to advocate the creation of a global federation that would be powerful enough to support an allencompassing and permanent peace. "For a brief, intense moment," historian Paul Boyer argues, "world government ... seemed to offer an escape from terror." The "One World" movement held a powerful influence over American culture and thought. Mter the Soviet test explosion of 1949, however, willingness to think critically and creatively about the bomb dissipated as public fear of the Soviets quickly came to outweigh the fear of nuclear weapons themselves. Support for world government and the international control of atomic weapons dwindled. Instead, Americans came to accept and support the use of nuclear weapons as the primary means of national defense. 36 Americans embraced the culture of nuclear deterrence as part and parcel of the culture of the Cold War. The early 1950s was not so much a "post" war era as the start of a new type of military age, in which society was controlled, even saturated by military values, but where citizens were denied direct and active participation. The Cold War was not fought by common soldiers, the men whose toughness and daring had defined American masculinity during World War II. With the advent of the atomic age, the American people had to rely on state institutions and advanced technology for their protection. The destructive capability of nuclear weapons played a critical role in this cultural shift. The overwhelming power of the bomb made all citizens impotent, soldiers and civilians alike, unable to protect themselves or their families or to launch a personal assault against this threat. What sociologist Michael Kimmel describes as the masculine need for heroic opportunities no longer had a meaningful military outlet. Little wonder, then, that family responsibilities took on such central roles in Cold War definitions ofmanhood. 37

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The culture of radical pacifist protest was as deeply affected by these developments as was mainstream American life. From Peacemakers' perspective, the bomb signified physical and spiritual death. This horrifying prospect required an immediate and dramatic response. "Against this frenzied spiral toward annihilation," one World War 11-era resister pleaded, "against this almost pathological insistence on suicide,-what answer can we give other than an equally total RESISTANCE?" By "resistance" he meant the dramatic acts of personal risk taking and individual derring-do that had marked radical pacifism in the 1940s, not the patient creation of alternative communities to support the work of social transformation. In a similar vein, ace organizer Bayard Rustin concurred with one veteran pacifist's proposal to march on munitions plants. "I want then to propose that Peacemakers ... do something rash now," he wrote to Muste in response to the January 1950 H-bomb announcement. 'We must find some way to let people know that now we are prepared to go to jail or even give up all-to get shot down if necessary-but to cry out. "38 The realities of living under the shadow of the bomb pushed activists into a desperate search for alternative modes of response. 'To match the atom and hydrogen bombs," the WRL's Roy Finch suggested to his fellow radical pacifists, "and prevent them from destroying us inside and out, we have to envisage an entirely new political era." Many believed that the overwhelming destructive power of the hydrogen bomb had ushered in a new and frightening age where pacifism was vital to the world's survival and yet profoundly impotent at the same time. Roy Finch reflected that "the appearance of the hydrogen bomb shows how far out of our grasp things are and how much we are simply abandoned to the logic of events." Nothing pacifists could conceive of doing seemed commensurate with the prospect of this unimaginably destructive weapon. "The whole framework which measures [our] effectiveness is in question," Finch concluded; "it is not clear what this means any more." The WRL's Roy Kepler admitted to Rustin that "conscientious objection in the old sense is obsolete for sure." No longer confident that their time-tested approaches to action would be effective in opposing the nuclear threat, pacifists nonetheless felt compelled to do something; some were desperate enough to try almost anything. 39 Existential questions raised by the nation's expanding nuclear arsenal complicated the debate over tactics and direction. How did one make sense of human existence, much less political protest, in a world in which the continuation of life itself could no longer be assumed? American radical pacifists echoed the words and warnings of French philosopher Albert Camus, who, in the aftermath of both the Holocaust and the atomic bombings of Japan, declared that the future of humankind

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required refusing to be either victims or executioners, making an active choice of life over death. "Either we acquiesce now to preparation for mutual annihilation," the War Resisters League appealed to its members in the winter of 1950, "or we choose to be among those who seek new ways to solve the problems which now lead us to war. "40 The "new way" that Peacemakers chose involved a dramatic shift in tactics and style. Gandhian nonviolence still remained at the front and center of everything that the radical pacifists planned. But now, instead of returning to the action-oriented militancy that had been the hallmark of past resistance campaigns, organizers turned to a quieter, more contemplative style of protest: a weeklong fast. Led by Bayard Rustin, Peacemakers and several cosponsors-the Catholic Worker, the FOR, and the WRL-scheduled a "Fast for Peace" for Easter Week 1950. Activists gathered in Washington, D.C., to form a temporary community of protest organized around daily prayer and meditation as well as public demonstrations designed to make "a direct moral appeal" to the people and powers of the world. "We feel that at this time we cannot simply go on in our accustomed ways," the fast's organizers proclaimed. The radical peace movement needed alternatives to its standard tactics-loud, confrontational, and apparently ineffective-just as the nation needed alternatives to violence and war. Although the Fast for Peace seemed outwardly tame in comparison to previous protests, leaders such as Muste and Rustin proclaimed that its emphasis on spiritual strength rather than pragmatic power politics made it a daring experiment in moral witness. 41 This assessment reflected the paradoxical situation in which pacifist radicals found themselves at midcentury. Despite their almost complete political and existential powerlessness, these activists remained convinced of their ability to foster fundamental change in U.S. foreign policy and military posture. Thinking in the Gandhian mode, they reinterpreted their powerlessness as a source of potential strength. This perspective was reinforced by trips to India that leading members of the peace movement, including Muste and Rustin, took after that nation had won its independence. American activists knew that Gandhi had described fasting and its concomitant acceptance of physical weakness as "the greatest and most effective weapon in [the nonviolent] armory." The Fast for Peaces organizers hoped that by embracing this paradigm of strength through weakness, they could model an option that the nation could emulate as well. "We can choose power, the hydrogen bomb, and the totalitarian society," the WRL's Roy Kepler explained, "or we can choose non-violence, the power that comes in giving up power."42 The Christian lens through which American radical pacifists interpreted Gandhian nonviolence increased the appeal of this unusual political

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paradigm. Perhaps the bomb made divine intervention seem like the only hope for change. The Bible certainly gave hope for miraculous events. Didn't Christ himself, pacifist religious leaders rhetorically asked, wield his utmost power through the sacrifice of crucifixion? If life could come out of death, as the biblical paradigm of resurrection promised, why should not power rise out of powerlessness as well? American pacifism had always had strong religious roots, through the historic peace churches and the influence of the Social Gospel in mainstream Protestantism; now it acquired an apocalyptic edge. The Peacemakers movement moved these spiritual questions about nonviolence to the center of its radical thought. Radical pacifists openly talked about the pursuit of "inner transformation," a quest they placed on a par with their efforts to build a revolutionary movement. As the obstacles to "outer revolution" grew, the spiritual alternatives-activities that highlighted the redeeming and transformative qualities of repentance, sacrifice, and prayer-may have seemed like the only viable options that remained. 43 Those members of Peacemakers who organized the Fast for Peace were not balmy spiritualists; they were seasoned organizers desperately grappling with the political realities of their time. Hard-hitting militants like Rustin and Dellinger genuinely believed that a public fast would be the only possible response to the political challenges at hand. In the wake of Truman's H-bomb announcement, Dellinger dared fellow pacifists "to go beyond the publicity stunts and picketing demonstrations that have characterized the more aggressive side of the anti-war movement in the last few years." The point was no longer to shock people on the street but rather, in the tradition of the ancient Greek tragedies, to use the self-suffering of the fast to arouse feelings of pathos in the viewing public. Organizers believed that by provoking an emotional catharsis, they could reverse and "break through the [public's] apathy and fear regarding the hydrogen bomb. "44 The activities of the fast's participants reflected this shift in political style. The group leafleted daily and regularly held public meetings in downtown Washington and at federal facilities, but it always made a sincere effort to avoid antagonism and rancor. On Good Friday, twentyfive members of the fast entered the Pentagon and held a three-hour Quaker-style "silent Meeting" in the corridor by the office of the Secretary of Defense. Although authorities eventually forced the vigil to move outdoors, participants believed that the act of standing patiently and silently in witness on the Pentagon steps, surrounded by armed guards and a passing stream of uniformed employees, illustrated what a former aide to Gandhi had described as the "dynamic effect" of "personal humility and love." Rather than highlighting points of confrontation, one

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member of the fast emphasized the sense of "responsibility" that vigilers felt "towards those questioning khaki-dad figures." Participants celebrated the atmosphere of reconciliation and respect that marked that day's and the week's events. "There was," one Ohio-area Peacemaker happily observed, "none of the spirit of a moral blackjack or 'hunger strike'." For this man and other activists like him, who had been put off by the more confrontational dynamics of the Resist Conscription campaign and the New York-based direct actionists, the Fast for Peace represented a welcome movement away from the rough-and-tumble style of protest that had marked radical pacifist demonstrations in the past. 45 Embracing powerlessness, or what one Peacemaker called "the essential element [of] defenselessness," allowed activists to reframe their definitions of militant action and resistance. Quiet persistence rather than raucous masculine physicality became the hallmark of these protests against the hydrogen bomb, a weapon that rendered traditional displays of power irrelevant. Despite the strong cultural correlation between powerlessness and the absence of masculine authority, radical pacifists did not consider the Fast for Peace's recognition of human vulnerability an effeminate stance. Rustin and Dellinger, the project's two key organizers, still saw activism primarily as a male pursuit. But the fast was gender balanced; more than half of the over fifty people who gathered in Washington that April were women. The presence of so many women, coupled with the distinctly gentle tenor of the fast, suggests that basic assumptions about the gendered nature of protest could be challenged. 46 These changes did not bring universal acclaim, even from the thinning ranks of the radical pacifist movement. The Fast for Peace attracted a coterie of veteran activists and organizers, including Muste, Rustin, Dellinger, George Houser, and Wally and Juanita Nelson. But many established resisters, men such as Jim Peck, Igal Roodenko, and Ralph DiGia, who had helped shape the highly masculine political culture of the wartime and immediate postwar movement, were notably absent from what the fast's organizers promoted as the cutting edge of protest against the hydrogen bomb. Their lack of involvement should not be mistaken for complacency. On the contrary, these men and others like them continued to organize dramatic protests, including a Christmas Eve picket by Santa Claus-costumed pacifists at the White House, a mock funeral through New York City's Times Square, and a pacifist invasion of a New York Loyalty Day parade. At this event, Peck displayed his usual masculine bravado by withstanding yet another brutal beating, this time by American Legionnaires, and inspired an article in the Peacemaker newsletter entitled "Mter the Brawl." This rhetorical

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equation between antiwar activism and the muscular manliness of a street fight highlighted the degree to which traditional notions of masculinity and militancy remained linked in some activists' eyes. 47 The Fast for Peace faced other political obstacles as well. The increasingly powerful climate of anticommunism, which Peacemakers did their best to defuse, would likely have stopped any radical campaign in its tracks. Activists continued to express their opposition to "both Russian and American imperialism" and explicitly identified their movement as simultaneously "anti-Capitalist and anti-Stalinist." One small group of Peacemakers went so far as to travel to Europe and appeal to citizens on both sides of the Communist divide to oppose the Cold War. Fliers distributed by the FOR, WRL, and Peacemakers declared that "these organizations are opposed to all forms of totalitarianism and are not to be confused with Communist-dominated groups calling today for 'peace'." But with "peace" increasingly defined by government leaders as the policy of containment, such declarations had little effect. 48 The public reputation of the movement was further damaged by the actions of radical pacifists who, in the summer of 1950, took the unpopular albeit principled step of supporting imprisoned American Communist Party members who had been targeted for prosecution by federal anticommunist crusaders. Their picket line at the Federal House of Detention, replete with placards calling on the government to "Release All Political Prisoners," emphasized the connection that radical pacifists made between anticommunist attacks and more generalized threats to dissent of any kind. But their view was lost on most bystanders, who, according to one article, "had difficulty understanding that the pickets were not Communist." Nor did the federal government seem to make the distinction, as harassment of pacifist activists by postal authorities, loyalty boards, and the FBI made clear. 49 The end result was a form of protest that, while innovative and experimental, proved decidedly ineffective. The Fast for Peace did not generate even the usual vociferous opposition and hostile reaction, a negative but reliable indicator of public awareness of their cause. Instead, to what must have been the dismay of the project's organizers, the Fast for Peace was greeted by deafening silence. For those who fasted and vigiled for that week, the power of the spirit, and of communal solidarity, may have seemed like potent alternatives to the threat of total war and the restrictions imposed by the nation's anticommunist obsession. The Peacemaker newsletter, for example, headlined its article on the project "Fasting for Power." Yet the article's conclusion, that "those engaged in the fast dedicated themselves anew to the task of finding the way to peace," suggests that this "power" was largely personal in nature. Winifred Rawlins, a veteran of the more assertive styles of action, arrest, and jail,

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remarked about the spiritual aspect of the fast that "each one felt it had been a great and significant experience .... [But] how far we were able to reach out to others it is difficult to know."50

"More Nearly Androgynous Than the Average": Community Building and the Struggle for Racial Justice The decline in the Peacemakers movement paralleled that of American pacifism overall. As historian Lawrence Wittner pointedly observes, "by late 1950 the postwar peace movement was clearly well along in the process of disintegration." The Fast for Peace failed to energize the movement, and other pacifists did not emulate its gentler, less aggressively masculine political style. More traditional forms of protest fell by the wayside as well. When the Korean War began in june 1950, individual objectors spoke out but no organized antiwar or draft resistance campaign materialized. For all intents and purposes, radical pacifism as a national force had faded from view, leaving only small pockets of resistance in scattered cities and towns. 5 1 Marion and Ernest Bromley personified the strength of this persistent localized spirit of protest during the early Cold War years. In the winter of 1948, for example, Marion publicly resigned from the FOR, incensed over the organization's decision not to support her refusal to pay federal income tax as a protest against military spending. The couple married that spring, just after Peacemakers' founding conference, and immediately baptized their union in the waters of political conflict. They spent the first summer of their married life in upstate New York and were practically chased out of town after Ernest preached a sermon exhorting young men to resist the peacetime draft. The couple left for southern Ohio, settling in the town of Wilmington, where they rented a modest apartment, started a small business, and had their first child. The Bromleys soon became involved in a local campaign to desegregate the public schools, a stand which, in the summer of 1950, enraged their landlord enough for him to evict them from their home. To make matters worse, on the day of their eviction, a local constable arrested Ernest for taking photographs of their piles of furniture dumped on the street, leaving Marion and their eleven-month-old son alone in search of shelter for the night. That summer it became clear that, although they had followed the route of marriage and children traveled by so many other couples of their generation, the Bromleys did not intend to pursue the trappings of conventional American life. 52 Marion and Ernest left Wilmington for the Cincinnati suburb of Gano, where in late 1950 they established a household with a small group of other Peacemaker members, including Wally and Juanita

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Nelson. Within a few years this household, with the Nelsons and the Bromleys at its core, had become a community in the most political sense of the word. The Bromleys, like other pacifists experimenting with the possibilities of communal life, believed their household would satisfy what they described as "the need for suitable housing, closer association, and mutual aid which would enable [us as] Peacemakers to 'wage peace' more effectively." "We were like a family," the Nelsons recalled. The four pooled their irregular incomes and shared household responsibilities while members of their community came and went, sometimes to jail, sometimes to demonstrations or meetings, and sometimes to work. This arrangement fostered strong bonds of affection and at the same time freed the community's adult members for political engagement. 53 For the Bromleys and the Nelsons, the circle of community extended well beyond the confines of their household. Their first loyalties were to the Peacemakers movement, which they considered to be the broader community to which they belonged. At the same time, they forged close ties to community-based projects in the greater Cincinnati area. All four adults worked with the Findley Street Neighborhood House, which provided services to low-income families in Cincinnati, and took turns at the helm of the city's interracial civil rights organization, the Cincinnati Committee on Human Relations (CCHR). The Nelsons worked for several years on a project subsidized by Ohio-area Peacemakers to make "contacts with groups much neglected by pacifists-lower income class, working class, and student groups," with the goal of bringing Peacemakers' principles to bear on what Juanita characteristically called "problems in our own back yards. "54 "Community," however, encompassed more than making strong personal connections to people and groups on local, regional, and national levels. For the members of the Gano Peacemakers community, it also meant public resistance. This equation was put to the test almost immediately after the group moved into the old farmhouse they had collectively purchased. This unconventional interracial household quickly attracted the attention of its white suburban neighbors, who, in their effort to uphold customary Jim Crow practices, began pressuring the couples to sell their home and leave town. Local residents held angry meetings, telephoned threats to the Bromleys and the Nelsons, and persuaded two different insurance companies to cancel the household's homeowners insurance. The two families stood fast. The law was on their side, and neither couple had ever been known to back down from a challenge. The conflict revealed that their simple presence in town was enough to threaten the prevailing social and political order. 55 The two couples continued this challenge by throwing themselves into the work of CCHR, which the Nelsons had worked with since their

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arrival in Cincinnati in 1949. Juanita played a particularly vital role in the organization: she spearheaded the drive to organize CCHR as a CORE affiliate, led numerous nonviolence trainings, and coordinated publicity for CCHR's pursuits. By then a skilled organizer with almost ten years of direct action experience, Juanita guided CCHR through a number of campaigns, including a successful three-year drive to integrate the city's two music academies. Marion Bromley, in the meantime, gave birth to a second child. Despite the added family responsibilities, by 1952 both she and Ernest were fully involved in CCHR's racial justice work. Within just a few years, their household had become a formidable force in the local civil rights struggle. 56 The Gano Peacemakers made their influence felt in a variety of ways. Members of the community occupied most of the positions of responsibility and leadership within CCHR. Their willingness to do the hard and unglamorous work necessary to keep the organization alive gave them the power to chart the direction that its civil rights campaigns would take. When CCHR chose its next local target, the popular but whitesonly Coney Island amusement park, it adopted the strategy of nonviolent direct action pioneered by radical pacifists in FOR, CORE, and Peacemakers. Focusing on the amusement park reflected the Peacemakers' commitment to egalitarian ideals. "Coney Island is a natural," Juanita Nelson wrote proudly in late 1951, in the flush of CCHR's victorious campaign to force music academies to admit black students. The amusement park "has the advantage of being available to everyone," she explained, "not to a handful of music students, and of lending itself to direct action." This was no bastion of elite culture and education; Coney Island provided popular entertainment for Cincinnati's white masses. The campaign against racial exclusion there thus lent itself to mobilizing broad-based community support. In the characteristic CORE manner, CCHR members consulted with "everyone" before starting the direct action component of this campaign. ''We checked with the Mayor's Friendly Relations Committee, the Urban League, NAACP," they noted, and then brought in additional allies; an April1952 hearing attracted representatives from the Jewish Community Relations Council, the Federation of Settlement and Neighborhood Houses, and the local Steel Workers union. When these advocates of integration were summarily rebuffed by Coney Island's director of management, the campaign's organizers, led by the Gano community, moved their efforts to the next stage ofprotest. 57 Interracial groups of CCHR members went to Coney Island each weekend that spring to seek entrance to the park for black people as well as whites. Protesters practiced what one account called "the politics of congestion."

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Cars carrying both blacks and whites would approach Coney's auto gate, then refuse to back up when they were refused admission. Whites would walk behind blacks to the foot gate, then refuse to move ahead in line until tickets were first sold to blacks.

On busy days, these tactics could tie up car and foot traffic for several blocks. At one Saturday protest in mid-May, police attempted, with litde success, to drag Wally and Juanita Nelson from the admission line. When the group could not get in by foot, Marion Bromley and Juanita Nelson tried to enter by automobile; they were then placed under arrest, although never officially charged. By the time officers arrested and jailed the three activists in June 1952, they were old hands at getting "pushed or pulled out of the line, or dragged from their cars." Once Marion had gone so far as to roll up her car windows and throw her keys into the back seat so that police would be forced to push her car out of the line. Although other members of CCHRjoined them in attempting to gain entry to the park, Wally, Juanita, and Marion were the only ones whom police actually arrested. Their willingness to jeopardize their freedom added a critical dimension of risk and drama to CCHR's desegregation campaign. 58 The threesome's decision to refuse to cooperate with authorities pushed CCHR's resistance onto new ground. Challenging the legitimacy of their arrest and charging that incarceration was "a complete violation of human rights," the three embarked upon a water-only fast that lasted for the full week and a half of their confinement. From behind the bars of the Hamilton County jail, they sent out word that they hoped their sacrifices would inspire others to act and would "contribute to and strengthen efforts to make brotherhood that much more of a reality." Their actions seemed to have a catalyzing effect. Although the resisters were released after nine days in jail, the desegregation project continued through the summer, and racially mixed groups regularly appeared at Coney Island's front gate and picketed on the streets outside. The campaign pressured the Cincinnati City Council to conduct hearings on the park's discriminatory policies. The local NAACP took up the challenge, began conducting test cases themselves at the park gate, and ultimately won a lawsuit against the park. When the park finally changed its racially discriminatory admittance policies in 1955, an announcement in the CORE newsletter gratefully acknowledged that "considerable community support had been enlisted." Most agreed that the direct action protests, inaugurated by Wally, Juanita, and Marion, had provided the impetus for these events. 59 The principled and dramatic acts of resistance that marked the struggle to integrate Coney Island amplified the power of CCHR's campaign, and their tenacity reverberated far beyond Cincinnati. The Peacemaker carried stories about the actions and their aftermath on its front page

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for two months in a row, and the national office of CORE sent out a mailing appealing for support from its membership. Neither of these venues reached much beyond the existing network of pacifist and civil rights activists, but these two overlapping protest communities provided a nationwide support system for the three imprisoned activists and helped increase the visibility of CCHR's efforts. Correspondence hints at wide newspaper coverage of both the arrests and the prison resistance, including an article in the New York Times. Supporters from across the country mailed letters of complaint to the Cincinnati mayor's office and to the justice of the peace in charge of the case. "The NelsonBromley case," one letter from St. Louis pointed out, "is getting wide publicity in ... other cities throughout the country. "60 Through their actions, the Nelsons and the Bromleys did far more than challenge the racial balance of power in southern Ohio. Drawing on a tradition of black female militancy in the civil rights struggle, as well as on radical pacifism's rhetorical commitment to egalitarian social relations, the Gano Peacemaker community's interracial household actively worked to subvert the gender conventions of their time. The men and women of the Nelson and Bromley families shared their domestic and political responsibilities as evenly as they could, a sharing that, at times, broke down along markedly unconventional lines. Wally Nelson often traveled in his position as a paid field worker for CORE. "Marion and I are carrying on here alone," wrote juanita during the summer of 1951, when both Wally and Ernest were absent; "I'm the breadwinner and Marion is keeping the house." Several years later, after the birth of the Bromley's third child, Marion went off to work while Ernest stayed home as househusband and child raiser. Ernest carried his share of the burden after the Coney Island arrests as well. Indeed, he not only maintained the household but, as a story in CCHR's newsletter described, he "continued his picketing of the courthouse in company with [his] two children, 15 months and 3 years," who carried signs that proclaimed "My Mommy Is in Jail." The Peacemakers approached direct action as a collective performance in which women often took center stage and men seemed content to play supporting roles. Many decades later, Marion Bromley described the Ohio-area Peacemakers as "more nearly androgynous than the average." Their actions defied the gendered assumptions that dominated both mainstream America and the radical pacifist movement itself. 61 The Bromleys and Nelsons stood out, even in comparison to their pacifist and nonpacifist radical peers. As James Tracy notes in his study of the postwar radical pacifist movement, despite their commitment to challenging the cultural presuppositions of American life, many of the intentional communities associated with Peacemakers divided their

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labor along traditional gendered lines. By and large, pacifist women such as Betty Dellinger and Paula Peck stayed home with their children while their husbands ran off on exciting adventures, political and otherwise. Within the ranks of what remained of the Communist Party and the non-Communist Left, despite public commitments to the principles of gender equality, the push toward reforming "male chauvinism" and opening opportunities for women gained little success. Black women in the civil rights movement faced different, even more serious challenges as they walked the fine line between respectable womanly behavior and assertive action on behalf of their race. It was rare to see such all-out subversion as that practiced by the Gano community. The Gano Peacemakers' actions served notice that radical challenges to the status quo were possible, even during these early Cold War years. 62 Despite the intense activity to overturn racial segregation led by radical pacifists in Cincinnati, by 1952 the Peacemakers movement was in a serious state of decline. That summer, Peacemakers put out a call for a national conference intended to "revive and revitalize the Peacemaker program." Activists realized not only the magnitude of the struggle they faced but also the meager impact of their own efforts. "The forces of war ride recklessly onward," they warned, yet they could only bemoan their lack of a "dynamic, unified program of peacemaking." Peacemakers struggled unsuccessfully to give their movement meaning and direction and to restore some of its initial vitality. A. ]. Muste remarked on the sorry state of affairs by reflecting that "since revolutionary movements probably cannot avoid having to pass through periods of groping and experimentation, we shall not be dismayed because our movement is in such a period." But, he added pessimistically, "it seems altogether likely that building a radical pacifist movement of any size will be a tougher and slower job in the U.S. than anywhere else."63 In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Peacemakers represented an experiment carried on by a small group of stalwart activists struggling to keep the radical pacifist vision alive. The movement refused to let the political constraints fostered by Cold War attitudes limit its scope. It worked to provide a flexible and innovative platform from which to combine militant political action with sustained efforts to transform the lives of its members and what the movement called "the structure of society itself." The group's political difficulties during this time indicate just how limiting the boundaries of dissent and debate had become. Despite the optimism of activists in the immediate postwar years, the United States quickly grew less rather than more open to the voices of radical protest, while solidarity became more difficult to sustain in an environment of immobilizing isolation. Nevertheless, some campaigns, especially those

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focused on nonviolent action for civil rights, gathered broad-based support and generated enough power to bring about real change. Peacemakers' ability to expand, challenge, and upend prevailing ideas about gender and race relations highlights the areas of social and cultural life that remained fluid and open to change during the early 1950s. 64 By the mid-1950s, the culture of the Cold War, with its emphasis on security, conformity, and domesticity, had tightened its grip on American life. Even Peacemakers was not immune from these forces, although for practical rather than ideological reasons: the "baby boom" hit this group with as much force as it did the rest of the population. As the years passed, family responsibilities increasingly came to dominate the concerns of many Peacemaker members. The Gano Peacemakers' experiment in radical egalitarianism and collective living ended in 1956 when the Nelsons departed so that juanita could pursue a personal goal of higher education. Left on their own, Marion and Ernest Bromley struggled to balance the demands of caring for three young children with their desire to remain politically engaged. "For now we're just trying to live as near a Peacemaker life as we can under our circumstances," Marion wrote to Muste in November 1956. The conditions of their lives had come to parallel the emerging familial consensus of the Cold War. There was "too much ... to care for," Marion tellingly added, "and have much time left for anything but family needs."65

Chapter 3

Familialism and the Struggle Against the Bomb

The centrality of family concerns to the peace movement became evident in the late 1950s when radical pacifists embarked on a focused campaign against nuclear weapons and atmospheric testing. Choosing the Nevada Test Site as the launching ground for a new experiment in nonviolent resistance, thirty-three activists, many of them self-identified parents and grandparents, gathered together on the twelfth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing. In the rugged desert, under the scorching sun, the group conducted a prayerful vigil at the entrance to the testing grounds and then, in small groups of two and three, eleven of the protesters proceeded to the main gate and tried to walk inside the site to halt the scheduled atomic test. Authorities arrested, tried, and released the civil disobedients that day with sentences of probation. The "Atomlopers," as the local press dubbed them, then returned to the vigil site in time to witness the flash and eerie glow of a pre-dawn nuclear explosion. The gravity of this experience reinforced their belief that, as they had declared in their public statements, "more than words are needed" to address the dangers posed by nuclear weapons. 'We oppose [these dangers] only by non-violence and self-sacrifice," they explained. "Our words unheard, we speak now with our whole lives. "1 After this action, those who were arrested released personal statements to the press that highlighted their shared motivations and sentiments. Dave Andrews justified his presence at the test site by noting that "as a minister and a parent, I am opposed to endangering the lives of children everywhere." Lillian Willoughby remarked that she had left her four children behind in order to defend the larger human family. "My love for all humanity," she explained, "compels me to make a non-violent protest against the immorality of nuclear explosions and all war." Even the project's organizer, Lawrence Scott, who had no children of his own, emphasized that "every nuclear test ... brings pain and suffering on people, many of them little babies yet unborn." As fathers, mothers, and concerned adults, they felt moved to risk their freedom to save the children of the world. 2

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The August 1957 demonstration at the Nevada Test Site was the inaugural project of the newly formed Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons (NVAANW, or NVA for short), a coalition effort that represented both a continuation and a departure from radical pacifism's previous endeavors. Many of the action's participants came from the generation of activists who had protested against militarism and racial discrimination during and after World War II and had been part of the Peacemakers movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s. This group was trained in nonviolent direct action and familiar with the risks that such action entailed; they had a history of working to build a cohesive movement for peace and social change. At the same time, these activists were grappling with new circumstances in their lives. Developments in nuclear weapons technology had raised the stakes of the Cold War: nuclear war might annihilate life on earth, while radioactive fallout from above-ground nuclear tests posed an immediate threat to human health. Public anxiety had increased, creating a new potential base of support for a pacifist disarmament campaign. So had the sense of personal peril and responsibility felt by activists themselves. Many of the participants in the Nevada action were mothers and fathers with children of their own to worry about and to raise. Young activists who had come of age in the 1940s had matured into concerned parents whose familial duties were as important to them as their responsibilities to the world at large. As the statements from Nevada made clear, by the summer of 1957, nonviolent direct action involved not only putting one's body on the line but joining the personal and political aspects of one's life in public protest against nuclear weapons and war. Members of the Peacemakers movement had experimented with intentional community building as a way to bridge their public and private concerns. The Nevada action signified something different. In an effort to act upon what participants called their "moral obligation to cast our whole lives against this evil," NVAANW activists set the stage for a new style of protest that simultaneously embraced family responsibilities and militant action and promised a new understanding of men's and women's political roles. 3

"For Ourselves and for Our Children": Creating a New Culture of Radical Pacifist Protest The period leading up to the formation of NVAANW and the Nevada Test Site action was marked by profound searching and disappointment for the radical pacifist movement. The midcentury years were not easy for pacifist dissenters or radicals of any stripe. As historian Lawrence Wittner notes, the peace movement limped through the early 1950s "in a strange half-life, ... formulating radical alternatives to American military policies and serving as prophets in the Cold War wilderness. Yet rarely

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had the prospect seemed so bleak and their witness so hopeless." Sensing the futility of their work at home, radical pacifists looked for inspiration abroad, particularly to nonviolent struggles in South Africa and India, optimistically believing themselves to be, in the words of one veteran Peacemaker, "part of a world non-violent revolutionary movement." But their own prospects for movement building in the United States seemed dismal at best. 4 The impact of McCarthyism, which continued long after the Senate's 1954 censure of Joseph McCarthy, had much to do with this sorry state of affairs. By the late 1950s, the combination of loyalty programs, government prosecution, and economic sanctions had effectively decimated the American Left, leaving it smaller and more isolated than it had ever been. Within this climate of conformity and suspicion, most Americans shied away from potentially "subversive" political entanglements, especially since the taint of controversy could be as damning as actually being proved a Communist. The results were disastrous for a movement predicated on critiquing U.S. foreign and military policies. Despite growing public fears of nuclear war and radioactive fallout, few Americans spoke out against what historian Laura McEnaney calls the "militarization of American life."5 The 1950s cult of domesticity helped to magnify the forces of conformity that pushed Americans away from the public arena of dissent and debate. Epitomized by new television programs like Leave It to Beaver and Father Knows Best, the familial emphasis of the era played a crucial role in perpetuating the politics and values of the Cold War. Many Americans viewed the family as a place of refuge from the frightening world of rival superpowers and an escalating nuclear arms race, a secure antidote to the chaos and dangers of the atomic age. Government propaganda that encouraged Americans to "duck and cover" into the safety and privacy of their homes also contributed to the political disengagement that made the postwar political consensus possible. Then there were the logistical demands of the privatized home, from physical upkeep to the purchasing of household goods, which civic leaders hoped would keep Americans too busy to participate in oppositional politics and too invested in consumer culture to desire radical alternatives. Even programs with overtly political aims, such as the Federal Civil Defense Administration's promotion of home fallout shelters, relied heavily on familial symbols and roles to turn the suburban homestead into the domestic counterpart of U.S. nuclear and military might. As Americans focused on their homes as a way to protect themselves and their families from the Soviet threat, they internalized containment and thus constrained the opportunities for social and political change.6 Even activists committed to challenging the foundations of the Cold War wrestled with the demands of family duty. Like other men and

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women of their generation, many radical pacifists found themselves preoccupied with domestic concerns as they began to settle down and raise families. Activists tried to accommodate to these changing dynamics, but there were limits to what could be done. As children became what activists such as the Bromleys called "a more dominant part of the household," family responsibilities inevitably got in the way of political protest. "I learned to stay home more," Dave Dellinger recalled about his own life in the 1950s with his wife Elizabeth and their ever-growing number of small children. The constraints of time and energy did not always preclude families like the Dellingers and the Bromleys from participating in political events. As Dellinger noted, ''when the lure of outside activity was especially strong, we made an effort to participate as a family, traveling together to conferences and demonstrations." But, given the precarious financial condition of most movement families, extensive travel and extended absences, whether as participants in geographically distant campaigns or in prison as a result of arrest, could push couples to the edge. Under these circumstances, the obstacles activists faced in bringing their public and private concerns into alignment could be crushing. 7 Nevertheless, the desire for political engagement remained strong. Growing frustration with Peacemakers' inability to launch the muchvaunted nonviolent revolution drove a number of militant pacifists to the War Resisters League (WRL), where they turned the previously education-oriented pacifist organization into what A.]. Muste called "the center for Gandhian action in the East." Others tried their hands at policy analysis, working with the American Friends Service Committee to draft what became, in the words of one prominent organizer, "the most popular pacifist pamphlet ever produced in this country." The 1955 pamphlet, Speak Truth to Power, made both "a pointed indictment of military power" and a social scientific argument for pacifism while emphasizing the power of individual action to effect change. Creative work could still rise out of the ashes of political failure and the confines of family obligations. 8 The newly born Liberation magazine provided another outlet for radical pacifist creativity. One of the so-called little magazines of the postwar era, this lively and provocative journal created space not only for cultural expression but, as its editors explained in its premiere issue, for "the transformation of society by human decision and action." Although its editors, among them Dave Dellinger, A.]. Muste, and Bayard Rustin, did not intend Liberation "to be the house organ of ... the radical pacifist movement," it essentially became that movement's tool. Liberation publicized radical pacifist organizing and direct action efforts and provided a much-needed forum for the debate and discussion of social, cultural, and political issues. James Tracy characterizes the magazine as "the most important contribution made by radical pacifists to the intellectual

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content of the American Left." Liberation may not have sparked a mass movement, but it gave radical pacifism a public voice. 9 The timing was perfect. By the mid-1950s, the atomic peril was no longer a purely pacifist obsession: it permeated popular culture as much as it did U.S. military policy, creating a strain of anxiety that underlay much of American life. What worried the public was not simply the theoretical threat of nuclear war or a Soviet invasion. Mter March 1954, when the highly publicized Bravo nuclear test spewed radioactive fallout across a wide swath of the Pacific test zone, Americans also began to fear the byproducts of weapons testing and development. By 1957, this fear had turned to outrage, fueled by studies and reports that highlighted the threat that radiation posed to public health. Although few people believed they could stop the arms race, limiting nuclear contamination by banning atmospheric tests began to seem like an achievable goal. 10 Seeking a platform from which to sway public opinion, radical pacifists identified nuclear testing as the most appropriate target of protest. The key person behind this shift was Quaker activist Lawrence Scott. An ardent pacifist and active member of Peacemakers, Scott quit his job as Peace Secretary for the Chicago branch of the American Friends Service Committee and in early 1957 embarked on what he called "an itinerant ministry" across the United States to organize a Gandhian movement against nuclear weapons and nuclear testing. That April, Scott gathered together the leading lights of the American peace movement and initiated a series of conferences that led to the birth of two parallel but distinct antinuclear organizations. One, the Committee to Stop H-Bomb Tests, later renamed the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, or SANE, harnessed liberal opposition to nuclear testing. The other was Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons, whose calls for unilateral disarmament and nonviolent direct action against the bomb provided the means to mount the Gandhian challenge that Scott had long dreamed of and prepared for. Together these groups changed the face of American disarmament efforts. 11 As one activist recalled, "Lawrence Scott regarded himself as a missionary from God." Indeed, many in the movement viewed Scott as a charismatic and spiritual political leader, "clearly under the weight of doing something" to address the atomic peril. Scott's ultimate goal, which he shared with most radical pacifists, was the complete and total abolition of nuclear weapons. But he was savvy enough to understand that any program built around that aim would be too radical to gain significant public support. He focused, instead, on the limited but more acceptable issue of nuclear testing. Scott hoped that a test ban "could become a first step in the direction of disarmament." He also believed that revolutionary nonviolence-what Gandhi called satyagraha, or "truth force"-was "essential ... for the breaking of the stranglehold

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that militarism now has on the country.... I don't know how this will come about," he reflected, "but I have faith that God will lead the way. There are many evidences of an awakening. "12 Despite the dismal political climate of the mid-1950s, there were indications that Scott's faith in the possibility of change was justified. Less than two years before, black activists in Montgomery, Alabama, had challenged Cold War complacency by initiating a nonviolent mass boycott of the city's segregated transportation system. The Montgomery Bus Boycott gave the nation notice that dissent was still possible and that organized nonviolence could be used effectively as a tool for social and political change. Images from Montgomery captivated and inspired radical peace activists who eagerly followed the stories of tens of thousands of black citizens walking to work to protest racial discrimination, of mass meetings, of the harassment of carpool drivers and peaceful citizens, of the arrests of over a hundred movement leaders and ministers, and of the charismatic young leader of the movement, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose public commitment to nonviolence withstood even the bombing of his own home. "Not since the death of Gandhi," opined the editors of Liberation, "has there been so much discussion of nonviolence as there is today. "13 Scott wanted to take the active nonviolence displayed by the Montgomery protests in a different direction. Although he was "elated" by the success of the boycott, Scott remarked at the time that he could not help but notice that "what is happening in Montgomery ... does not touch the hem of militarism." Despite the fact that Peacemakers, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the War Resisters League had all sent emissaries to work with King and to guide him in the theory and practice of Gandhian nonviolence, pacifism was not on the Montgomery movement's agenda. Nevertheless, Scott believed that antiwar activists could take the lessons of Montgomery, particularly the boycott's highly publicized use of mass nonviolent resistance, and translate them into the struggle for disarmament. It was in that spirit that Scott put together NVA's first Call to Action: the Hiroshima Day demonstration and vigil at the government's Nevada nuclear test site. Scott optimistically touted the project as "the biggest direct action undertaking pacifists have grappled with in this country."14 The Nevada action fell short of the mass protest that Scott hoped to inspire; only about three dozen pacifists traveled to Las Vegas and out to the test site. Nevertheless, the "Atom-lopers" and their supporters demonstrated a new creativity in the use of nonviolence as a strategy of protest. The group arrived at the entrance to the Mercury test site early in the morning of August 6, 1957. There they posted signs and banners in the desert ground and began a twenty-four-hour "Prayer and Conscience Vigil." Careful to alert local and national media agencies to their protest, eleven "satyagrahis," under the watchful eyes of news cameras

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and pacifist supporters, slowly walked up to the gate and attempted to enter the site to halt the scheduled nuclear test. Twenty-two others continued the vigil after authorities carted the civil disobedients away, remaining at the site through the night and into the next morning, where they witnessed first-hand what participant James Peck later called the "horrifying experience" of a nuclear blast. Staging the protest in order to allow multiple forms of sacrifice and risk taking, from arrest and imprisonment to nuclear contamination, the group hoped to dramatize the message that they felt they could do nothing less than "cast our whole lives against this evil." 15 Just as important, participants in NVA's inaugural protest strategically deployed the familial symbols that most Cold War Americans held near and dear to their hearts. Sam Tyson, whom authorities arrested at the test site, stated in court that he and his wife had "four young children, and I would like [for] them and for the children all over the world not to have to pay for our mistakes in the detonation of these weapons." Dave Andrews declared that by risking arrest he would be "casting a vital vote for a sane and safer world ... for ourselves and for our children." Publicly distributed biographical statements about the eleven activists who chose to risk arrest emphasized the importance of parental concern: all but three had children, including one young father of an eighteenweek-old son. By highlighting their roles as concerned mothers and fathers, participants tried to speak in a language that most Americans could understand. 16 Their use of domestic imagery, however familiar and reassuring it may have been, nonetheless flew in the face of conventional norms. The radical pacifists' commitment to community, equality, nonviolence, and peace turned the family into a springboard for political engagement rather than an excuse for private retreat. In NVA's hands, activism became the way to defend one's own family and that of humankind. In the process, these activists defied a narrow view of nationalistic loyalty and proclaimed a radical, humanitarian internationalism instead. It was their own government, they argued, that was leading the way in the testing and development of new weapons of mass destruction. And it was their responsibility, as U.S. citizens and as concerned parents, to do something about this dangerous situation. The efforts of George and Lillian Willoughby, two key members of the Nevada action, epitomize the degree to which activism could function as a family affair. Quakers with a long history of pacifist and political involvement, the Willoughbys had begun their activist careers during the contentious years of the 1940s. George had been a conscientious objector in Civilian Public Service during World War II; while he served, his wife stayed at home, pregnant with their first child. Upon his release from CPS, George began working full-time for the peace movement,

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first in Iowa with the AFSC and later in Philadelphia with the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors. He also tried his hand at direct action, in 1956 joining a small group of activists from the Catholic Worker and the WRL who risked arrest to protest New York City's civil defense drills. Nevertheless, the Willoughbys were, in some ways, a conventional family. George left the home to engage in the public sphere of political work. Lillian devoted herself to what George jokingly called "raising kiddies"; they had four children in all. Like other women of her time, however, Lillian did more than just stay at home. Venturing into the female-friendly arenas of community work and civic affairs, she gained valuable organizing experience by developing the infrastructure for a local Quaker meeting and by initiating educational forums through her children's PTA. Family was always at the center of the Willoughbys' lives, but it never excluded their public and political concems. 17 Lawrence Scott pushed the couple to take the next step. When the charismatic Scott came east in the spring of 1957, he challenged the activists whom he met to take more direct forms of action against the bomb. "That was enough to persuade me and my wife, Lillian, that we should go to Nevada," George Willoughby recalled not long afterward. In the spirit of familial cooperation, the two packed up their car, dropped their children off with grandparents in Iowa, and headed to Nevada. Once they arrived at the NVA vigil site, George put his organizing experience to work by coordinating the publicity and press relations for the project. Lillian moved to the foreground as the only woman on the civil disobedience team. "I felt," Lillian explained, "that if one of us should participate in the ... project, it should be me." George had done so much; now it was her tum to participate in direct action and represent her family through public protest. Although the Willoughbys' heritage of Quaker egalitarianism likely provided a foundation for this decision, acting as a family gave them the practical flexibility they needed for Lillian to take a leading role. 18 As the Willoughbys' experience suggests, framing activism as an extension of family responsibility allowed for a mode of gender cooperation that could increase opportunities for women within a movement where men had traditionally taken the leading action-oriented roles. Mothers and fathers could act out of a shared concern over the fate of their children and the children of the world. The potential seemed enormous, for both the movement and its female members. Given American society's preoccupation with family-oriented domesticity, activists undoubtedly understood the symbolic power of having parents act as parents in their efforts to preserve the world for future generations. In their eyes, women and men not only could, but should act together for peace.

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The symbolic importance of having mothers as well as fathers on the front lines of protest encouraged Lawrence Scott to recruit women for the Nevada event. Given Scott's repeated references to the threat that fallout posed to "children yet unborn," the connection he saw between protest and maternalism was compelling and direct. Significantly, despite his Quaker background, he never expressed an overt commitment to gender equality as a rationale for bringing women into the fold; instead, he emphasized motherly duty in his correspondence with potential female volunteers. Scott's letter to Miriam Keeler is typical of many he wrote to potential female recruits: "this issue of radiation and the future of the human race is one that women should be especially interested in." But women in the movement, whether they were mothers or not, had other reasons to step up to the plate. 'We [women] have always felt we could not personally participate in c.o. to military conscription," Keeler wrote back to Scott, "but the testing affects everybody." Pacifist women thus welcomed and recognized the potential that this new framework for action held. It seemed, finally, that women and men could unite publicly in protest. 19 Theory and practice, however, were two very different things. Despite efforts to include female activists in this groundbreaking protest, Lillian Willoughby was the only woman actually to risk arrest and one of only seven women among the thirty-three vigilers who gathered at the Mercury gate. The barriers to participation were many. Many women in their childbearing years likely did not view exposure to radioactive fallout from a nuclear test as a wise course of action. One female pacifist explained to Scott, after declining his invitation to participate, that the Nevada action "should appeal to women, at least women who do not expect to have any children of their own." Others faced more commonplace obstacles at home. The husband of one eager supporter vetoed his wife's plans to go to Nevada. Without an intentionally organized group of women, it was difficult to generate the kind of gender solidarity that could bolster their determination to act. Even Lillian Willoughby recalled having a difficult time deciding whether to participate in the test site protest. She worried about leaving her children behind but was swayed by her husband's and her parents' support. "Mter, I was sorry [that I took so long to decide]," she reflected, "because ifl had made my mind up, I wouldn't have been the only woman. Mterwards I thought ... that maybe some other women would have gone, too."2° Although fewer people took part in the Nevada action than planners had hoped, participants still viewed it as a watershed event for the radical pacifist cause. The project's focus on nuclear testing struck a popular chord, its emphasis on nonviolence gave it dignity, and the use of familial imagery made it more publicly accessible than any radical pacifist

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protest in recent memory. Activists had successfully dramatized and made visible the issue of nuclear testing. CBS and NBC television, Fox Movietone, and several other news services sent reporters and cameras to the Mercury site, leading to local and national television and newspaper coverage. As one jubilant supporter exclaimed, "I have never seen such public notice given to any pacifist action since World War II." This public attention electrified the movement and, Scott reported, "stirred up much interest among many people who had never thought of civil disobedience in constructive terms before." In the eyes of its participants and supporters, the Nevada Test Site vigil became to the pacifist struggle what the Montgomery Bus Boycott had become to the fight for black civil rights: a pivotal event that gave "evidence of the possibility of a movement of non-violent action" against militarism and war. It was something to build upon, George Willoughby later reflected. "Most of us understood that we had to get people to move."21

Family Men Speak Out for Peace: Nonviolent Action and the Voyage of the Golden Rule The essential question was how to move people from opposition to action. In the wake of Nevada, Lawrence Scott diligently worked to bring new activists into NVA and to initiate projects that would combine the key ingredients that had made the Nevada action such a success. NVA's first post-Nevada effort was a month-long "Prayer and Conscience Vigil" in November 1957, which brought the group's call for disarmament directly to the halls of power in Washington, D.C. These political dramas, however, paled in comparison to what came next. In response to an autumn 1957 announcement that the U:nited States would begin a new series of H-bomb tests in the Marshall Islands region of the South Pacific, and inspired by protest proposals emerging from radical pacifists in Great Britain, Scott and NVA's steering committee decided to purchase a small ship, recruit a crew of committed activists, and sail into the nuclear test zone as a form of "moral protest."22 The timing seemed propitious. SANE, the liberal educational arm of the new American disarmament movement, had grown by leaps and bounds in the short time since its founding, tapping into the growing public outcry against the dangers of nuclear fallout that pushed the test ban issue into the mainstream of political debate. Campaigns organized by fellow activists in Great Britain were even more inspiring. In 1957, SANE's British counterpart, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), organized a series of massive marches and protests that far surpassed anything that had occurred in the United States. The more radical wing of Britain's disarmament movement, known as the Direct

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Action Committee, quickly established a reputation for daring and militant action. Radical pacifists in the United States viewed these developments with delight. The conditions seemed increasingly amenable to forming a mass American disarmament movement.2 3 The response to proposals for this next project suggested that the leaders of the movement were right. Almost miraculously, the plans for the Pacific protest fell into place. Supporters and friends donated huge sums of money and a crew of volunteers emerged, willing to risk death, radiation sickness, the dangers of sailing in a small boat on the open seas, arrest, imprisonment, and, not least, extended separations from family and friends. Extensive behind-the-scenes groundwork-publicity, press conferences, and public speaking events-got done in advance. Mter months of planning, NVA's ship, the Golden Rule, embarked in February 1958 for the Marshall Islands. Assuming that events ran according to course, something that could not be guaranteed despite NVA's careful preparations, the crew of the Golden Rule planned to "arrive at the time of the scheduled U.S. nuclear bomb tests in April, enter the test area and remain there, come what may." The swell of support that the project received encouraged its organizers, who confidently proclaimed that the ship's presence in the test zone would "arouse the conscience of the world. "24 In ways that NVA did not intentionally plan, the Golden Rule's crew became not just a model of pacifist conscience but a living example of dissident manhood in the atomic age. The crew was all male: Captain Albert Bigelow, a Quaker and former naval officer who cut his teeth on nonviolent direct action during the Nevada arrests; his friend and colleague Bill Huntington; and NVA activists George Willoughby and David Gale. This was, quite visibly, an action for men alone. According to Bigelow, "there was no room for women in Golden Rule." Even if there had been space on the small ship, it is unlikely that the men who dominated NVAANW would have given women a place. Lillian Willoughby, the sole woman arrested at NVA's Nevada protest, insisted that she would have gone on the voyage if her husband had not; the issue and the action were that important to her. But she also conceded it was unlikely that she would have been accepted as part of the crew. "I'm not sure we would have been ready at that time for a woman aboard," George admitted, referring to the logistics of life on a small ship and the men's apparent aversion to putting women in harm's way. Instead, as self-proclaimed "MEN Against the BOMB," the men of the Golden Rule transformed themselves into the latest manifestation of militant pacifist masculinity. 25 Inserting mainstream paradigms of late 1950s manhood into a radical pacifist framework allowed the men of the Golden Rule to cast their protest and themselves in familiar and respectable roles. The project intentionally highlighted a style of pacifist protest defined by strength

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rather than weakness and action rather than passivity. A widely circulated publicity still featured the four men posed as tanned and rugged sailors stationed proudly at the boat's stern, exuding the qualities of authority and will that played such an important role in postwar understandings of masculine identity. Here were men ready to seize control over their destinies, even in the face of the powerful government and corporate bureaucracies that ruled the world. Willing to risk life and limb on the high seas as they sailed across the Pacific and into the path of atmospheric nuclear tests, they radiated a heady combination of assertiveness, pride, and manly physicality. 26 On one level, the men of the Golden Rule mirrored the archetype of the "reluctant hero" embodied by popular cultural icons such as Marlon Brando and Humphrey Bogart, virile and strenuous men who, in the words of sociologist Michael Kimmel, "become exemplary when they leave self-interest behind and act ethically." Bigelow and his crew risked everything to protest against the threat of nuclear war. They left behind their homes, their jobs, and their families, and readily agreed to sacrifice their lives, health, and safety for the cause. As notes from planning meetings ominously attest, organizers understood that "such a project might be the final choice for those directly involved." Participants publicized these sentiments in the letters and statements that they distributed to friends, family, and the press. In one such message, crew member David Gale explained that "as long as I can remember I have feared death .... Somehow, this past weekend, I came to a new clarity of life-a life which no longer feared death and which no longer feared itself. I now speak forth." Albert Bigelow expressed these ideas more directly in the project's most widely reproduced statement of purpose: "I am going because I have to if I am to call myself a human being. "27 The men's motivations for action were as much rooted in their actual families as they were in the larger family of humankind. Releases to the press pointedly referred to the number of children and grandchildren that each member of the crew had. Here they struck the familial note even more loudly than they had during the Nevada protest. Personal statements emphasized the role that fatherly sentiments played in the men's own political development. "I am going," Bert Bigelow declared, "because [in this age of nuclear weapons and radioactive fallout] it is now the little children, and, most of all the as yet unborn who are the front line troops. It is my duty to stand between them and this horrible danger." Having sons and daughters of his own brought George Willoughby to the same conclusion. "As a father of four children," he explained, "I don't think I could go on facing these children and their friends knowing what my generation was doing to them and their children's children."28 Defending one's family provided a powerful justification for the men's decision to break the law and challenge U.S. nuclear policies.

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The primary iconic masculine figure of the late 1950s, the breadwinning family man, laid the foundation for cultural definitions of middle-class masculinity and male success. Being a good provider was key; success in this field demonstrated maturity, responsibility, and the ability to take care of one's dependents, all of which allowed men to exercise authority over their wives and children at home. Family life was a reward for middle-class men, an antidote to the anomie of the workplace and the much-derided stereotype of "the Organization Man." At the same time, turning the home into a male-controlled domain provided an acceptable way of containing the tough and adventurous qualities that men prided themselves on preserving. Domesticity offered a responsible outlet for assertive, even aggressive, masculine behavior. Society celebrated home and family as the center of men's lives, but it celebrated it as a venue of action and power rather than of passive retreat. The crew of the Golden Rule simply took these qualities of responsibility, authority, and protective fatherhood to the next level. 29 It was thus no accident that the voice of the responsible patriarch, seeking to protect "the lives of our grandchildren and of their grandchildren," rang out loud and clear on the voyage of the Golden Rule. Instead of risking their lives to fight Communists or guard the family fallout shelter, these fathers and grandfathers sought to end the threat of nuclear war. From the radical pacifist perspective, breaking the law was the ultimate act of masculine honor and integrity, the only way to provide for the future of their children. The men used their commitment to Gandhian nonviolence to bolster their masculinity in other ways as well. A sign of discipline rather than weakness, it contained the crew's dissent in a way that likely broadened the project's appeal, allowing the men to cast themselves as voices of responsible protest rather than as harbingers of chaos. 30 Portraying themselves as paragons of late 1950s manhood also made it possible for them to expand the boundaries of masculinity to include the quality of vulnerability as well as the more familiar characteristics of strength and control. The crew members and organizers extolled the tender emotions that motivated them to action, unabashedly describing "civil disobedience and other direct action against immoral laws" as "a duty for citizens of sensitive conscience." The direct action framework espoused by the radical pacifist movement and the hazards faced by the men in carrying out the mission of the Golden Rule gave such sensitivity a distinctly masculine tinge. These were courageous men who embraced their vulnerability without shame. Bigelow aptly described the ship and its crew as "a white sail, a tiny speck in the vast blue Pacific, moving westward," nothing more than "four harmless men sitting quietly in a tiny boat" hoping to be "near the scene of a huge nuclear blast." Their vulnerability mirrored that of the human race threatened by the specter of

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nuclear war, "cowering before a storm of our own making." But powerless these men were not. The Golden Rule paradoxically gained authority and strength by celebrating its vulnerability and smallness. ''We are four men in a ketch," the crew declared; "we mean no harm to any man .... We feel the support of people the world over. With us they ask: 'Why is the U.S. government afraid of the Golden Rule?' "3 1 Ironically, it was the government's antagonism toward the project that helped turn the voyage into a national news event. In April 1958, the Atomic Energy Commission issued regulations designed to keep the Golden Rule out of the Pacific test zone. When the ketch arrived in Honolulu to restock and refuel, federal officials slapped the crew with a court injunction that prohibited them from setting sail. Mter several weeks of judicial wrangling, the four men, determined "to keep as clear as possible of legal entanglements and side issues," decided to ignore the injunction and continue their voyage, an act of defiance that amplified their protest. When the crew, refusing to heed the court's order, set sail for Eniwetok on May 1, 1958, the conflict burst into the open. The Coast Guard chased and seized the ship two miles offshore. The crew was apprehended, charged with criminal contempt, held for a week in the Honolulu City Jail, and then tried in federal court and released on probation. Articles about the voyage began to appear in small-town papers and metropolitan dailies across the country. 'Thousands upon thousands who had not heard about [the Golden Rule] before now heard its message," A.J. Muste crowed from NewYork. 32 As the conflict continued, the project's message of manly nonviolence and nuclear disarmament spread. On June 1, a month after the crew's initial arrest in Honolulu, the men announced their intention to sail again, despite their probationary status and the continuing court injunction that had already sent them to jail once. Ten minutes before the ship's scheduled departure, federal marshals waded through a dock crowded with supporters and the press, boarded the Golden Rule, and arrested Albert Bigelow for criminal conspiracy. Without a captain, the story should have been over; the three men who remained were unable to navigate the ship on their own. But crew member Bill Huntington, who had been on the mainland drumming up support for the project, serendipitously landed in Honolulu late that afternoon. He arrived on the deck, briefly talked with the crew, and then asked, ''What are we waiting for?" Five minutes later, displaying the tenacity that had long highlighted their masculine courage and will, the crew had the ship out at sea. It seemed, for a moment, that the Golden Rule might actually be on its way to the Marshall Islands. But five miles out, in international waters, Coast Guard cutters closed off the ship, arrested the crew, and forced the Golden Rule back to shore. The four men, brought before the now-familiar federal judge Jon

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Wiig, were found guilty of contempt and sentenced to sixty days in jail, making it impossible for them to reach the test zone before the scheduled nuclear test. Nevertheless, the crew and its supporters considered the project a success. The drama of the Golden Rule had brought the radical pacifist movement and its opposition to nuclear testing an unprecedented degree of news coverage and local support. 33 It also planted the seeds for the continuation of the project. Try as it might, the federal government found that imprisoning the men did not silence the Golden Rule's message of fatherly protest. Another father and his family, who by chance had sailed their yacht Phoenix into Honolulu Harbor during the Golden Rule's travails, took up the cause. Earle Reynolds, an American anthropologist, had worked in Hiroshima studying the health effects of atomic radiation and was well aware of the risks posed by nuclear fallout. Mter years of sailing and living abroad, he and his wife and two children had developed a strong sense of world citizenship. Although none of the family had been involved with NVA's protest, they explained that "as amateur seamen and world travelers, we ... felt inexorably drawn into this case." In support of the Golden Rule's endeavor, the Reynolds family left unannounced for Hiroshima via the Marshall Islands and sailed sixty-five miles into the nuclear test zone before being stopped. In the words of historian James Tracy, "the image of an entire family ('average' Americans, as opposed to 'professional' activists) risking their lives in this way ... was tailor-made for media consumption." The imprisoned crew of the Golden Rule was jubilant: the Phoenix had not only continued the Golden Rule's protest but had maintained the theme of familial concern for human life. NVA members could not have dreamed up a more fitting end to their dramatic project. 34

"The All-American, All-World Mother": Militant Maternalism's Alternative to the Cold War Female activists also considered themselves responsible for undertaking actions organized around family values, even though they did not sail on the Golden Rule. One letter to Sylvia Bigelow pointedly exclaimed that "this trip is not a task for small men, nor is staying at home a task for small wives." By the late 1950s, women had acquired a great deal of experience in the radical pacifist movement, in terms of both assuming the domestic duties of absent activist husbands and instigating and participating in demonstrations of their own. The spouses of the men of the Golden Rule knew what they were getting into and took their responsibilities seriously. In their hands, and in the hands of other radical pacifist women, home-front struggles became personal manifestations of political commitment. 35

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Holding the fort, while largely invisible, was a critical political act. Lillian Willoughby, who, of all the wives, faced the toughest task, certainly viewed it in this way. A veteran of the Nevada protest, Willoughby was a committed activist in her own right and a full-fledged member of the movement with which her husband had cast his lot. But she was also the youngest of the wives and the mother of four small children, all of whom needed emotional and financial support during the year George was gone. Finding herself largely on her own, Lillian worked as a nutritionist and kept the family afloat on what was, by all accounts, an extremely tight budget. Somehow she managed. Hard times were, after all, an expected consequence of her husband's decision to join the crew of the Golden Rule. Having participated in the discussions that led to George's involvement in the project, Lillian willingly accepted the resulting hardships. Like her husband, she sought to "speak" with the weight of her whole life. 36 Lillian and several other female members of NVA took their roles as activist wives and mothers a step farther, onto a more visible public stage, at one of the many support demonstrations organized to champion the voyage of the Golden Rule. In May 1958, an NVA delegation of men and women went to the Maryland headquarters of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and demanded to speak with Admiral Lewis Strauss, chief of the commission, about the AEC decision to ban the ship from the Pacific nuclear test zone. When their request was denied, the group refused to leave, turning what might have been a simple afternoon visit into an extended sit-in and hunger strike in the headquarters lobby. Included among the ranks of the protesting pacifists were three mothers: Matjorie Swann, Dorothy Hutchinson, and Lillian Willoughby, who brought her eight-year-old son Alan. As they settled in for the long haul, they turned the protest into a genuine family affair. 37 The image of resistant motherhood clearly distressed AEC officials. In the parlance of the times, women were supposed to confine their civic engagement to familial concerns through their roles as wives, homemakers, consumers, and mothers. This framework provided women with numerous opportunities to act on behalf of their children in the public arena, working with Parent Teacher Associations, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, charity and religious organizations, and voluntary recreational and educational services. But the limits were clear, and women who stepped outside these designated bounds were feared and labeled "bad mothers," women whose children would grow up into unfit citizens and whose actions would undermine the security and stability of the state. Protesting at the AEC was most certainly beyond the pale. Peacemaker Ernest Bromley, who joined the sit-in after traveling from Ohio, reported that "the presence of the fasting women seemed to trouble the

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AEC personnel." So did young Alan Willoughby; one guard insisted that he "ought to be home in his bed." Nevertheless, the AEC personnel graciously accommodated the group, provided cots for the women, and gave all members access to bathrooms and phones. One of the guards even befriended Alan, fed him in the cafeteria, and brought him out to play baseball with a group of local children. But authorities viewed the group as a troublesome and dangerous lot. 38 The radical pacifists, in contrast, framed their sit-in as a cause for celebration. The fact that their protest coincided with Mother's Day made this easy. That weekend, telegrams, calls, and flowers began streaming in "from all over the nation." And the media, always on the lookout for an interesting story, stayed to interview and film the ongoing protest. The symbolism was irresistible. What better day than Mother's Day to protest against the threat nuclear weapons posed to children across the world? And what better way to celebrate Mother's Day than in a room filled with mothers? The lobby of AEC headquarters held not only an assortment of mothers but also the wife of an imprisoned member of the Golden Rule's crew, protesting against AEC policies that endangered her own family as well as the family of humankind. On a holiday originally conceived as a day dedicated to peace, the women of NVA made themselves known as models of maternal concern. 39 Despite the attention, the voice of maternal protest seemed to hold little clout. The group of protesters eventually got its long-awaited conference with Admiral Strauss, but could not convince him to change public policy or the AEC prohibition of the Golden Rule. Nevertheless, the sit-in highlighted the familial nature of radical pacifism's new mode of dissent. The message that activists presented was clear: the bomb threatened families around the globe. As one sit-in participant put it, nuclear tests were akin to lining "a thousand children against the wall in order to test a new machine-gun." A weeping Japanese visitor to the Golden Rule, who had lost his wife and twelve children in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, brought this point home to movement members in a vivid and highly personal way. The Golden Rule's goal was to ensure that such a tragedy never happened again. Pacifists cast themselves as saviors of the children and families of the future. It became the job of those with families of their own, mothers as well as fathers, to speak out in protest. 40 How they would continue to do so remained subject to debate. The surge of public interest in the Golden Rule and the widespread support for SANE's more moderate antitesting campaign convinced NVA members that they were in the midst of what Liberation magazine called a "pacifist revival." The Golden Rule had generated a degree of enthusiasm, publicity, and activity that far exceeded organizers' expectations. But it had done little or nothing to ease tensions between the U.S. and the

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U.S.S.R or to curtail the spiraling nuclear arms race. Nor had it resolved growing divisions within the radical pacifist movement itself, especially as NVAANW reorganized itself as the Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA). Several ofNVA's founding fathers, including Lawrence Scott and Albert Bigelow, withdrew because of conflicts over strategies and tactics, leaving the planning of the next action in the hands of A. J. Muste and Bradford Lyttle, a single and childless rising star in the movement. What the two men proposed-a prolonged protest at the Strategic Air Command base in Omaha, Nebraska-would escalate radical pacifist protests by taking nonviolence to a more militant and obstructionist stage. Symbolic acts of witness against nuclear testing, they argued, were no longer enough. Activists now wanted to halt the production and deployment of the weapons themselves. With Muste and Lyttle at its helm and a core of young volunteers at the center of its organizing efforts, Omaha Action began to take shape as a portent of change within the radical pacifist struggle. 41 Omaha Action initially staked its claim on what its organizers considered a new terrain of militant nonviolent protest. A summer-long affair rather than a one-shot deal, the campaign involved a series of public meetings, peace marches, pickets, and vigils targeting the new and deadly Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) system housed at the Omaha base. By late June 1959, volunteers had established a round-theclock vigil outside .the entrance to Mead Air Force Base, and in early July they began a twice-weekly ritual of walking up to the gate, scaling the fence, and being arrested by authorities for trespass. Federal Judge Richard E. Robinson, who oversaw the cases, released the first two groups of protesters with suspended sentences of six months in jail, a $500 fine, and one year's probation. Then, on Friday, July 10, Karl Meyer, a twenty-two-year-old Catholic Worker volunteer and son of a Vermont congressman, was arrested for the second time and sent off to serve his full sentence for violating his probation. The now-irate judge increased bail for initial offenders from $1,000 to $2,500 and, when the next group of four civil disobedients appeared in court on July 13, immediately sentenced the two who pled guilty to six months in jail and a $500 fine. The heightened risks of the protests and the media attention they received, including spots on NBC television and the widely watched Huntley-Brinkley news broadcast, suggested that participants had pushed radical pacifism to the next stage of political dissent. 42 The already established framework of familial protest, however, still held sway. Despite the fact that many of the project's organizers and volunteers were too young to be mothers or fathers themselves, Omaha Action's participants distributed statements that described Mead's ICBM bases as places where "indiscriminate suffering and nameless torture are

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being prepared for countless men, women, and children" and leaflets that argued that "no possible danger can justify ... exterminating our enemies and their children as well." Imagery that worked once was clearly worth trying again, whether or not it directly applied to the specific activists involved.43 References to a generalized parental concern quickly gave way to more pointedly maternalist remarks. One leaflet insisted that "today it is not uncommon for mothers to form a human blockade against trucks when traffic regulations are inadequate to protect their children." Organizers argued that since nuclear weapons threatened children even more than did runaway trucks, it was the duty of motherhood to commit civil disobedience in children's defense. Such statements may have been made simply to broaden the project's appeal to the general public. Who, after all, would want to annihilate innocent children? But they became integral to the campaign after the July 21 arrest of longtime radical pacifist and Peacemaker Marjorie Swann. 44 Swann, now the mother of four children between two and thirteen years of age, arrived at Omaha Action in early July to "help with the practical details" and keep the project's office running. "I'm not going to do any parading," she assured one daughter before she left home. "I'm just going to stay in the background-as cook, clerk and bottlewasher." This was very much like the work she had done almost fifteen years before with the National Committee on Conscientious Objectors. But Swann was a seasoned activist as well as a trained organizer, making it difficult for her to remain on the sidelines. Sensing that the project should end with a symbolic flourish, Swann decided to risk arrest on what was scheduled as Omaha Action's official closing day by emphasizing her identity as a concerned and caring mother. 45 "I know many of you ask why I take this action," Swann explained in her public statement, particularly, why a mother who has the responsibility of raising four children? Do I not feel guilty in disgracing them by going to prison, and in leaving them without my care for a number of months? I can only say that the guilt I may feel now, and the pain at leaving my husband and children, is nothing compared to the guilt and pain I will feel-if I am still alive-at seeing my children blasted to death by an H-bomb.

Perhaps learning from her Mother's Day experience in the lobby of the AEC, as well as from the Golden Rule's successful use of paternal protest, Swann turned her act of civil disobedience into nothing less than the fulfillment of maternal responsibility. 46 The truth, of course, was much more complex. "Through all these years," one pacifist colleague reflected, Swann "has remained true to

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her belief in direct action that she first demonstrated ... at the British Embassy in Washington" in 1943. Swann's radical pacifism predated both marriage and motherhood; her concern was as much with the human family as with her own. These deep political roots were important. In 1959, respectable mothers typically did not leave their children and risk going to jail. Certainly they were expected to be of service to their husbands, children, and nation, but to do so within the carefully contained boundaries of community and home. But Marj and her husband, Bob, both active members of CNVA, were not typical Americans or typical parents. While the two struggled over the potential consequences of Marj's action and the hardships her absence would bring to the family, Bob ultimately rallied to his wife's side. 'We feel," Marj wrote, that "there are urgent reasons for overriding this traditional concept of a mother's place." The combination of Swann's political history and parental responsibilities likely meant that she acted not solely because she was a mother but also in spite of it. 47 Such subtleties were lost in the immediate light of the action. 'Tuesday Uuly 21] was Mother's Day at the gate to Mead Missile Base," rejoiced one Omaha Action participant, "and Marj really rang the bell as the AllAmerican, All-World, Mother." Swann did her best to play the part. She arrived at the gate to the air force base in a dark dress and pearls. Her protest companion, Art Harvey, gamely jumped the fence, but Swann demurely ducked under the chain and crossed onto base property. Both were arrested after their second entry and held in jail until their arraignment and sentencing one week later. Swann retained her composure throughout her arrest and prison stay, but Judge Robinson appeared unnerved by the prospect of imprisoning this respectable-looking mother of four. He imposed "the familiar maximum sentence," supporters reported, but then quickly suspended it and put the two civil disobedients on probation. Members of Omaha Action exclaimed that "he seems quite disturbed by the dilemma in which we have placed him. "48 Swann seemed invigorated rather than disturbed. Complying with probation did not appear to be a moral option. "No, we are sorry, we cannot draw back," she and a fellow activist wrote to the judge. Deliberately violating the terms of her release, Swann organized and participated in a four-day fast and vigil at the missile gate to commemorate the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "It is especially appropriate," she explained to Judge Robinson, "that as a mother of four children I conduct this act of penance at this time, because it was the children of Hiroshima and Nagasaki who suffered most horribly." On August 10, after the close of the vigil, Swann and Harvey returned to the gate and tried to enter. Guards arrested the two pacifists once again and promptly brought them back to court. 49

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This second arrest and sentencing revealed how maternalism could act as a double-edged sword. Judge Robinson was aghast that Swann had willfully and knowingly violated her probation. He questioned her "sharply" about her family responsibilities, "sternly" lectured her "on the matter of 'neglecting her children,' " and then revoked her probation and imposed the full six-month sentence. "I told him," Swann recounted, "I agreed that my care, attention and affection are much needed, but that part of my duty as a mother is to do everything I can to insure my children ... the opportunity for life and freedom in the future." Despite her protestations, Judge Robinson did not agree. Even some supporters of the Omaha Action project "questioned this mother's right to follow her conscience to jail." In their eyes and the eyes of the judge, Swann had become a "bad mother," dangerous because of her radical politics, but even more so because she had abandoned society's prescribed maternal role. 5° Swann, however, was well schooled in the fundamentals of Gandhian nonviolence and recognized what Dave Dellinger publicly described as the "revolutionary effectiveness of taking suffering on one's self rather than obeying an unjust law or permitting violence to go unchallenged." Quite consciously, she made this self-suffering a central part of her witness. 'We who are pacifists and who attempt to offer a non-violent alternative to war have not even begun to give, to sacrifice, to suffer what we must before our often-stated desire for peace begins to be a reality," she charged in a letter written prior to her first Omaha arrest. 'We will have peace,'' she resolutely insisted, "when we are ready to pay as much for it as we pay for war, with sacrifice as soldiers, wives, and parents sacrifice in war." Swann embraced her six-month sentence, expressing neither complaints nor regret. In the process she became a paragon of radical pacifist resistance.st To many, she also became a symbol of maternal sacrifice. The Peacemaker reprinted her Hiroshima Day reflections, emblazoned with a portrait of her four smiling children. Publicity mailings and news articles in the pacifist press highlighted and celebrated her maternal role. Personal mail echoed these sentiments. One letter read: "No doubt there will be those who will criticize you for not accepting your freedom and returning to your beautiful children .... I am deeply convinced that it is the completeness of the sacrifice, the abandon to your witness which counts." The image of a mother leaving her children, some argued, was "especially challenging to pacifist women" who had spent much of the 1950s toiling in the background of the radical pacifist movement. It was also an inspiration. "Your husband and children can be proud of you," one friend wrote Swann in jail; "it is for the honor of American womanhood that one woman is in prison for protesting against the annihilation of born and unborn children the world over. "52

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This combination of pacifist resistance and maternal sacrifice was potent. ''We who are less brave in our peace witness," wrote fellow Omaha Action member Wilmer Young, "draw strength from her action and are encouraged to greater participation." From the movement's perspective, Swann's greatest sacrifice was not the six months she spent behind bars but the forced separation from her four growing children. The hardships of the young and single imprisoned men paled in comparison. Although five other civil disobedients also served six-month sentences for their actions in Omaha, it was Swann's willing incarceration that was the most prominently publicized and the most highly acclaimed. As one supporter wrote, "Marjorie's fearless act speaks in a singularly forceful way." Swann's identity as an imprisoned mother transformed her direct action experience into the ultimate act of pacifist sacrifice. 53 Of course, Swann was not the only one who made sacrifices during her six-month prison stay. 'The action of Marjorie and yourself ... has truly been a joint action," one friend wrote to Bob Swann. Bob's active and highly publicized support of Marj's protest was critical to the success of her action, but so were his efforts on the home front. The prospect of caring for four children and maintaining the household as a single father must have been daunting. Luckily for him, a small community of support, dominated by family friend and fellow Peacemaker Juanita Nelson, rallied to the cause and jumped in to fill the gap that Marj's absence created. These self-described "mother-substitutes" cared for the children and cooked for the family while Bob was at work during the week. The household ran smoothly even with Marj away. 54 "It is a truly great sacrifice," one supporter inscribed, "[that] you and your family are making for the cause of peace." It may have been a sacrifice, but it was not a transformation. Despite Marj's absence and one supporter's insistence that "Bob Swann has taken up the broom and dustpan with a will," the traditional gender roles in the Swann family remained largely intact. Women and girls did the cooking and childcare while Bob continued to work as the family breadwinner. There was no question in people's minds that Bob Swann needed help raising four children. Yet Lillian Willoughby, with little fanfare, had just cared for her four youngsters singlehandedly during the twelve months that her husband George was away on the Golden Rule. "They probably said, 'Well, Lillian can take care of it!'" Mrs. Willoughby guessed. No one doubted Bob's competence; the domestic realm was simply not considered his responsibility. So although activists lionized Bob Swann for his sacrifices on the home front, they barely acknowledged the same hardships suffered by his female counterparts in the movement. 55 Marj Swann's Omaha arrest did mark a change for women in the radical pacifist movement of the postwar era. Women remained a minority,

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and most still found themselves relegated to the margins of political action. But the publicity that surrounded Swann and her family dramatically brought a female figure to the forefront of militant consciousness. Dubbed by a male supporter "the first woman C.O. to be sent to a federal prison," Swann gave notice to the movement that women had an important role to play in radical political protest, one commensurate to that played by the most valorized of men. This was not a complete break with the notions of female domesticity that pervaded the culture of the movement as well as the culture of 1950s America. Nevertheless, it was a step in a new direction. 56 Omaha Action reflected the high hopes and ideals held by radical pacifists in the late 1950s. The campaign's direct accomplishments were difficult to measure in concrete terms; it did little to halt the arms race or change public policy. But it attracted public note and, equally important, it energized the movement. Organizer Brad Lyttle remembered it as "a good team, and a good project. It really stirred people up." The sixmonth federal prison sentences handed down by Judge Robinson played a particularly strong role in maximizing the impact of this campaign on the radical pacifist movement itself. The longest set of prison terms since the noncooperation and resistance of World War II, the stunning sentences acted as a powerful inspiration to pacifist supporters. Father Daniel Berrigan, a Jesuit priest from upstate New York and Karl Meyer's spiritual advisor, found himself profoundly moved by Meyer's protest and imprisonment. "I feel constantly the force of your witness in everything I try to accomplish," Berrigan wrote to Meyer in jail. That, in fact, was the point of the campaign: by speaking with their whole lives, radical pacifists hoped to influence the whole lives of others. This, they believed, was the route toward changing public attitudes and policies about nuclear weapons and American military might. 57 In making life-altering commitments to the nonviolent struggle for disarmament and peace, activists used the language and symbolism of their times to appeal to the public as broadly as possible. No longer willing to hover on the margins of America's political culture, radical pacifists shrewdly used their identities as protective fathers and nurturing mothers to generate the leverage and support their movement so desperately needed. The willingness and ability of activists to cloak their radicalism within the mantle of good parenthood helped turn their acts of protest into potent political symbols that resonated with the culture of mainstream American life. Couching their dissent within a gendered familial framework that most Americans equated with patriotism, security, and loyalty allowed pacifists to send a doubly subversive message: not only did they call for unilateral nuclear disarmament, a radical state-

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ment in and of itself, but their words and actions turned prevailing ideas about fatherhood and motherhood, the foundation of American society, upside down. In the hands of the radical pacifists, the family became a springboard for political dissent rather than a place of retreat from the world. From the pacifists' perspective, the threat of nuclear war made hiding at home a futile and immoral proposition. As Marj Swann, the crew of the Golden Rule, and the members of the Nevada Test Site protest made clear, other steps were needed to protect one's own family and that of humankind, even if that meant breaking the law and transgressing the norms of the day. The familial language of late 1950s radical pacifism inadvertently allowed women to transgress the norms of the movement by providing them with the opportunity to take center stage. As the symbol of the model resister shifted from the protective father to the sacrificial mother, a new model of female militancy emerged. Finally, it seemed, women could play leading roles in the radical pacifist struggle. Nevertheless, activists predicated their acceptance of female militancy on ideas about difference. Fatherhood and motherhood, and by inference, men and women, were not one and the same. Indeed, the sacrifice of women surpassed that of men only because of their special motherly role. Women's position had improved, but gender equality was still a long way off. Changing ideas about gender and women's participation in the movement were complemented, reinforced, and, in some ways, overtaken by generational shifts taking hold across the spectrum of the American Left. CNVA organizers noticed this transformation when groups of young volunteers arrived to participate in Omaha Action's extended community of protest. "It is hard to classify these men according to conventional standards," one participant wrote. "Some are college graduates, ministers or teachers; others are pioneers of the Spirit, willing to give up many material comforts for their ideals. One man hitch-hiked from Seattle; a young couple drove up from Mississippi." Veterans of pacifist resistance from the years of World War II must have viewed these new recruits with ambivalently tinged feelings of hope. Recognizing that their movement needed fresh blood and increased numbers if it were to make a difference, experienced radical pacifists had worked to "gather young people ... into our movement and give them a channel for expression." Nevertheless, the cultural values of these young people, many of whom were influenced by the creative and nonconformist allure of the Beats, were quite different than those of the aging World War H-era pioneers. Some older activists worried that this new generation of resisters was "at loose ends." Others believed that they represented "a vital force in our society-a force which, if understood, will throw considerable light on the crisis of our times."58

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Figure 1. Marj Swann, at far left, proves that militant action was available to both women and men as she risks arrest with other pacifist protesters outside of the British Embassy during the Free India Campaign, summer 1943. Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

Figure 2. The interracial but all-male Journey of Reconciliation team in Richmond, Virginia, Apri11947. Members of the team, from left to right: Worth Randle, Wally Nelson, Ernest Bromley, Jim Peck, Igal Roodenko, Bayard Rustin, Joe Felmet, George Houser, and Andrew Johnson . Fellowship of Reconciliation.

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Figure 3. An ardent egalitarian, Ernest Bromley combines childcare with protest as he supports his imprisoned wife, Marion, who was being held in the Cincinnati jail for resisting racial segregation at Coney Island Amusement Park, June 1952. The CORElator.

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Figure 4. The "rugged men" of the Golden Rule, from left: Bill Huntington, Albert Bigelow, Orion Sherwood, and George Willoughby, spring 1958. Honolulu Star-Bulletin.

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Photo Gallery Figure 5. Dressed in pearls and carrying a handbag, Marj Swann presents an image of respectable motherhood as she prepares to breach the gate with pacifist Art Harvey at Mead Missile Base in Omaha, Nebraska, August 1959. Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

Figure 6. A typical radical pacifist protest of the early 1960s. This New York City street demonstration, part of a January 1962 sitdown protest targeting the Atomic Energy Commission, attracted young men and women of the Beat generation as well as the requisite folksinger. These demonstrations provided activists of both sexes with opportunities to rebel against the prevailing cultural, social, and political norms of their time. Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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Figure 7. Virile masculinity comes to the rescue as Don Martin scales the hull of the Ethan Allen submarine during its ceremonial launching in New London, Connecticut, November 22, 1960. AP / Wide World Photos.

Figure 8. As this photograph clearly indicates, women and men participated together in radical pacifist public demonstrations. Working side by side with men on the front lines of protest, however, as they did on this June 1960 Polaris Action Peace Walk from New York to New London, could not save activist women from obscurity. Despite the fact that all of the men were identified by name, all of the women except for one were listed as "unidentified" in the caption that appeared with this photograph on the front page of the Polaris Action Bulletin. Polaris Action Bulletin.

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Figure 9. Women's vigorous leafleting quickly became a hallmark of CNVA's Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace. Here a female member of the Walk Team takes the lead as the project makes its way through the segregated South, fall1963. Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

Figure 10. Brad Lyttle waves from this photograph of The Spirit of Freedom and its crew as they prepare to travel to Cuba from Miami in the fall of 1964. Lyttle and the male members of the crew stand clearly in the foreground. Erica Enzer, the only woman on board, may be driving the boat but literally remains lost in the shadows. Swarthmore College Peace Collection.

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Figure 11. The new clean-cut image of resistant manhood appears in this photograph of a 1965 draft card burning demonstration in New York's Union Square. Tom Cornell of the Catholic Peace Fellowship stands at the far left of the group, dressed in a jacket and tie, prepared to burn his card. AJ. Muste, the grandpatriarch of the radical pacifist movement, oversees the proceedings from the right. Neil Haworth.

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Figure 12. Women highlight their primary role in Vietnam-era draft resistance campaigns with this full-page spread of photographs documenting a female-led draft card burning demonstration held on the steps of the Supreme Court on June 17, 1968. Marking a shift from the recent past, this article prominently featured female activists and fully identified them by name. Bradford Lyttle.

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Marj Swann had hoped that the Committee for Nonviolent Action's 1960 Hiroshima Day commemoration would bear strong resemblances to the vigil she had organized one year earlier in Omaha, Nebraska. 'join Us," the flier she and others distributed proclaimed; "Say Yes to Your Child's Future, ... Say No to Violence and War." The planned vigil was part of a broad series of protests organized by CNVA as part of a new, long-term campaign against the Polaris nuclear-missile-carrying submarine centered in southeastern Connecticut. As one of many activities organized by the newly created Polaris Action project, the Hiroshima Day event had to compete for the attention of activists involved in the disarmament movement with an array of other events: peace walks, picket lines, floating vigils in the water by the docked submarines, leafleting events, public meetings, and civil disobedience actions. But, since the practice of wedding familial duty to political concern had worked so well in the recent past, Swann believed it would prove successful again. 1 This must have seemed like the perfect moment for Swann to organize a vigil that encouraged fathers and mothers to protest against the arms race for the sake of the world's children. Swann had recently emerged from her six-month prison term energized and ready to commit herself and her family to another direct action disarmament project. That june, she, her husband, and their four children packed their bags, traveled up the east coast, and settled at Polaris Action's New London, Connecticut, office. As in Omaha, Swann provided critical logistical organizing support for the project. For the moment, she was also a media star. That summer, the popular women's magazine Redbook published a feature story on Swann's witness in Omaha and her consequent federal prison sentence, highlighting the links Swann had made between concerned motherhood and opposition to nuclear arms. The article gave the radical pacifist movement just the kind of exposure that organizers had long craved. To them it was proof that Swann's celebrated act of maternal sacrifice had struck a popular chord that they hoped could be used to the movement's advantage.2

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Swann's 1960 Hiroshima Day vigil, however, garnered neither publicity nor acclaim. Its most noteworthy characteristic is its almost complete invisibility in the historical record. The Polaris Action Bulletin, a weekly publication that carried articles about almost every detail of the Polaris Action campaign, gave the vigil a significant amount of advance publicity but, oddly, never printed an account of the protest after it occurred. Although every Polaris Action event was deemed newsworthy by organizers, who issued press releases several times a week, CNVA's meticulously compiled scrapbook of mailings, releases, and articles from the summer of 1960 includes nary a mention of the Hiroshima Day vigil. News of the event appears only once: a short paragraph embedded in a much longer announcement about a concurrent peace walk from New York to New London. Despite the newsworthiness of Swann's maternalist protest one year before, a silent vigil that emphasized parental "responsibility to the children of the earth" disappeared within the myriad of other protest activities. 3 Another image from that season did capture the imagination of both the radical pacifist movement and the mainstream American press. On November 22, while navy men assembled on top of the Ethan Allen submarine for its ceremonial launching, Polaris Actionists Bill Henry and Don Martin swam through the icy waters of New London's Thames River and, using the red, white, and blue bunting that decorated the vessel's hull, pulled themselves aboard. Their action, which they called a "living protest against the mechanisms of nuclear annihilation," quickly became a symbol for the entire campaign. Authorities arrested seven other pacifists at sea, towing them and their skiff away from the official ceremonies, but they could not dampen the power of this dramatic act. Startling photographs and film footage of swimsuit-clad pacifists scaling the most powerful emblem of U.S. military policy catapulted CNVA and its messages of nonviolent resistance and unilateral disarmament to the front pages of the nation's newspapers, a visibility the movement coveted but rarely achieved. 4 The action gained this attention because of its dramatic power. Martin and Henry's daring but simple act subverted a powerful public ritual at the same time that it embodied some of radical pacifism's most attention-grabbing characteristics. Militant, risky, absolutely nonviolent, and uncompromising in its critique of American militarism, their protest carried forward a well-established tradition of pacifist direct action. At the same time, despite such lines of continuity, the image of these two men differed visibly from that of the proper and respectable "mothers" and "fathers" who had most recently exemplified radical pacifist protest. Don Martin, Bill Henry, and their political companions were not middleaged parents but young and single activists, unencumbered by and

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largely unconcerned with the responsibilities of parenthood and family life. Through their startling protest, a new generation of radical pacifists came into public view. 5 Many activists, young and old, viewed Polaris Action as "the cutting edge of the [radical pacifist] movement" and "a worldly laboratory where nonviolence is being explored and tested in action." As campaign organizer Brad Lyttle recalled, actions like those of Don Martin and Bill Henry "immediately galvanized the radical peace movement in this country." Emblematic of a new and youthful militancy that was sweeping through progressive movements across the nation, Polaris Action gave notice that important things had changed in the world of pacifist political protest. Nuclear disarmament and nonviolence still remained top priorities, but parental concern no longer stood at the symbolic center of militant dissent. Instead, young men had reemerged as the movement's most visible heroes, bringing with them a new style of dynamic and masculinist protest. 6

"Strictly a Bunch of Beatniks": Young Rebels Enter the Radical Pacifist Fray From its inception, the Polaris Action campaign appealed most directly to youth. This was not its original intention: CNVA's leaders, mature direct action veterans in their thirties, forties, and beyond, simply had aimed to create a sequel to build upon the momentum generated by their earlier nonviolent campaigns in Nevada, the Pacific test zone, and Omaha. Southeastern Connecticut, home to the Polaris submarine, was an obvious site for protest. As organizer Bradford Lyttle recalls, Polaris was "the big Navy piece de resistance, their great weapon that was going to 'save' western civilization." A state-of-the-art submarine carrying the latest generation of nuclear warheads, Polaris embodied everything about the Cold War that the radical pacifist movement hoped to change. By focusing on New London's Electric Boat shipyard, the production facility that built the submarines, CNVA hoped to take radical pacifism's message into the heart of Cold War culture while expanding its base of supporters. 7 The public certainly appeared ready. The escalating nuclear arms race had clearly heightened public anxiety and unease, as had increasing awareness of the dangers posed by radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing. Popular movies of the time, like the 1959 box-office favorite On the Beach, indicate how far the fear of fallout and nuclear war had permeated the national psyche. And for good reason. Despite the best efforts of activists to mobilize and generate political pressure, and even in the face of measurable successes like the 1958 partial test-ban

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treaty, the Cold War continued to intensify. New and deadlier missile systems appeared each year. At the same time, international tensions-in Berlin, in Cuba, and in Southeast Asia-increased with every passing month. East remained pitted against West in what appeared to be an ever-escalating and increasingly dangerous nuclear arms race. Children ducked and covered in school while parents stocked food away in their basements and fallout shelters. Disarmament activists were alarmed by this chain of events, but they believed that this undercurrent of fear was a force they could capitalize on and mobilize into organized dissent. 8 In the winter of 1960, the situation seemed right for such an approach. The success of CNVA's previous actions-the protest at the Nevada Test Site, the voyage of the Golden Rule, and the Omaha Action campaign, which had culminated in Marjorie Swann's arrest-had given the radical pacifist movement an incalculable boost. SANE's concurrent successes, especially its growth into an organization with tens of thousands of members and supporters from the most respected walks of American life, suggested that a wide constituency existed to support disarmament action. The expanding Ban the Bomb Movement in England had proved itself capable of regularly bringing massive numbers of people out into the streets in protest. Popular support for disarmament had grown, as had the movement itself. CNVA's leaders believed that the time was right to launch another militant campaign. 9 What organizers did not initially recognize was the degree to which their message would appeal to the ranks of America's youth. As the first group of Americans to grow up under the shadow of the mushroom cloud, young adults who came of age in the late 1950s and early 1960s were particularly sensitive to the prospect of global nuclear war. One such activist explained that "mine is the first generation in history that must say not 'when I grow up' but 'if I grow up.'" Their fear of annihilation went hand in hand with a desire for fundamental change. Conformity and complacency were not for them. Instead, they sought to break through the constraints of Cold War culture and pursue what one observer called "absolute human freedom" and young people across the country called a quest for authenticity. Motivated by a combination of idealism and fear, young people provided a perfect, if inadvertent, constituency for a disarmament campaign. 10 The result was a unanticipated boon to organizations like CNVA. As one Connecticut newspaper commented, "a stream of boys and girlsof college age at least-has been trickling across the country ... [to what] has become the local Mecca for this nation's pacifists." Young people had been visibly present in the radical pacifist movement since the Omaha Action campaign of 1959, and in 1960 and 1961 they came to dominate Polaris Action, serving as the backbone of radical pacifism's

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most dramatic direct action projects. During the campaign's most active summer months, several hundred young protesters passed through the doors of Polaris Action, while a rotating crew of between twenty and thirty volunteers took up semipermanent residence in the project's nearby house and farm. Organizers generally viewed these developments in a positive light. "These people are able, understand the principles of nonviolent action and have no ambitions for wealth," Brad Lyttle remarked about CNVA's new young recruits. Other observers agreed that these youthful volunteers were hardworking, dedicated, and sincere. More important, like the generations of radical pacifists that had preceded them, they were willing to assume "risks and sacrifices" for the cause ofpeace. 11 The idealism and confidence of these young people were impressive. "Youth leads in the battle" for peace and social change, the young submarine climber Bill Henry declared, "because it is naive and inexperienced enough, foolish enough, to dare to superimpose starry-eyed ideals upon the facts of cold reality." The demographic realities of the age gave strength to their utopian bent: the baby boom generation was coming of age, young people seemed to be everywhere, and anything seemed possible. As sociologist Doug McAdam observes, the generation that emerged in the early 1960s "helped produce a ... youth subculture uniquely optimistic about the future; certain, one might even say cocky, about its own capabilities, and enamored of its 'history-making' presence in the world." This sense of hope and optimism, rooted in the affluence and domestic peace of the postwar years, visibly manifested itself in the 1960 election of John F. Kennedy. Kennedy's presidency, which, as historian Carl Brauer notes, "generated considerable excitement and fostered the belief that a new day had dawned for America," reinforced the belief that ordinary people, particularly young adults, could change the course of history. Older activists who had weathered the repressive fifties happily celebrated this "new spirit of resistance to conformist pressures. "12 These new recruits swelled Polaris Action's crew of volunteers and allowed the campaign to conduct a wide range of actions and sustain its protests for an extended period of time. Young demonstrators joined peace marches from New York City and Boston, sailed protest ships up and down New London's Thames River and the New England coastline, carried picket signs through city streets, vigiled at the gates of the nearby navy base, leafleted workers at the Electric Boat submarine production facility, and made repeated attempts to block and board the Polaris nuclear submarines. Local residents, sailors, and workers at Electric Boat responded to the program with overt hostility and occasional violence. Nevertheless, the volunteers stayed, not only through the summer

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and fall of1960, but into the spring, summer, and fall ofl961, making this CNVA's most multifaceted and longstanding project to date. The young people's most visible contribution to the movement was their distinctive cultural bearing. 'They looked like strictly a bunch of beatniks," one local news reporter remarked, echoing the observations made by numerous others. Many of these new volunteers did, in fact, consider themselves part ofthe early 1960s Beat Generation. CNVA's national office, strategically located on New York's Lower East Side, attracted an ever-expanding circle of cultural and student radicals who frequented the folk clubs, poetry cafes, used bookstores, and tenement apartments that dotted the landscape of Beat New York. These young people cast themselves as the next generation of Kerouacs and Ginsbergs but moved beyond the early Beat vision of apolitical adventurism and alienation to embrace a world of dissent and revolution. These wild and youthful idealists stood, in the words of the Polaris Action volunteer and Beat poet Ed Sanders, against "conformity and dullness," for "spontaneity and experiment, for social justice, for abundance, and for triumph over the hideous forces of warfare and eighty-hour Rat Race work weeks." As Barbara Deming, a respected journalist and recent recruit to the pacifist movement, pointedly observed, "they are Beats raised from limbo by a positive faith. "13 Radical pacifism, and CNVA in particular, offered young radicals like these the opportunity to act out their quest for personal authenticity within the context of political opposition. Cultural and political nonconformity merged as bearded men and long-haired women sang folk songs on the picket lines, crashed in sleeping bags at the Polaris Action farm, and engaged in discussions about everything from nonviolent resistance to vegetarian cooking. Beards, sandals, and "rumpled sport shirts" most visibly represented "their distaste for the status quo" and were as noticeable as the picket signs that many of them carried. Even though merely "touching" a submarine guaranteed a long prison sentence, young activists were not deterred. Nonviolent action became a way to both "act with integrity" and "resist tyranny in any form." Resisters became, in the words of historian Van Gosse, "rebels with a cause."14 The influx of these young people to the movement was as much a source of tension as it was a signal of hope. Organizers clearly recognized that "it is [the young people], primarily, who are doing civil disobedience actions," and they celebrated the student movement as "one of the most hopeful and significant developments in American social and political life." Youthful militants had boosted Polaris Action's numbers and infused the movement with a dynamic new energy. But CNVA's leadership still lay in the hands of its older and more experienced members: the

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direct action veterans of the 1940s and 1950s who served on the Executive Committee, raised money for the projects, oversaw the campaigns, and felt responsible for the conduct and direction of the movement they had shepherded through the dark days of the Cold War. This encounter between distinct generations--one emphasizing free-spirited cultural expression and the other a more sober-minded political discipline-generated serious difficulties. 15 The tensions lay, to a large degree, in divergent definitions of personal freedom and political responsibility. Older members of CNVA openly fretted that radical pacifism's politically challenging message would never reach the "families and family members who make up the great bulk of American society" if people were confronted by the "beards and flapping shirts" of the pacifist volunteers. They introduced numerous rules and regulations to remedy the problem they labeled "the sloppy picket." Polaris Action's new "Suggestions for Conduct" specified that "participants are expected to be neat and clean in appearance. Girls and women are asked to wear dresses, men and boys neat-looking slacks and shirts.... Haircutting and shaving equipment is available; it is requested that they be used." This "discipline" provoked serious grumbling among Polaris Action's youthful recruits, although they generally followed its basic guidelines. These undercurrents of dissent suggest that what one group saw as a sensible policy for outreach, another saw as rigid, arbitrary, and authoritarian. 16 Modes of dress and appearance were only the tip of the iceberg of generational conflict. "You got into all kinds of problems of sexual relationships with young people," George Willoughby recalled about the early 1960s. This was the era of the birth control pill and the dawning of the sexual revolution. The young men and women of Polaris Action eagerly experimented with this dimension of cultural revolt even as leaders like Marjorie Swann and Bradford Lyttle took it upon themselves to rein in the "active hormones" of CNVA's new recruits. Other behavior seemed to need regulation as well. "All the young people were smoking pot," Ed Sanders remembered. He recalled it as "a secret thing," but records of debates and discussion from the time note the discord and concern generated by such illicit and illegal affairsP The Polaris Action planners' desire to be "sensitive to the mores, moral standards, and emotional reactions" of the general public reflected more than a concern with superficial appearances. It was a real challenge to convince people to listen to radical pacifism's egalitarian and antimilitarist message even when it was couched within the respectable framework of responsible 1950s parenthood. In southeastern Connecticut, a region that depended on the military industrial complex

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for its economic survival, reaching the public was a still more difficult task. Did Polaris Action dare risk antagonizing its conservative neighbors further by having its volunteers flaunt their commitment to a "free and libertarian social philosophy"? And what about their supporters, those people who weren't prepared to take direct action but who still stood on the sidelines of the radical pacifist cause? CNVA's projects, especially the peace walks, which had become one of the organization's favorite tools for outreach and recruitment, depended heavily on the hospitality of sympathetic families and community groups for their success. Organizers and movement leaders rightly recognized the dangers of alienating this critical source of financial and logistical support. They were not yet ready to throw respectability out the window. 18 These generational tensions exacerbated other serious conflicts among established radical pacifists themselves. A number of prominent activists, including NVA's founder, Lawrence Scott, and the Golden Rule's skipper, Albert Bigelow, believed that CNVA should capitalize on growing public opposition to the nuclear arms race by focusing on nuclear testing as the first step toward disarmament. The public, they argued, was simply not ready for CNVA's more radical demand of an immediate and unilateral end to the arms race. Nor did they approve of Polaris Action's "obstructionist" techniques, particularly demonstrations that involved blocking the submarines and disrupting ceremonial events. But other leading pacifist figures, including A.J. Muste, Bradford Lyttle, and Bob and Marj Swann, felt that they needed to challenge America's nuclear weapons policy in as direct and dramatic a way as possible. As in Omaha, it was their style of what Lyttle called "vigorous nonviolent action" that ultimately prevailed, despite protest from those members of CNVA who disagreed. For Scott and Bigelow, Lyttle's move into the position of coordinator of CNVA, which visibly strengthened the organization's commitment to this new style of unrelenting militancy, was the last straw. They soon departed and left the group without its more socially moderate base. 19 This renewed commitment to militancy, however, endeared CNVA and Bradford Lyttle to Polaris Action's young pacifist recruits, giving the organization a strength that compensated, at least in part, for the divisions among its more established leaders. Lyttle was anything but a youthful libertine himself; the thirty-one-year-old was probably best characterized by the qualities of discipline and asceticism. But his intense political drive and active embrace of these young volunteers made him an effective and charismatic leader for the new generation. He called them "our greatest asset" and went to great lengths to teach them the skills they needed to become "the leaders of the future." Polaris Action and CNVA

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became what Marj Swann described as "a place and a focus for young people to come to." The young radicals, in turn, made CNVA part ofthe cutting edge of militant protest in the early 1960s.2°

"Conspicuously Hardy": Polaris Action and the New Masculinity of Radical Pacifist Protest The young men who joined Polaris Action found the program a hospitable environment that allowed them to combine their commitment to peace and their quest for authenticity with emerging ideas about masculine rebellion and identity. On the streets of New London and in the icy waters of the Thames River, these activists acted out their understanding of what it meant to be a youthful male radical in a time marked by hope, peril, and the desire for change. Theirs was not an entirely new form of militant masculinity: even while experimenting with new forms of cultural and political expression, they relied heavily upon the examples of earlier pacifist endeavors. But the differences in style, coupled with the surrounding political climate, were enough to turn these young men and their actions into emblems of a new direction in political protest and pacifist dissent. Like their antecedents in the movement, these young activists were above all else fearless. Brad Lyttle recalled about the young men who spearheaded most of Polaris Action's direct actions that "there just wasn't anything they weren't willing to try to do." Echoing war resisters from the 1940s and 1950s, young men in Polaris Action took what they described as their "duty to engage in NonViolent Action against ... the evil and dangerous policies of our government" and gave it an edge of risk taking bravado. The first few times volunteers committed civil disobedience, "no one knew for sure there wouldn't be some kind of mob violence directed against the project." Then there were the hazards involved in approaching the submarines by water. Coast Guard cutters often swamped the small boats manned by the Polaris Actionists, threatening to capsize and sink the tiny vessels. Swimming through the choppy and frigid waters of the Thames was even more perilous. When Bill Henry made it to the top of the Ethan Allen that November day in 1960, he recounted, he was "shivering violently" from the cold and "barely conscious." One observer concisely described them as "a conspicuously hardy" bunch. 21 The emphasis on working-class physicality, which had defined radical pacifist militancy since the movement's earliest days, remained alive and well two decades after its birth. Young men celebrated their athletic prowess, boasting about their capabilities as swimmers and proudly

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insisting upon their ability "to intervene bodily between the arms race and doomsday." They also self-consciously called themselves political "ground mechanics," highlighting their identification with the rugged and down-to-earth masculinity of skilled and common laborers.22 These workers with whom they sought to ally themselves, however, were on the other side of the political divide. Theories that the pacifists were acting in working people's best interests came up against workers' actual opposition. It was not uncommon for drunken sailors to attack Polaris Action's downtown office at night: they broke windows with some regularity and periodically threatened the volunteers inside, some of whom began to stand overnight guard. Tensions also ran high on the picket lines outside Electric Boat, where shipyard workers and peace actionists, with diametrically opposing ideas about the utility of the submarine shipyard, came into direct contact. But withstanding curses, threats, and actual blows only served to strengthen the young men's sense of physical bravery and courage. If Polaris Action's experiences in New London were any indication, you had to "be a man" in order to stand for peace. This was true in a literal as well as figurative sense. There were twelve antisubmarine protests that first summer and fall of 1960, with numerous activists risking arrest. But with the exception of the brief appearance of one New York coed and the intrepid resistance of one other woman, all of those who attempted to block and board the submarines that first season were men. These men reveled in the combative nature of their protests and the masculine vigor that their actions displayed. Sounding like pacifist counterparts of the nation's military recruits, one young man gleefully described his demonstration as the "invasion of a military installation." Submarine climber Bill Henry labeled the campaign "our nonviolent 'war.' " Another activist proudly recounted the way nonviolent direct actionists held their own against "sailors with oars [who] attacked the demonstrators, and ... [a] fireboat [that] sprayed CNVA's boats.'' The photos and footage of Bill Henry's and Don Martin's muscular and barely clad bodies climbing aboard the Ethan Allen submarine visibly cemented the connection between manly athleticism and militant direct action. The men's stoic embrace of their prison sentences only added to their allure as models of courageous masculine resistance and paragons of pacifist protest. 23 These conflicts and dangers highlighted the centrality of Gandhian self-sacrifice to radical pacifists' understanding of themselves as political actors. Displays of physical vulnerability were valued within this framework, since activists believed that confronting real danger in an unguarded manner allowed them to wield a degree of power and influence that brute force could never bring about on its own. As Polaris Action's

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Discipline of Nonviolence proclaimed, reflecting its continuing roots in the Gandhian tradition, "the power of nonviolence is generated through the voluntary acceptance of unmerited suffering." In their eyes, vulnerability plus risk taking equaled a kind of strength and courage that made them as manly as members of the American armed forces. ''We are calling on you ... to assume a portion of the risks and sacrifices-prison among them-that you would in war itself," one Polaris Action recruiting leaflet proclaimed. Another publicly released statement described one young man's willingness to block the submarines until he was "first destroyed or otherwise dealt with." Opponents might label these young men misguided or even traitorous, but they were anything but cowardly or weak. 24 Instead, these young men strongly resembled the "reluctant heroes" that the fatherly protesters of the late 1950s had emulated just a few years before: men who may have preferred to take an easier path but who decided to take a difficult stand in order, as a Polaris Action leaflet explained, "to change evil to good." Within this framework for action, one had no choice but to protest against what another flier described as "the murder of our brothers everywhere in the world." A direct actionist expressed the hope that "giving up my freedom for jail will add more weight to my earnest appeal to stop the arms race," while a widely distributed leaflet emphasized the importance of taking such risks "for the sake of human brotherhood." Others saw it as a way to live up to one's higher self and achieve existential purpose. In a statement that one young man published before going off to swim out to and then block and board a submarine, he said, "I choose civil disobedience as a way to act, because it means acting with integrity."25 In "refusing to obey these conditions," as one observer characterized their actions, these young men also found a way to rebel against the most emasculating aspects of Cold War American culture. The overwhelming momentum of the arms race, the seemingly insurmountable power of the bomb, and the specter of life as a conformist "Organization Man" all weighed heavily on the psyches of the young men who joined CNVA's Polaris Action program. As its leaders explained, CNVA provided "an opportunity for individuals to express their convictions about the arms race ... at a point of possible major effectiveness." Engaging in a "skirmish" with missile-carrying submarines became a potent way to combat what Brad Lyttle described as "feelings of personal inadequacy and frustration." And it disproved what Dave Dellinger, now an experienced elder in the radical pacifist movement, publicly labeled "one of the saddest fallacies of our age ... the feeling that the individual is helpless to stand against the system." It allowed young activists like Ed Sanders, a self-described "wild young man from the Midwest with a

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sense of daring," to break free of postwar America's cultural and political constraints, to "stop reading history and start making it" instead.2 6 Rather than allowing themselves to be beaten down by the pressures of the dominant culture or frightened off by the risks that such actions entailed, these young men felt liberated by the experience of challenging the powers that be. Authorities arrested several civil disobedients, some repeatedly, for attempting to block and board the submarines and regularly sent them to jail for sentences that ranged from several weeks to several months. But they viewed these punishments as cause for celebration, not lament. Confined to prison, their spirits soared. Echoing the efforts of war resisters of almost twenty years before, the Polaris Actionists continued their protests after entering jailhouse doors, leading one sheriff to complain that "they've got to stop preaching non-violent resistance to the other prisoners." Prison provided opportunities to learn and to grow on a personal level. One young submarine climber described the "feeling of freedom" that he had gained from his short prison sentence. As he explained in one newspaper report, "I knew I could no longer be threatened by any punishment. "27 The spirit of Beat cultural rebellion added a new dimension to the youthful heroics of Polaris Action's ongoing campaign. Despite the emphatic physicality, daring, and courage of their masculine protests, the young men of Polaris Action intentionally framed their rebellion in the gentlest of terms. They were not prime examples of the defiant, lowerclass masculinity that most people now equate with the Beat generation. The men of Polaris Action more closely resembled what one of their own described as the "neurasthenic, passive beatnik boys" of the Lower East Side. They were idealistic free spirits rather than young macho toughs. For example, Polaris Actionist Victor Richman's great concern was whether he could "ever hope to create once more a poem" if imprisoned by the fear of nuclear weapons. Ed Sanders prepared himself for civil disobedience by listening to Joan Baez's sweet and lilting voice and hoped to become "a permanent fixture oflove" if he ever made it aboard the submarine. Aspiring to become heroic rebels or "beatnik saints," perhaps, these men certainly did not cast themselves in a typical mold. 28 The exceptional nature of their actions was readily apparent to observers of and participants in the radical pacifist movement. People celebrated their protests, but very few were willing to actually join in with them. CNVA's chief organizer, Brad Lyttle, described Polaris Action's masculinist antimissile campaign as a "powerful program" but conceded that there was little widespread radical pacifist activity outside of the New London region. Despite the publicity generated by the project itself, Polaris Action's organizers scrambled to keep the campaign financially afloat and rejoiced if over forty people turned out to vigil. CNVA's New York

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City disarmament demonstrations attracted larger numbers of participants but did not come close to resembling a mass movement. No matter how dramatic and promising CNVA's program may have been, there was no denying that radical pacifism remained a marginal political force. ''While unilateral disarmament may objectively be the best program for peace," Lyttle proclaimed to CNVA members in early 1962, "we must realize today it is an ideology that does not have mass support. "29 This absence of widespread support must have been painfully obvious to America's radical pacifists. Members of CNVA and Polaris Action closely followed the exploits of Britain's direct action movement, which had grown by leaps and bounds in only a few years. As in the United States, "some of the best segments of British youth" backed Britain's radical disarmament movement, and they, too, focused their most dramatic efforts on opposition to the Polaris submarine. Unlike efforts in the more pronuclear United States, Britain's direct action campaign quickly came to resemble a mass movement. The thousands of British pacifists who engaged in civil disobedience and risked arrest conspicuously dwarfed even the most valiant efforts of the New London crew. 30 Neither could CNVA, despite its self-proclaimed vanguard position in the American peace movement, numerically compete with its domestic counterparts. Although distinguished by courage and creativity, the several dozen protesters who regularly gathered in New London simply could not match the power of the 1960 and 1961 New York City civil defense protests, where over one thousand people actively defied authorities in the name of peace. The five thousand young people who gathered in Washington, D.C., for a 1962 Student Peace Union national protest rally dwarfed CNVA's direct action campaigns. The most humbling example of nonviolence in action appeared not in the peace movement but in the surging civil rights struggle then overtaking the South. Important as CNVA may have been, its lack of a sizable constituency was impossible to ignore. 31 Activists had numerous explanations for CNVA's apparent failings. The disenchanted Lawrence Scott blamed radical pacifism's problems on "utopian irrelevancy." Others argued that the movement's social and cultural radicalism inevitably alienated the people it most needed to reach. CNVA's internal divisions likely contributed to the organization's continued political marginalization, but other factors were at work as well. One observer attributed the lack of a widespread pacifist protest movement to the sense of hope generated by "the vigor and idealism of the Kennedy administration." Fear as well as hope may have precluded public activism against the bomb. War Resisters League staff member David McReynolds speculated that it was difficult to create an authentic

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peace movement in the United States because "Americans, while desiring peace, also fear the Soviet Union." Most Americans still considered radical dissent an unpatriotic threat to national security. 32 The liberal wing of the American disarmament movement, despite its apparent respectability and mainstream support, did not fare much better than its radical pacifist counterpart. Unlike CNVA, in early 1960 the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) did seem to have both a coherent program and a sizable constituency. As a testament to the organization's immense popular appeal, in May 1960,just a month before Polaris Action's inauguration, SANE organized a rally in New York's Madison Square Garden that attracted an overflow crowd and was addressed by such dignitaries as labor leader Walter Reuther and former first lady Eleanor Roosevelt. "For a moment," one observer noted, "it looked as though SANE might grow into a really powerful force in American politics." But at that moment, things began to fall apart. The organization was brutally attacked by Democratic senator Thomas ]. Dodd, who charged SANE with harboring members of the Communist Party. SANE fatefully responded to this charge by acquiescing in Dodd's redbaiting tactics and purging its membership of Communist sympathizers. This embrace of liberal anti-Communism destroyed SANE rather than protected it. The organization's response to Dodd's attack deprived the group of some of its most skilled and dedicated organizers and drove many supporters from its ranks. It also earned SANE the disdain and distrust of the country's more radical and youthful advocates of disarmament, including the members of CNVA. 33 Polaris Action had successfully experimented with expressing dissent in the most dramatic way possible, and the excitement from its first season carried over into a series of disarmament rallies and sit-downs in the streets of New York, instigated the formation of a permanent New London radical pacifist presence, and spawned a dramatic 1961 intercontinental peace walk between San Francisco and Moscow. These activities and CNVA's growing numbers excited and encouraged many radical pacifists, but the movement's inability to foster concrete political change or to inspire mass ferment imparted what one movement staffer called "a strong element of despair." International crises in Berlin and at the Bay of Pigs heightened this desperation; while they put many activists on alert, they did little to help CNVA launch a cohesive or meaningful program of political resistance. A.]. Muste rationalized to Liberation's readers that "achieving disarmament and peace is not simple, but a hard, revolutionary task." Although the struggle appeared to be particularly suited to courageous and intrepid young men, it was clearly not one that they could win on their own. 34

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"Left ... in the Shadows": Female Militancy and Female Invisibility The women of Polaris Action must have recognized that fact from the start. Like their male counterparts, CNVA's young female recruits saw themselves as in rebellion against the status quo and likely sought to experience what antiwar activist and sociologist Wini Breines describes as "the excitement of living where life felt intense and real." Their statements from the time certainly suggest that, like the young men of the movement, they saw participation in the struggle against the bomb as the best way to live with intensity and purpose. Activist women expressed their political goals and desires using the language of brotherhood, which had once more come to dominate the rhetoric of the radical pacifist movement. One woman's August 1960 civil disobedience statement highlighted the importance of protecting the dignity and life of "man." Another woman's public statement one year later pointedly expressed the hope that "if enough individuals ACT and consciously say NO to the destructive and inhuman force of the military machine ... real brotherhood and peace will be achieved." Performing traditionally feminine tasks, even for a good cause, was just not enough. Barbara Deming, by then a full-fledged member of CNVA, insisted that "only by the boldest action can we dramatize the crucial choice with which our country is faced." Women were as prepared as men to take up the challenge. 35 As they discovered, the fight against conformity could take many forms. While radical young men were pushing against the constraints of the "Organization Man" and the "Gray Flannel Suit," bohemian women were trying to break free from the suburbanized, domesticated, and white-aproned image of Donna Reed. As Ed Sanders observed, most of these women "had been raised in, and were now rebelling against, the traditions of the postwar forties and the McCarthy fifties-that is, to be bland, blonde, and blind." In these women's eyes, sleeping in makeshift quarters, sharing communal meals, and holding picket signs as part of the Polaris Action campaign bore little resemblance to the banality of middle-class life that they were trying to leave behind. Redefining femininity in terms of political action and cultural revolt, these young female radicals embraced the risk of prison, unconventional lifestyles, a hipster style of dress, and premarital sex, all as integral parts of the same struggle. In the pursuit of social and political authenticity, they eagerly became everything that they believed their mothers were not. 36 The self-professed egalitarianism of CNVA and its Polaris Action project appeared to provide plenty of opportunities for women to work toward these goals. Polaris Action statements declared that "we act as

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members of one human family." "Men and women" were expected to "stand together," in the words of one popular protest song, while recruiting brochures, which made no mention of a gendered division of labor or protest, insisted that "we welcome participation at all activity levels ... individual interests and skills will help determine your place in the project." For the work of distributing leaflets, walking picket lines, staffing the office, feeding the volunteers, and staging demonstrations, CNVA simply called for "able, energetic men and women of good will. "37 The husband-wife team of longtime pacifists Bob and Marj Swann most visibly embodied CNVA's commitment to political egalitarianism and highlighted the opportunities available to strong and confident women. The Swanns traveled up to New London for the summer of 1960 and were so impressed with Polaris Action's first season that they permanently relocated their family to southeastern Connecticut in order to ensure the project's continuation. Under the Swanns' shared leadership, Polaris Action continued its vigils at the sub base and its leafleting at Electric Boat, ran a local film and discussion series, conducted door-to-door outreach, and periodically organized civil disobedience actions against the Polaris submarine. Both Bob and Marj Swann actively engaged in all aspects of this work; each took on important leadership roles, even as they juggled political commitments with childrearing and income-earning responsibilities. Although both were competent organizers and effective leaders, CNVA considered Marj's presence to be the greater asset because of the publicity her Omaha protest had received.38 All this made Polaris Action a powerful venue from which to expand the definition of radical pacifist militancy to include a decidedly feminine dimension. Openly welcomed into the activist "brotherhood," young women participated in a range of leadership and action opportunities. A small number of women played an important role in movement policy and decision-making processes. Larger numbers "manned" the picket lines, acted as public "spokesmen," and engaged in diligent leafleting, while men sometimes assisted with the cooking and office work. Young women must have relished such opportunities and freedoms. In the early 1960s, they were generally not expected to take serious political stands or to have aspirations that went beyond becoming wives and mothers and perhaps secondary wage earners. At the same time, they understood that they took risks when they transgressed the boundaries of prescribed feminine behavior. One young woman who picketed steadily outside the submarine shipyard during the winter of 1960-1961 reported that she had been "cursed at, propositioned, and been the target of snow balls and stones." Yet going against the grain had its rewards, especially the sense of excitement and satisfaction that came from living

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and acting according to one's beliefs. What a change from the apparent superficiality of postwar American life. "My family has always been after me to dress just so," one female activist exclaimed, "but I've never seen them stand up for anything." Polaris Action gave them the chance to stand up for world peace and for themselves at the same time. 39 Women's growing capacity for militant action must have been difficult to ignore as they moved into Polaris Action's leading roles. In August 1961, radical pacifists staged yet another demonstration against the Ethan Allen submarine, which Bill Henry and Don Martin had scaled one year before. In a marked departure from the previous season's protest, three young women joined the small team that swam out to the vessel and attempted to climb on board, defying the navy frogmen sent to intercept them. Beverly Kanegson was so determined to swim to the submarine that, according to one supporter, she "outmaneuvered a frogman until she just became too exhausted.... Once on deck, she was tied up and sat on" so that she would not jump back into the water. Activist Laura McKinley "gave three frogmen a race" and then continued her resistance in jail. She and Kanegson "refused to cooperate voluntarily with prison officials and rules" and were penalized harshly. In a demonstration of community solidarity, all the imprisoned pacifists, men and women, initiated a hunger strike, but the women proved the most relentless in their protests. As one male colleague glumly recounted, they "left us men in the shadows. "40 This demonstration of physical hardiness and stalwart determination, ironically, did little to move women into the limelight. Although activists of both sexes worked behind the scenes and on the streets, far fewer women than men participated in the project's most celebrated civil disobedience events. During the second summer a higher proportion of nonviolent civil disobedients were women, but by then Don Martin and Bill Henry had made the image of masculine militancy synonymous with resistance to Polaris nuclear submarines. Newspapers and pacifist organizers alike reported on and celebrated the public bravery of men. Women remained, in the words of one notable caption to a newsletter's published photograph, "unidentified" and unnamed. 41 The reasons why this occurred are bound up with the gendered beliefs and attitudes that defined radical pacifist militancy as profoundly in 1961 as they had two decades before. Pacifism and effeminacy were still largely conflated in the public mind. The manly militancy of Polaris Action's male members, epitomized by Don Martin and Bill Henry's boarding the Ethan Allen submarine, depended in large part upon the distinction that it made between women and men. Militant mothers such as Marj Swann did not complicate this definition since motherhood clearly defined women and women's activism as distinct from that of men. But maternal

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concern was not high on the priority list of these young, single, and bohemian women, many of whom were rebelling against the maternalist tag. They spoke instead, in the words of Laura McKinley, of "brotherhood and peace." But by emphasizing their commonalities with their brothers in the struggle, these young and vibrant women threatened to undermine the masculinity of their male counterparts. They were not so unlike young Marj Swann at the start of her own political career. 42 This emphasis on gender difference may have had even more salience in the early 1960s than in the 1940s, since so many of these brothers had embraced Beat-inspired qualities of gentleness along with the conventionally manly characteristics of muscularity and courage. But their appreciation ofJoan Baez and the pursuit of "love" notwithstanding, these men went to great lengths to ensure that their manliness was not called into question. Although willing to rebel against many aspects of mainstream American culture, they were not ready to do so against the basic tenets of masculine privilege and power. Tellingly, instead of describing female activists as heroes in their own right, Polaris Action's bulletin patronizingly referred to them as "our pretty girls." Strong men and strong women could not yet exist side by side. 43 For the young women who wholeheartedly adopted radical pacifism's egalitarian rhetoric, distinguishing between women and men was completely beside the point. In defense of an egalitarian brotherhood that they thought included them, young women acted with courage and daring against the threat of nuclear war. Unfortunately for them, this commitment to brotherhood obscured the militant sisterhood that had developed among them. As in the civil rights, New Left, and student struggles of their time, young women played a critical role in the radical pacifist movement, yet found themselves and their contributions overshadowed by the publicly acclaimed actions ofmen. 44 This dedication to militancy and brotherhood not only failed to move women into the visible center of radical pacifism's political culture but also placed them on the margins of a new and powerful female-centered disarmament movement. On November 1, 1961, fifty thousand women arose seemingly out of nowhere and demonstrated in towns and cities across the nation against the dangers of radioactive fallout and nuclear weapons testing. Their organization, Women Strike for Peace (WSP), captured national attention by linking "maternal indignation" to political protest. A generational and cultural divide prevented the young women of CNVA from adopting WSP's mode of operation. WSP women, with their purses, baby strollers, and rhetoric of maternal pacifism, embodied the very cultural images that many young and radical female activists sought to avoid. 45

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While WSP women basked in the national limelight and young radicals celebrated the public militancy of men, the image of a young and militant womanhood rooted in a strong sense of community, collective action, cultural rebellion, and social change may have been beyond America's comprehension. These women were, in many ways, self-made strangers to their own place and time. That they found a haven in Polaris Action and CNVA suggests the degree of social experimentation that this "worldly laboratory" of nonviolent action allowed. Radical pacifism offered a vision of social and political transformation. Yet young women's continued invisibility, within the movement as well as outside of it, reveals just how incomplete this transformation still was. In the early 1960s, it may have been easier for women to swim against the current of the Thames River and board a nuclear submarine than it was for them to gain public recognition for a pacifist commitment that fell outside the bounds of masculine militancy and maternalist concern. 46 Polaris Action did not come close to sparking the mass movement that its organizers hoped for. Nevertheless, it held a pivotal place in the history of the radical pacifist movement. According to Brad Lyttle, A. ]. Muste believed that Polaris Action was the finest peace project in which he had ever been involved. More than three decades later, its emotional charge remained so strong that memories of that campaign's first summer literally brought tears to Lyttle's eyes. Unequivocally pacifist and unilateralist in its orientation, Polaris Action employed a wide range of nonviolent direct action techniques and, as a result, generated tremendous national and international publicity that attracted a host of recruits to the radical pacifist cause. 47 The changes inspired by these new recruits to CNVA paralleled similar transformations in the broader milieu of American radical politics. The influx of young people into radical pacifism's ranks turned the movement and its political culture away from the rhetoric of familialism and parental duty and toward a new model of youthful idealism and cultural rebellion. A younger generation of activists now stood at the forefront of the vanguard struggle for social and political change. As in other movements, their presence among radical pacifists proved to be both electrifYing and controversial. As the widely publicized image of Don Martin's and Bill Henry's protest against the Ethan Allen indicated, the radical pacifist quest to "revive the compact of brotherhood" had literal as well as figurative ramifications. It signaled an exciting new militancy but left women unseen and unheard. 48 The invisibility of CNVA's female activists suggests the continuing limits of radical pacifism's egalitarian vision, as does the almost all-white

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composition of the group. Despite the fact that some of the Polaris Actionists' signs, including those that proclaimed "Defend Freedom by Non-Violent Action," made direct references to the fight for racial justice, this most highly publicized of CNVA's programs seemed to have had little to say to the real freedom struggle then being waged in the South. There is no doubt that this group strongly sympathized with the cause of racial justice, and a number of its members worked to foster at least individual personal connections with its youthful counterparts in the civil rights crusade. But Polaris Action remained largely white in its membership and largely male in its public image. The quest for brotherhood notwithstanding, true egalitarianism was still a long way away. 49

Chapter 5

Reversing the Traditional Pattern

Radical pacifists reveled in the vitality and commitment that their young recruits brought to the movement in the early 1960s, especially as they contemplated the possibility of waging the nonviolent struggle on multiple fronts. By early 1963, the threat of nuclear war had never felt more immediate. The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which brought the world literally to the brink of annihilation, reminded antiwar leaders just how much was at stake in their work for peace. Activists agreed that the campaign for disarmament needed to continue at full strength. At the same time, the struggle for racial justice urgently demanded attention. National civil rights efforts had grown since the mid-1950s into a widespread and mass-based movement whose escalating protests had propelled the cause of black freedom to the forefront of national consciousness. To the leaders of CNVA, what it called "the current Southern struggle" had become, "with the exception of the issue of nuclear war, the most important question before the American people today. "1 This renewed concern with civil rights raised critical questions that the radical pacifist movement found difficult to address. For two decades since the movement's birth in the early 1940s, nonviolent direct actionists had attempted with only limited success to create a lasting and meaningful alliance between the causes of peace and civil rights. Pacifists were well aware of the problems they would have to overcome. Signs of the unresolved nature of their relationship with the civil rights movement were everywhere, including the pages of Liberation magazine, radical pacifism's most public mouthpiece. In a provocative editorial in the September 1959 issue, for example, the veteran war resister David Dellinger outlined ongoing obstacles to interracial cooperation. Dellinger pointedly accused his fellow pacifists of turning the Montgomery protest into "an icon for pacifist devotions," a source of inspiration that often translated into reverence rather than action. White activists, he argued, must become more than devotees of nonviolence and distant supporters of the southern struggle; they needed to turn their nonviolence into effective resistance on behalf of civil rights. Unless white activists were willing to identifY themselves fully with the

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victims of racism-unless, as the title of the editorial insisted, they were "willing to be negroes" by directly allying themselves with the civil rights struggle and taking the risks experienced by black activists in the South, then the radical pacifist movement held no relevance to American politicallife.2 The members of CNVA, who considered themselves the vanguard of what A.]. Muste called "the nonviolent revolutionary movement," believed that linking their goals with those of the southern freedom struggle was a moral and political imperative. In the early 1950s, fulfilling this mandate took a number of forms: radical pacifists traveled to the South, joined in civil rights protests, and raised funds for organizations leading the struggle for racial justice. Equally important, they organized political projects that intentionally linked the causes of freedom and peace, including a series of interracial peace walks through the South, one from Nashville to Washington in 1962 and another down the eastern seaboard from Quebec to Florida to Cuba in 1963-1964. These walks became the most visible manifestation of radical pacifism's dual commitment to disarmament and civil rights during this time, highlighting the possibilities as well as the limits of such a shared political agenda. The result, as radical pacifists soon discovered, was not harmony between the two movements but a clash of political cultures that challenged almost everything they understood about activism, militancy, and nonviolence. 3

"I ... Felt ... That the Two Struggles-for Disarmament and for Negro Rights-Were Properly Parts of ... One Struggle" CNVA designed the Nashville-to-Washington Walk and the QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace to serve a particularly important objective: to demonstrate radical pacifism's commitment to civil rights. The walks were more than just opportunistic responses to the confluence of national and world events in the early 1960s, or even to the commitment shared by the pacifist and civil rights movements to the tactic of nonviolent direct action. Pacifist direct actionists genuinely believed that the two movements shared a natural affinity in goals. What better way to prove this than by having integrated groups of black and white activists march for peace through the segregated South? In the eyes of CNVA's leaders, these marches would serve as exemplary models of interracial solidarity in action. Radical pacifists looked admiringly, even wistfully, at the vitality of the civil rights movement. The student sit-ins of 1960, the Freedom Rides of 1961, and the civil disobedience campaigns that spread across the South in 1962 and 1963 brought images of courage and daring to the center of national attention. The black freedom struggle provided a compelling

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example of how nonviolence could mobilize the masses and push the nation toward fundamental social change. At the same time, it challenged pacifists to live up to their egalitarian ideals. To their credit, predominantly white peace activists recognized that the grave injustices that black activists sought to redress in the South and the blatant violence that civil rights workers encountered required them to do more than applaud from the sidelines. 4 A strong sense of political affinity attracted radical pacifists to the civil rights cause. They celebrated their common commitment to Gandhian nonviolence, a tactic that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., skillfully moved to the center of the freedom struggle. By the early 1960s, nonviolent direct action and civil rights protests had become nearly synonymous in the public eye; indeed, the freedom movement had supplanted militant pacifism as the most widely recognized practitioner of this distinctive form of dissent. The two movements also had a long history of cooperation. Since the emergence of radical pacifism in the early 1940s, militant pacifists had regarded the freedom struggle as their "peculiar responsibility" and had pointedly linked their resistance to war with the fight against Jim Crow. In recent years, they had sent trained emissaries to the South to join the freedom struggle directly. By sharing their political expertise and organizing resources, radical pacifists created what sociologist Aldan Morris calls "movement halfway houses" that, though unable to spark a mass movement of their own, provided invaluable assistance to an emerging popular struggle. But radical pacifists gained even more than they contributed to the civil rights cause. Peace activists took heart from the freedom movement's daring accomplishments. Youthful Polaris Actionists sang freedom songs during their protests against nuclear submarines and looked to the members of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), whom they viewed as their southern black counterparts, for hope and inspiration. Collectively, they did their best to make the relationship between peace and freedom vital and concrete. 5 Radical pacifists believed that it was only natural to organize a project that intentionally linked these two movements and goals. As CNVA member Barbara Deming wrote in 1962, "I had felt for a long time that the two struggles-for disarmament and for Negro rights-were properly parts of the one struggle." That spring, CNVA put these sentiments into action by organizing an interracial peace march from Nashville, Tennessee, one of the strategic centers of the nonviolent student sit-in movement, to the nation's capital. The Nashville-to-Washington Walk had serious limitations, most notably a singular focus on peace and a determination to stay on route, which encouraged activists to avoid arrest so as not to disrupt their schedule and thus led its marchers to walk awkwardly past sit-in demonstrations rather than stopping and joining in.

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Nevertheless, the project seemed to generate feelings of unity and common cause between activists in the peace and civil rights movements. In the walk's aftermath, a number of respected civil rights leaders, including the veteran black organizer Ella Baker and white southerners such as Carl and Anne Braden, made encouraging statements that cast "the fight for civil rights, for civil liberties, and for peace as all tied together." A young black SNCC worker concurred. ''We think love and nonviolence can change the South. They [the Nashville peace walkers] think love and nonviolence can change the world. I think we are working for the same things. "6 In early 1963, in the wake of the Cuban Missile Crisis, CNVA proposed a second project designed to push this alliance to the next stage. For CNVA, this was an act of necessity as much as choice. The October 1962 missile crisis had highlighted the isolation and impotency of the radical pacifist movement, even after the boost given to it by the Polaris Action campaign. In the face of imminent atomic catastrophe, pacifists were able to do little more than organize endless meetings and hold tiny vigils that were hardly the stuff of meaningful dissent. For activists who had grown accustomed to the personal sense of power and public acclaim that came from engaging in dramatic acts of protest, the shock must have been overwhelming. So was the desire to take a proactive step. In February 1963, Brad Lyttle proposed the project he believed would do just that: an intemational, interracial march that would travel from Canada down through the eastem seaboard and then to Cuba. The route had undeniable symbolic power. By marching to Cuba, the QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace (QW-G Walk) visibly placed its opposition to the Cold War and to nuclear weapons at the top of its political agenda. At the same time, the project had a more explicit civil rights mission than had the walk from Nashville to D.C. According to Lyttle's plan, the QW-G Walk team would tackle segregation head-on even while maintaining its focus on disarmament and peace. Lyttle understood that "its risks will be enormous" but believed that its benefits would be enormous as well. Organizers considered the walk a "new and dynamic development" that would invigorate both their movement and the larger struggle for justice and peace. 7 The tactic of the walk itself generated much of this excitement. Extended peace marches first appeared on the American scene at the height of the ban-the-bomb movement of the late 1950s and by the early 1960s had become a standard part of the radical pacifist repertoire. Volunteers and organizers regarded peace walks, which could run from several days to weeks or months, as a uniquely effective tool for outreach and recruitment. Activists could "go directly to the people," as the literature promoting the QW-G Walk explained, circumventing biased or

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nonexistent press coverage to make invaluable person-to-person contact. At the same time, these protracted marches expanded radical pacifism's definition of resistance in ways that allowed volunteers to demonstrate their political commitment without taking the risks involved in climbing over the fence around a military base or swimming out to a Polaris submarine. All that was required was the motivation and discipline to walk for days on end, speaking to and leafleting passersby and the general public. Although support for the walks was never unanimous within CNVA's ranks, they generated enough backing to become one of the favored forms of early 1960s pacifist protest. To their most ardent champions, activists such as Lyttle, Dellinger, Muste, and Deming, extended peace marches represented a visionary model of the world that activists hoped to create, an embodiment of radical pacifism's most egalitarian values and ideals. 8 In the winter of 1963, many American radical pacifists believed that the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace would position their movement on the cutting edge of efforts for social and political change. Seemingly poised to achieve a variety of goals, from promoting nonviolence and Gandhian direct action to making concrete connections between peace and civil rights and providing a forceful model of egalitarian social change, the QW-G Walk quickly became organizer Brad Lyttle's obsession and CNVA's top priority. With the help of volunteer workers and the support of CNVA's Executive Committee, Lyttle spent the winter and spring of 1963 busily recruiting participants, raising money, finalizing the project's route, and arranging hospitality. In an effort to reach as wide an audience as possible, CNVA mailed out over a thousand invitations and publicly advertised the project in such movement publications as Liberation magazine. Organizers did not expect thousands of participants, but they hoped to reach a mass base. 9

"Are Pacifists Willing to Be Negroes?": Obstacles to Connecting the Goals of Peace and Civil Rights The Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace began in May 1963, when a small but dedicated interracial team of over a dozen women and men exuberantly set off from Quebec for the long journey to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. These early volunteers quickly got a taste of the dangers the project would face: rough gangs of youths harassed the march outside Quebec, hostile bystanders in New York and Pennsylvania greeted the team with angry catcalls and anti-Communist jeers, and a number of peace walkers risked arrest and imprisonment while protesting at an air force base in rural upstate New York. Risk, however, brought its own rewards. Self-sacrifice was a badge of honor within radical pacifist

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circles, and the marchers embraced these hazards as proof of their discipline and zeal. These experiences also enhanced the team members' sense of camaraderie and solidarity. A synergistic energy arose from working together, marching together, and eating and sleeping together day after day. Despite a few rocky patches, organizers seemed genuinely pleased with the walk's accomplishments during its first few months.I 0 Nevertheless, the call for racial justice and black civil rights, a key component of the campaign as it had been initially proposed, was entirely absent. The signs that walkers carried as they made their way through Canada and the northeastern United States were emblazoned with pacifist slogans such as "No Tests, East or West," 'jobs for All Without Arms Industries," and ''We Are Walking to Cuba for Peace," but the group appears to have carried no civil rights banners at all. In addition, CNVA's initial appeal for recruits and the policy proposals it circulated focused exclusively on nonviolent reconciliation with Cuba and the threat of nuclear war. The leaflet that marchers distributed in the North, ''We're Walking to Cuba," explained the purpose of the walk without any reference to civil rights. Organizers may have believed that combating racism was primarily a southern concern that would have little resonance as the group marched through the North, but their silence on this issue was deafening. Despite the project's avowed interest in forging connections between racial justice, disarmament, and peace, the Q-W-G Walk's early publicity and rhetoric neglected to mention the cause of black freedom at all.n Once the walk crossed the Mason-Dixon line and moved toward Washington, D.C., the reality of segregation forced adjustments in the project's priorities and rhetoric. The laws and customs ofJim Crow brought the marchers face to face with the realities of racism and made it impossible for them to maintain any semblance of integrity without addressing this primary political concern. The group stepped up its effort to recruit Mrican American volunteers willing to make a long-term commitment to the project, finally adding Ray Robinson, the peace walk's first permanent black member, in August 1963. The team constructed new signs-"End Racial Discrimination" and "Freedom Now"-that participants carried along with their messages about disarmament and global reconciliation, and they rewrote their standard leaflet to highlight the project's twin goals of peace and civil rights. Hospitality arrangements shifted as well, with local black church and civil rights groups providing the bulk of the logistical support that had previously come from white pacifist and religious organizations. Peace and freedom now seemed genuinely intertwined. 12 The project's members faced new risks once the march entered the South. Organizers had recognized from the start that their defiance of

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Jim Crow would not go unchallenged and that the southern portion of the walk would involve "greater hazards to more people than any previous CNVA project." Most of the peace walkers had direct experience with nonviolent protests in the North, but the risks protesters had previously taken in demonstrating for peace paled in comparison to the dangers faced by activists working for civil rights in the South. In Washington, D.C., the group paused to prepare for the perils ahead. The project's leaders whittled down the walk team from fifty to twenty-four of its most disciplined members. At the same time, the group held intensive nonviolence training sessions, including frank discussions with experienced white and black SNCC activists such as Bob Zellner and Reginald Robinson and role-playing exercises that simulated the dangerous situations that civil rights protesters routinely faced in the South. 13 Racial integration quickly became the peace walk's most salient feature. Entering Virginia, the walkers discovered that they no longer needed to plan demonstrations to get public attention: their very presence as an interracial group incited immediate response. In town after town-Falls Church and Danville, Virginia; Greensboro, North Carolina; Athens and Americus, Georgia-the marchers encountered harassment and faced the threat of arrest. Violence seemed endemic. On the endless stretches of sparsely populated country roads, the walkers were a small and isolated group. Despite their shared vulnerability, the black members of the walk team, all men, became its most frequent targets. Ray Robinson was shot at, had objects thrown at him from passing cars, and was periodically run off the road. But neither were the white members of the team immune from these dangers; they, too, were attacked by individuals, groups, and police wielding electric cattle prods. Hoping to forestall potential violence, the team began delegating "elders not likely to be beaten up" to do the advance work of meeting with police and arranging hospitality. Packing jail kits became part of the daily routine. By the time the walk reached southwest Georgia in December 1963, each member of the team had filled out a small card listing the names of persons to be contacted in case of injury or death. The peace walkers now shared the same risks as their white and black counterparts in the organized freedom struggle.I 4 These shared risks did not necessarily translate into increased clarity about the peace walk's ultimate goals. The project's dual focus caused endless confusion. People whom the walkers encountered, activists as well as passersby, repeatedly asked the group whether they were "peace walkers" or "freedom walkers." The leaflet that the team distributed in the South insisted that "we are both," but the truth was much more complicated. On the one hand, the group felt strongly about marching as an interracial team, intentionally defying the customs and laws of the

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segregated South. On the other hand, the official policy of the walk clearly stated that "sit-ins and other civil disobedience demonstrations against segregation are not part of its program." If trouble came to them because they were an interracial team, they would deal with it. And although organizers expected that individual team members would temporarily drop out to engage in local demonstrations, they did not consider organizing such protests or stopping the walk to be viable options. CNVA's executive committee inexplicably went so far as to decide that "CNVA as an organization would take no part" in the 1963 March on Washington, even though it was organized by its own Bayard Rustin. As Brad Lyttle, the project's chief organizer, explained at the time, "the question of the Walk's relationship to the integration movement is a difficult one."15 These difficulties arose from a number of distinct but interrelated tensions. One primary source of conflict lay in the fact that although pacifists considered civil rights to be part of their struggle for a nonviolent world, it was only that: a part, and a subordinate part at that. CNVA leaders frequently declared that eliminating the threat of nuclear war was "the most pressing business for the movement," a goal that trumped all other concerns. The name of the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace also suggested that, despite the project's dual focus, peace was supposed to take center stage. Some CNVA supporters openly expressed concern that the walkers would find it "difficult to remember disarmament when faced by a racist mob." A number of the walk's white volunteers also resented the fact that race overshadowed their antiwar agenda once the project reached the South. As one white walker who left the project complained, "I am willing to face death for my views on peace, but I am not willing to die just yet for insisting on my right to walk through the towns of Georgia with Negroes and carrying signs against racial discrimination." To many walk team members and supporters, this was an interracial peace march, not a pacifist civil rights campaign.I 6 Attitudes like these undoubtedly led activists in the freedom struggle to view their erstwhile pacifist allies as little more than fair-weather friends. Their most pressing concern was racial justice. And although few had the impulse toward martyrdom that animated some pacifist activists, civil rights workers regularly and unavoidably risked their lives as they pursued their goals. Not surprisingly, black movement leaders and grassroots activists who encountered the Quebec-WashingtonGuantanamo Walk for Peace in the South responded with wariness, caution, and "moderate enthusiasm" at bestP The aims of these movements diverged in other ways as well. The civil rights struggle had concrete objectives-ending segregation, boosting black political power, opening up economic opportunities-all of which

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required effective political action and strategic decisionmaking. In the struggle for racial justice, nonviolence was one means to a clear and definable end. In contrast, radical pacifists often viewed their protests as more symbolic than instrumental, with nonviolence itself as their ultimate goal. CNVA leaders celebrated their movement's emphasis on moral issues rather than concerning themselves with the pursuit of political influence or clout. A.]. Muste characteristically explained that "we are not engaged in seeking power, ... not even in order to use [it] for our own supposedly noble ends." Such pronouncements must have left civil rights activists shaking their heads. How could they work closely with people for whom nonviolence seemed to be an end in itself rather than a means to victory in the struggle against racism? Given the freedom movement's goal of transforming the fundamental dynamics of power in the South, black protesters must have wondered if it would be possible, or even desirable, for them to make common cause with pacifist volunteers who were content to play the role of what Barbara Deming called "the conscience of American society" but who eschewed what Brad Lyttle described as "interest in conventional political power." 18 The peace walkers' position as outsiders did little to advance their alliance with the cause of civil rights. Representatives of a predominantly white and northern movement, the members of the Q-W-G Walk team found themselves in the unenviable position of being excluded from both black and white southern communities. Some recalled being treated as ''white skinned niggers" by southern segregationists, a not unexpected outcome of a project such as this. Others noted with surprise that black activists kept them at arm's length. Fear that associating with the peace walkers would make them targets for attack, plus a profound skepticism about their goals, led many African Americans to regard the group with mistrust. "Literally we were between black and white," one white peace walker observed. Not surprisingly, this contradictory racial position frustrated the project's attempt to make inroads in the South, a proposition that would have been difficult even under the best of circumstances. 19 The peace group's distinct cultural orientation exacerbated these political differences and racial contradictions. The influx of young volunteers, so visible at Polaris Action in 1960 and 1961, had dramatically altered the tone ofCNVA's nonviolent direct action projects by adding a bohemian quality that was impossible to ignore. As both critics and supporters of CNVA complained, even when they were marching down the highways of middle America, many of the project's young volunteers dressed and acted as if they were still on the streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side. For the young people who joined the group's marches, unconventional dress and demeanor was a cause for celebration, a way to display their "rebellion against the whole of society." But for CNVA's

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leadership, "bearded, beatnik, dirty, and disheveled" protesters who looked like "a roving band offolk singers" posed a serious problem that threatened to undermine and marginalize their already unpopular pacifist message. Older organizers, who had steadfastly refused to tone down the walk's radical political vision, balked at the cultural radicalism of the new recruits and worked to bring the behavior of the project's "footloose" members into line.2° In the politically charged climate of the Jim Crow South, these concerns were about more than adhering to standards of good taste or polite middle-class values. The politics of respectability had long played a critical role in African American efforts to achieve racial uplift and equal rights. Black activist communities wielded "respectability" as both a political shield and a weapon. Respectable comportment-proper dress, careful diction, sexual modesty, and sober behavior-could be used to protect family and community from the charges of racial degeneracy and inferiority that whites used to justify white supremacy and racist violence. Just as important, African Americans deployed the tenets of respectability to prove their worthiness to enjoy first-class citizenship, with all the rights and privileges it entailed. How activists appeared and acted was a deadly serious concern.2 1 CNVA leaders recognized that the "bare feet and attempted beards" of the youthful pacifists, not to mention the drinking, pot smoking, and sexual liaisons that they regularly enjoyed while on CNVA projects, endangered other Q-W-G walkers as well as their potential black allies. Rebelling against the culture of respectability was neither prudent nor practical in the socially conservative South. Organizers warned the peace walkers that, although defying segregation, they should "be sensitive to the mores of the region." Then, in August 1963, as the walk headed from D.C. into Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, the project's organizers instituted a code of discipline that emphasized normative standards of personal appearance and conduct as well as nonviolent behavior. The new guidelines banned the use of alcohol and drugs, prohibited "bizarre clothing," and specifically required that "men and women ... sleep in separate rooms ... [and] abstain from sexual relations." Many of the young participants, who combined the rebellious ethos of Beat culture with the pacifist call to nonviolent direct action, openly complained about these efforts to regulate their conduct through a discipline whose "legalistic format and military spirit astonished all." These youthful activists resisted the pressure to conform. Well-behaved they may have become, but bohemian they remained, making their value to potential southern civil rights allies questionable at best. 22

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The marchers proceeded in blithe ignorance of most of these problems, even as they encountered the expected racist resistance. "Much to everyone's surprise," the walk team noted in the early fall of 1963, the group traveled through Virginia and the Carolinas ''with little difficulty." But Georgia was another story altogether. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation tailed the peace walkers right from the start, as did sheriffs, state police, and the occasional truckload of robed Klansmen. On the walk's third day in the state, a man with a knife attacked the group; later that day, another man threatened several walkers with a machete. Two weeks later, police in the town of Griffin stopped the walk team from marching as an interracial group. The walkers retreated but returned the next morning to exercise what they believed were their constitutional rights. When they went limp upon arrest, the police brutally tortured them with electric cattle prods and then hauled them off to jail. Mter Griffin, violence became a daily experience. The assassination of President Kennedy in November only made things worse: Lee Harvey Oswald's connection with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee made any project that claimed allegiance to Cuba suspect. Rural Georgia became far too dangerous and isolated even for this team of hardened pacifists. The group quickly made its way to the relative safety of Atlanta, where the peace walkers hunkered down, met with local civil rights leaders, and tried to make plans for the future. The next leg of the journey seemed dangerous at best. But, as they reflected on their situation, the walk's connection to the civil rights struggle seemed stronger than ever. 23 It was in that spirit of solidarity and conviction that the Q-W-G Walk for Peace entered the infamous civil rights battleground of Albany, Georgia. By the time of the walkers' arrival in December 1963, the city had a well-earned reputation for racial strife and stalemate. In the fall of 1961, SNCC workers had launched an ambitious organizing and direct action campaign, hoping that militant nonviolent protests would encourage local blacks, in the words of historian Clayborne Carson, "to break with previous traditions of accommodation." These efforts were largely successful. Hordes of local students joined SNCC's sit-in demonstrations. The formation of the Albany Movement in November 1961 initiated a far-reaching crusade that challenged all local forms of segregation and racial domination in this southwest Georgia city. 24 The joint efforts of SNCC and the Albany Movement resulted in the first organized campaign of mass arrests in civil rights history and attracted the support and participation of Dr. Martin Luther King,Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They also raised the ire of local city and police officials, most notably Albany's chief of police, Laurie Pritchett. Chief Pritchett responded to the protests by

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arresting and imprisoning massive numbers of local act1v1sts, but he refused to provide the photogenic acts of violence that had inspired national sympathy for civil rights activists in other campaigns. By 1962, the combination of Pritchett's "nonviolent" tactics and dissension within the ranks of Albany's activists had eroded the early successes of the local movement. Nevertheless, local freedom workers continued to hold weekly mass meetings, organized occasional demonstrations, and sustained a partially successful boycott against downtown stores. By the time the Quebec-Washington-Guantana mo Walk for Peace arrived in December 1963, the Albany Movement was quiescent and disillusioned but intact. 25 The peace walkers entered Albany with trepidation and hope. They were well aware of the city's history of racial conflict, the difficulties that the local freedom struggle had encountered, and the very real possibility that they would face arrest and imprisonment as they tried to make their way through town. They therefore considered Albany a place where pacifists could take an important political stand. "Devotees of nonviolence," A. J. Muste proudly declared several months later, "could not make a witness of any significance in a town like Albany, or even pass through it 'with honor' and self-respect, and not run smack into the racial situation." Here was a way to prove their credentials as nonviolent activists and allies of the civil rights cause. 26 Despite the organizers' intentions, the walkers' experiences in Albany were much more complex than these statements suggest. 'The walk really stumbled into the situation," Edie Snyder insisted in retrospect; "no one really knew what Oglethorpe meant when we refused it." They quickly found out. On the most basic level, Oglethorpe Street marked the entrance to the city's downtown shopping area and the dividing line beyond which all demonstrations were banned. The walk team, ignoring the local prohibition, marched into the business district and began leafleting Christmas shoppers, only to encounter the Albany police, who promptly arrested the group and hauled them off to jail. But the project had done more than stumble into an area designated off-limits to political protest. By crossing Oglethorpe as an integrated group, they inadvertently embarked upon what would become a two-month campaign for mixed groups of black and white people to gain the right to march and leaflet through the city. This is when the true meaning of their struggle began to take hold. 27 The prolonged stay in Albany, which most members of the team spent behind bars in the Albany City Jail, pushed this group of radical pacifists closer to the civil rights struggle, bringing the commonalities and differences between these two groups of activists to a head. Divergent ideas about goals, priorities, and the significance of specific actions took on greater meaning as the walk team was forced to build deepening

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relationships with members of the Albany Movement. The peace walkers needed logistical support to survive in this strange city: an apartment to stay in, phones and mimeograph machines to use, and legal advice. Just as important, they needed to find a way to make meaningful connections with Albany's activist community if their sojourn in this city was to have any significance at all. That would not be an easy task for obvious outsiders, as the peace walkers discovered the moment they arrived. ''When the Walk entered Albany," Barbara Deming later explained, "a good many of us had entertained naive hopes about the welcome we would receive .... Instead, we found [local activists] wary of making any move at all." Trust was not forthcoming, even though both CNVA and local activists understood that the city's decision to arrest the walkers "had clear civil rights implications." Much to their surprise, the peace walkers' struggle to make connections with the local freedom movement would prove as difficult as their quest to march and leaflet through the center of town. 28 An inherent, but only partially recognized, political incompatibility between the goals of peace and freedom in the early 1960s heightened the problems that plagued the radical pacifists' attempts to build bridges to Albany's activists. Radical pacifists were well aware that civil rights workers and antimilitarists did not necessarily share the same political agenda. The editors of Liberation magazine, who had posed the question of whether pacifists were "willing to become negroes," had also noted, with some dismay, that international conflict and "the problem of nuclear war ... [did] not enter significantly ... into the thinking of Negro leaders." Indeed, those involved in the southern struggle for racial justice were consumed by their efforts to address the violent realities ofjim Crow. In addition, black activists must have regarded the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace's calls for unilateral disarmament and reconciliation with Cuba as a liability. They were fighting for first-class inclusion in the institutions of mainstream American life. As they struggled to overcome the Cold War conflation of subversion and dissent, the last thing they wanted was to have their patriotism questioned. The pacifists' critique of U.S. foreign and military policies and their position to the left of Democratic liberalism placed them on the wrong side of this political equation. For those working against war, even within non-Communist groups like CNVA, charges of Communist influence and un-Americanism were impossible to avoid. In Albany, as in other locales, such charges became a common occurrence. 29 The practical implications of these differences became abundantly clear about a month into the peace walk's Albany stay, when project members who were not yet in jail staged a small demonstration at a military

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base just outside of town. To the radical pacifists, Turner Air Force Base was an obvious target for protest. Peace walkers had regularly demonstrated at military installations along the route and were eager to bring the antiwar struggle into the heart of what had become a key area of conflict in the fight for civil rights. But such a protest made no sense to the local black community. As a federal facility, Turner Air Force Base was one of the few employers in the region that was racially integrated and provided well-paying jobs to both black and white residents. The base was, in the words of one observer, "the one place in that entire area where a Negro is treated with dignity and respect." Walk leader Brad Lyttle's insistence that the base, rather than the racist and repressive police department, was "the most evil institution in Albany," vividly demonstrated the distance of the primarily white radical pacifist movement from the realities of Mrican American life. 30 The QW-G Walk failed to appreciate the important role played by the military in Mrican Americans' historic quest for racial justice and civil rights. Even before the Civil War, black men had joined the military as a way to advance their rights as U.S. citizens. Black Americans understood, as did white Americans, that martial duty was considered one of the most fundamental responsibilities of citizenship. Mrican American men proudly served in the American armed forces and, despite the discrimination they experienced within the military, viewed their work as servicemen as a step toward equality and freedom. During World War II, these attitudes sparked the "Double V" campaign, which encouraged black citizens to pursue victory over racism at home while black soldiers fought for victory over fascism overseas. President Truman's 1948 decision to desegregate the armed forces only increased the value of the military to the ongoing struggle for black civil rights. 31 From the perspective of southern Mrican Americans, even those fully committed to the nonviolent tactics of the integration struggle, open attacks on an institution with such strong links to the advancement of the race were counterproductive. Young black activists and movement leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr., would ultimately take a militant stand against U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. But in 1963 and 1964, an openly antimilitarist position was unthinkable. The arrogance of many white pacifists, who had been known to tell black activists who had risked their lives for civil rights that the ultimate proof of a commitment to nonviolence required resistance to military service, made this barrier even more difficult to overcome. Even the peace walkers found themselves divided by race over the priorities of their project. Black peace walker Ray Robinson angrily declared after the Albany protests that "if I die down there [in the South], I die for peace AND freedom, not peace only." But statements made by a number of white volunteers,

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including the young man who abandoned the walk because of his unwillingness to take the risks that engaging in civil right protests entailed, or Brad Lyttle, who vocally despaired about whether the group would ever reach Cuba, undermined the project's ability to bridge this racial divide. 32

"The Biggest Challenge I Have Ever Tried as a Man": Gender and Militancy at the Crossroads of Peace and Freedom The peace walkers' experiences in Albany called other factors into question, including the gendered culture of protest that had come to define radical pacifism in the early 1960s. In ways that activists at the time did not fully understand and that a shared emphasis on nonviolence as a means of radical social change masked, the process of combining the pacifist and civil rights struggles brought together two very distinct sets of assumptions about the relationship between masculinity, femininity, and militant action. For the members of CNVA and the Q-W-G Walk team, this effort required coming to terms, or at least trying to come to terms, with beliefs and behaviors that challenged their most fundamental understanding of what it meant to be a ''warrior" for the nonviolent revolutionary cause. On one level, the gendered dynamics of the black freedom struggle seemed remarkably in line with those of the predominantly white and highly masculinist radical pacifist movement. Black civil rights efforts of the early 1960s had deep roots in patriarchal traditions of protest that dated back almost one hundred years. Middle-class leaders of the struggle for racial justice conformed to the cultural conventions of "racial uplift" and the concomitant embrace of masculine respectability that defined much of the movement's thrust from the late nineteenth century on into the twentieth. During the 1950s and 1960s, the movement's male leaders still emphasized what historian Kevin Gaines calls the "romance of the patriarchal family," which rested on the idea that a combination of "character, self-control, reason, and strength" would allow black men to live up to their designated role as authoritative protectors of their wives and children. Even those men whose militancy led them to reject the Victorian ideals of self-restraint and polite "civilization" sustained the black patriarchal ideal by emphasizing the right of black men to arm themselves and physically defend their families and their homes. Although women did critical work for the advancement of the race and provided the backbone of many local and national efforts, the freedom struggle overwhelmingly cast men as heroes and protectors and women as supporters. It was a framework that the movement's radical pacifist allies understood well. 33

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However similar they may have been, the gendered cultures of the two movements were not identical. Within the radical pacifist movement, activist men found their masculinity most frequently challenged by charges of effeminate weakness. A Jules Feiffer comic, published in Liberation in 1963, highlighted these concerns. In the strip, a man pleading for respect for the peace movement wails that "the public finds peace lacking in virility.... It finds it overly passive ... and a sop for women and beatniks." Mrican American men fighting for racial justice, in contrast, faced racist insults that deemed them less than men not because they were like women but because they were like "boys." Male civil rights leaders echoed these sentiments in their own critique ofjim Crow by blaming racial oppression for their emasculated status in American society. Members of the black community frequently called on their men to erase the stain of such characterizations by using political resistance to become men rather than "mice." Within this framework, men gained masculine dignity by forcefully acting as responsible adults in the struggle for their race. 34 Because Mrican American manhood was counterpoised against "boyhood" rather than ''womanhood," women were able to take powerful political stands and engage in militant action without posing a direct threat to notions of black masculinity. As the historical record shows, black women enlarged the boundaries of that space as far as they could. Countless strong, competent, and independent women worked tirelessly for social change and racial justice. Male domination notwithstanding, by the early 1960s, this tradition had fostered a gendered political culture with a tradition of female leadership and, particularly within the student wing of the movement, a highly egalitarian flavor. 35 The women of CNVA must have found the example of black women in southern civil rights protests compelling and empowering. When they looked at SNCC, the group whose activist members were their closest contemporaries within the freedom struggle, they saw an organization whose central office and grassroots organizing strongly encouraged female involvement on the front lines of protest. Women in SNCC led sit-ins, went to jail, and dealt directly with the press and the public. The southern civil rights movement, with its emphasis on nonviolent action, highlighted a style of resistance that required spiritual fortitude rather than physical strength and thus eliminated one obstacle to female leadership and participation. Women played an even more vital role behind the scenes, undertaking what Charles Payne describes as "the slow, respectful work, that made the dramatic moments possible." Here was a movement filled with strong and powerful women whom female radical pacifists could emulate in their own nonviolent protests against injustice and war. 36

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The political culture of early 1960s radical pacifism, with its roots in the traditions of Quaker peacemaking, the anarchist pacifism of the 1940s, and the more recent phenomenon of Beat anti-authoritarianism, encouraged women to believe that they, too, could become heroes in the struggle. CNVA prided itself on an egalitarian style of organization and leadership where, as its members explained, "there is no 'authority over' anyone, but shared authority by all." Notwithstanding, this democratic principle did not mean that CNVA successfully overcame the hierarchical tendencies that defined the cultures of radical and mainstream American life. Within CNVA, men dominated both organizational work and public events and outnumbered women on all leadership committees. Nevertheless, a small number of individual women, including Marj Swann and Barbara Deming, held significant power and influence within the organization and the larger radical pacifist movement. Just as important, CNVA's efforts to stress cooperation, consensus, and community in all of its work created an environment amenable to the participation of both women and men. 3' Radical pacifist styles of protest, particularly on projects like the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, built on these ideas and processes to open the doors to female leadership in action. Peace walks were famous for generating an intense communal spirit as well as for disregarding traditional social conventions, sometimes to the chagrin of CNVA's longtime members. What may have seemed like a liability to older activists concerned with respectability was an asset to those interested in challenging the most basic structures of society itself. ''What I liked," the poet Ed Sanders recalled about his own experiences as a young peace walker, ''was the breakdown of roles among men and women." Mter days or weeks of marching, eating, sleeping, and meeting together, team members developed a sense of community that came close to living up to radical pacifism's egalitarian ideals. These forces of change influenced political as well as social roles. According to CNVA member Marv Davidov, women on the QW-G Walk "toughened up on the road," deploying what he described as "ferocious tactics, coupled with a gentleness of spirit." Carrying on what had by then become a wellestablished peace walk tradition, the women became, as Brad Lyttle explained, "vigorous leafleters" who fearlessly carried CNVA's message up to houses, across fields, and into passing cars. Despite repeated references to women's "persistently quiet and gentle approach" to political conflict, the actions of women peace walkers modeled a style of courageous femininity that, according to Barbara Deming, "filled me with something close to awe" and raised the standards of militancy for both women and men. 38

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The consequences of these new standards became apparent once the peace walkers were confined in the Albany City Jail. In the inimitable CNVA manner, the pacifist prisoners decided that they would refuse to submit passively to their fate. Over the course of two waves of protests that led to a total of forty-nine days in jail, the peace walkers actively resisted police, prison, and court authorities, using every method of Gandhian noncooperation that they could summon. They refused to walk out of their cells. They refused to walk into the courtroom or to stand for the judge. Most dramatically, they embarked on an extended hunger strike to protest what they considered to be the unconstitutional nature of their arrests. This strategy of noncooperation, with the physical risks and emotional discipline that it entailed, turned into the team's most "powerful weapon" and its strongest symbol ofresistance. 39 These tactics appeared effective on a strategic level. The negative responses of law enforcement officials suggest that the pacifists pushed all the right buttons. Police officers and prison guards dragged uncooperative prisoners down stairs, threw them against walls, and charged them with contempt of court. Those who refused to eat faced the threat of painful force-feedings and, in at least one case, a court-ordered commitment to a psychiatric institution. Such intimidation only strengthened the resolve of the resisting activists, who were determined to "[call] attention to [the Albany legal system's] undemocratic character [by] ... refusing to respect it." So did the conditions of imprisonment itself: group cells fostered intimacy among those inmates housed together, and the shared experience of prison helped create a shared culture of resistance. 40 Their acts of defiance sought to upend traditional relations of power through very nontraditional means. The imprisoned pacifists' refusal to go along-to not walk, to not eat-became the supreme act of volition. The protesters' ability to make these most basic decisions about how to use, or not use, their bodies imparted a sense of agency and hope despite their imprisonment. Rather than considering themselves victims, the prisoners saw themselves as individuals acting of their own free will, even in their incarcerated state. By embracing their physical suffering, the walkers collectively recast a situation primarily designed to humiliate and degrade into a source of honor and strength. Indeed, although it took almost two full months, the group was able to parlay the power gained by the fast into a negotiated settlement that ultimately allowed the QW-G Walk to march through downtown Albany as an integrated group. 41 The prison protests challenged other relations of power as well, particularly as women emerged as the true heroes of this conflict. Less than half of the imprisoned men refused to cooperate at any given time, yet almost all of the women insisted that the only way they would move from

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their jail cells to the courtroom was to be dragged. The women demonstrated a similar degree of physical and emotional fortitude that carried them through the hunger strikes in ways that the men could only envy. Female prisoners seemed to take the fasting in stride. Despite dizziness, bleeding gums, and occasional fainting spells, most of the women held out on the prison fasts until the bitter end, long after most of the men had given up. If persistence was one mark of political strength, then it was the women who became the most powerful resisters of all. 42 Radical pacifists, male and female alike, clearly saw these displays of feminine endurance as direct challenges to the men's sense of masculine strength. In mid-February 1964, Barbara Deming, who had joined the walk after the first Albany jailing only to be imprisoned herself, observed how "our loyalty to one another makes [the pressure to stay on the fast] inevitable; pride makes it inevitable too; and clearly the pressure is especially painful for the men. The fact that ... the women on the project have extraordinary stamina hasn't made it easier for them." Men recognized this threat to masculine pride, even as they spoke of about it in a lighthearted vein. ''You girls," wrote Peter Gregonis while in jail, "gave far more than anyone could expect on the first fast. I was in tears many times, and I suffered greatly from a feeling of guilt. ... You ... have reversed the traditional pattern on me, which is of the strong masculine versus the weak female types. Now I must develop a complex." Ralph DiGia's short note echoed these sentiments: "Hi dear ladies, most powerful of creatures," he penned; "now I can truly admire the female more than the male-and that's the way it should be anyway! "43 The fast transformed physical weakness, perceived as a feminine characteristic, into an emblem of moral strength. ''We are most ashamed," announced Edith Snyder during the first jailing, "no one in here has fainted yet." Thinness became a source of pride and fortitude as well as a political lever. "There is a daily ritual now," wrote Barbara Deming, "of taking our diminishing measurements, and as they are read out we pretend to be delighted. 'Everyone think thin!' Edie has written in one of the notes we have sent the men in our group. The thinner we get, the more the authorities will have to worry." But the walkers had cause to worry as well. In addition to enduring poor prison conditions, hunger and physical weakness, and the uncertainty of not knowing when or how the struggle would end, fasting walkers faced painful daily vitamin shots from the prison doctor and the prospect of mandated feedings, a brutal and invasive procedure that involved forcing tubes filled with juice down the prisoner's nose and throat. Because of their persistence, it was women, not men, who suffered through this act considered so violent that supporters compared it to torture by electric cattle prods. By experiencing the harshest aspects of prison punishment and by making the

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greatest of physical sacrifices, the women found their status as resisters elevated above that of the men. 44 For some men, the most painful aspect of the fast was how the women's heightened militancy and power appeared to undermine their own. All the participants viewed going to jail and fasting as "a call to duty." Nevertheless, male activists, who had long used displays of virile militancy to counter critics who equated pacifism with a weak and effeminate passivity, found it difficult to embrace the frailty and vulnerability that remaining on the fast provoked. "The only thing that stops me from crying," John Stephens lamented as he struggled to come to terms with his physical and emotional limitations, "is that I would be ashamed of myself.... This battle is helping to train me and discipline my body." This sense of discipline did not necessarily help the men's morale. In contrast to the women, who seemed to maintain an upbeat and hopeful spirit in their cells, Tony Brown regretted that "no one [in the men's cells] seems to understand how a person can feel joyful and happy in jail. "45 Ray Robinson found his struggle as a black male prisoner particularly trying. 'This thing that's called nonviolence," he wrote from jail, "is the biggest challenge I have ever tried as a man." Patience and endurance did not come easily to him, nor did the ability to accept the feelings of weakness and helplessness induced by the fast. Twice he pushed the limits of the hunger strike by refusing to drink liquids, but he could not withstand the pressure and gave up. Conceding defeat threatened his sense of manly dignity and racial pride. Things only got worse during his second jailing, when prison guards threatened Robinson with commitment to a psychiatric institution if he refused to break his fast. Several days later, frustrated by the poor conditions in the segregated cell block and worried about the health of the fasting prisoners, Robinson instigated a solitary protest that resulted in the destruction of prison property. While he accepted responsibility for his actions, he admitted that his ability to cope with the situation was limited. He simply could not break the equation between masculinity and physical strength; embracing his powerlessness was too difficult. 46 Challenges to the gendered norms of protest thus did not go down easily among all of the ostensibly egalitarian members of the QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace. The women reveled in their success. To them, the hunger strike felt like a glorious accomplishment in which they had played a leading role, one that seemed quite congruent with the prominent positions held by black women in the grassroots civil rights movement around them. For the men, however, the prospect of turning into what they themselves referred to as "weaklings" seemed more than they could bear. On a rational level, the men clearly under-

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stood the importance of their involvement in the fast and how physical frailty could generate a surprising amount of political leverage and power. All the team members, male and female alike, remained convinced that the fast contributed to their ability to negotiate an acceptable route out of the city. Just as important, they believed that their self-sacrifice and willingness to accept suffering provided a critical point of entry into Albany's black activist community. Local activists were, as Brad Lyttle self-consciously recorded in his jail log, "impressed by my thinness" in ways that helped them overcome their initial reticence and mistrust. But such weakness was also problematic for the men, especially within a movement culture that valorized the display of masculine virility and strength. To be physically weakened and outdone by their female companions struck a serious blow to the manly pride of the imprisoned male pacifists. Barbara Deming astutely observed at the time that "the 'hurt' ... seen in the men is more than physical. "47 The team put these tensions aside in order to complete its Albany mission, elevating the political over the personal for the time being. The peace walkers brought in a small group of veteran pacifist leaders, including the venerable A. J. Muste, Dave Dellinger, and mediators from the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), to meet with Albany's white civic officials. By February 22, they had hammered out a compromise agreement that allowed a small, integrated group of activists to walk through and leaflet the downtown business district. This was the first time since the beginning of the freedom movement's struggles in the city that such protests had been allowed. As one of the AFSC mediators observed, "Albany Movement leaders hailed [the compromise proposal] as a significant breakthrough" that brought an important extension of their civil liberties and a boost of new energy to their civil rights program. 48 In a convergence of events that strengthened the apparent links between the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace and the struggle for civil rights, city officials released the imprisoned team members just in time for a "Freedom Day" voter registration rally organized by the Albany Movement and the local office of SNCC. For the first time since the onset of civil rights demonstrations in 1961, no local activists were arrested for picketing in the formerly forbidden area of downtown. CNVA's pacifists considered the timing propitious. Two days later, the walkers made their way through the city, the tensions among them remaining invisible to observing eyes. According to a newspaper report, "the group laughed and seemed happy as they left." The team walked through the streets in small, integrated groups, leafleted shoppers, and carried the signs that they felt most clearly expressed their goals: "Extend Freedom with Nonviolent Action," "For Cuba-Compassion, Understanding, Reconciliation, Mutual Aid," and "End Racial Discrimination."

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On the outskirts of the city they united as a single group and resumed their journey south. At that moment their success seemed assured. 49

"Now We Go Downhill": Breaking the Connection Between Freedom and Peace "It was ... in Albany," two of the walkers later reflected, "that the connection between peace and freedom in our time was made so visible and tangible." The peace walk's incursion into the jim Crow South, particularly in Albany, created an opportunity for two distinct but related political cultures and movements to come together and influence each other's struggles. Members of the Albany Movement appear to have retained little or no memory of the QW-G Walk's presence in their conflict-ridden city, but the walk team's work with civil rights communities profoundly affected the members of the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace and their understanding of nonviolent struggle. Their time spent in prison and their efforts to create meaningful relationships with local black activists unintentionally gave the walk's white volunteers a visceral knowledge of the violence of racism. As the peace walkers quickly learned, one could not act with honor or integrity without addressing the issue of race. Pacifists were also powerfully influenced by the black freedom struggle's gender egalitarianism. Concepts of masculine and feminine behavior that defined both the culture of the Cold War and its pacifist opposition gave way. In the Jim Crow South, black women served as models of militant action, and pacifist women fasting in prison became celebrated heroes. 5o As powerful as these lessons were, their effects appear to have been short-lived. In retrospect, the struggle in Albany, Georgia, was the climax; there peace and freedom reached their highest level of congruence. The walkers realized this fact almost immediately, although they had a difficult time defining precisely what had changed. Marv Davidov experienced conflicting feelings of relief and loss. 'There is among us a feeling expressed in a letdown of caution that the project is over," he wrote in late March, just a month after the group's release from prison and triumphal march through the city; "Albany was the high spot and now we go downhill." Edie Snyder echoed these vague sentiments of discontent later that summer. "[In] Griffin, Macon, but especially Albany," she reflected, "words like 'freedom,' 'peace,' 'love' ceased to be abstractions .... When we walked through Florida and returned once again to 'symbolic' protests, ... something very vital which had electrified the project ... disappeared. "51 The return to what Snyder called "symbolic" protests signified an end to this experiment in political cross-fertilization. As the Quebec-

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Washington-Guantanamo Walk moved south from Georgia into Florida toward Miami, civil rights ceased to be the project's primary concern, and the walk's earlier emphasis on peace, disarmament, and Cuba overshadowed its more recent concern with race. A number of volunteers considered this return to old priorities problematic. Ray Robinson forcefully complained that "peace" had come to eclipse "freedom" in the group's public demands. The black activist soon left the project in frustration and headed for Mississippi, where he worked with the voter registration campaign that ultimately became Freedom Summer 1964. Other volunteers also left the walk to do explicit civil rights work, most notably a small group of white women who returned to Albany to continue the race relations efforts that their participation in the Q-W-G Walk had begun. Edie Snyder, who participated in this "Albany Project," explained later that summer that "we all just began to learn what it was all about in albany [sic]." The promise of militant action based on gender equality and racial justice seemed too good to leave behind. Yet activists like Robinson and the Albany Project women were a minority within the radical pacifist movement, and their departures attracted little attention within the wider activist community. Worse still, when they left the campaign, they took with them whatever social and political learning they had gained from their experiences. The radical pacifist movement and the Q-W-G Walk were impoverished by the loss of their insight and knowledge. 52 What remained of the Q-W-G Walk team was a small and predominantly male group intent on reaching its final destination of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Carrying banners that proclaimed "Pan en Vez de Bombas" (Bread Not Bombs) and "Entre Cuba y los EEUU: Compasi6n, Reconciliaci6n, Ayuda Mutual" (Between Cuba and the U.S.: Compassion, Reconciliation, Mutual Aid), they entered Miami in May 1964 with an apparently singular focus on peace. It was impossible to see that the project had ever had any significant civil rights component. With the push to reach Cuba, "freedom" became detached from the issue of racial justice and instead became tied to the group's efforts to gain "freedom of travel" to Cuba. The vehemently anti-Castro local Cuban exile community helped push the concern with civil rights even farther to the background as shouts of "Communistas" took the place where calls of "nigger-lover" had once prevailed. The virulent hostility and anger of the local Cuban exiles at times threatened to surpass that of Georgia's most ardent segregationists, but the similarities between the group's experiences in the two regions ended there. 53 It was equally difficult to recall that women had taken a visible lead in the Q-W-G Walk. In both substance and style, the team's actions in Miami devolved into a male-dominated, individualistic, and highly

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confrontational battle. The federal government's Cold War military policies and its refusal to grant the group travel visas to Cuba made it the march's primary target. Against such a familiar foe, the walk team deployed its old tactics of nonviolent masculine militancy. Ken Meister staged a dramatic and lengthy one-man sit-in and hunger strike at the Miami Federal Building. Brad Lyttle and Marv Davidov spent weeks readying the project's boat for sea and hiding from the Coast Guard and the FBI. Lyttle hailed the project's local supporters, "particularly the Miami Beach housewives," but the image of women as first-class militant actors faded from view. Instead, for the walk's closing act, on October 27, 1964, the small craft The Spirit ofFreedom and its all-white crew of four men and just one woman set sail for Cuba. Mter a short but dramatic chase, the Coast Guard managed to stop and seize the boat. The Q-W-G Walk had finally come to an end, with men literally in the lead. 54 "One of the problems of interpreting a project like the Walk is its complexity," Brad Lyttle explained not long after the project had ended. On its surface, the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace promised to link the issues of peace and freedom as part of the quest for a universal and egalitarian "brotherhood of man." To some degree, the project succeeded. Certainly the walkers found themselves more closely allied with the southern struggle for racial justice than radical pacifists had been in years. This alliance, however, was difficult to sustain. In the end, white pacifists found it nearly impossible to "be negroes," even though that was what their leaders had charged them to do. 55 Part of the problem lay in the fact that for the radical pacifist movement, nonviolent action, or what they called "revolutionary nonviolence," was frequently an end in and of itself. Activists within the black freedom struggle, in contrast, considered nonviolence a means to the larger ends of justice, equality, and power. The result was radical pacifist protests such as the one organized at Turner Air Force Base outside of Albany, Georgia, which engendered conflicts with black activists rather than allying them with the pacifist cause. The strategic chasm between these two groups of radicals was, in many instances, too wide to bridge. 56 Nevertheless, what is most striking about the Q-W-G Walk and the protests it waged in Albany, Georgia, is not that radical pacifists faced obstacles in trying to make connections with the local freedom struggle but that they were able to foster any connection at all. Over time, the walkers developed close relationships with leading figures in the Albany Movement; they succeeded in the city only because of these networks of support. But these were relationships with limits, limits that taught the peace walkers that, contrary to what they had believed at the beginning,

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the association between peace and freedom was anything but natural. One of the team members proclaimed in a rare moment of candor that "the wonder of it all is not that the Albany people have not joined us sooner but that they have come to trust us at all." Building an alliance between the peace and civil rights movements required flexibility, hard work, and grace. Its success could never be assumed. 57 While the dynamics of race highlighted a core point of tension between these two movements, the politics of gender illuminated another. The highly egalitarian practice of the black civil rights struggle provided a model and precedent for the women of CNVA to follow. But it was not a model that the men of the walk team felt comfortable accepting. Men's anxiety during the Albany prison fast is one indication of this discomfort. The overt return to masculine models of militancy once the QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace arrived in Miami is another. By the spring and summer of 1964, women had literally returned to the shadows. Movement coverage of the individualistic, dramatic, and predominantly male Miami project, which culminated in the attempted voyage to Cuba by The Spirit of Freedom, eclipsed the attention given to the community-building Albany Project being organized by women at the very same time. Both projects entailed considerable risk, and both projects advanced the goals of the Q-W-G Walk. While differences in style may account for the different receptions that these two projects received, there is no doubt that, yet again, the radical pacifist movement had prioritized the work of men over the contributions of its female members. The political winds that blew through the radical protest movements of 1963 and 1964 suggested that such trends would continue. In the aftermath of the highly publicized Freedom Summer campaign of 1964, racial tensions within the civil rights movement increased, particularly within SNCC. Black activists began to suggest that it was time for white volunteers to move out of the freedom movement and organize in their own communities, around their own issues, rather than attempt to dominate the struggle for racial justice. At the same time that the racial divide became more difficult to cross, a new political concern emerged that would dominate white radicalism's agenda for almost a decade to come. Hints of this sea change appeared as early as the fall of 1963, when Brad Lyttle suggested a new sign for the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk: "No Federal Troops in Cuba, Vietnam, and Dixie." The placard was not approved; some members of CNVA clearly did not share Lyttle's blind spots regarding race. But the issue of Vietnam was there to stay. That Christmas Eve, CNVA's Gene Keyes, a veteran of Polaris Action and the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, celebrated the holiday by burning his draft card in protest. By the spring of 1964, chants of "End

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the War in Vietnam, Now!" punctuated pacifist gatherings and demonstrations, while the pages of Liberation magazine and the Peacemaker analyzed the escalating military conflict and celebrated the growing numbers of young men like Keyes who were choosing to resist the draft. The era of the masculine antiwar hero was once again at hand. 58

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For radical pacifists like twenty-two-year-old Gene Keyes, protesting against the draft was a courageous and exemplary act. American military operations in Vietnam challenged the most basic convictions of activists who held both a principled pacifist stance and a radical critique of U.S. Cold War policies. From their perspective, the conflict in Vietnam was an unjust and misguided attempt to maintain a corrupt anti-Communist regime and suppress a legitimate struggle for national liberation. Conscription for this war also posed dangers to liberty at home, especially for the young men who were targeted by the draft. Radical pacifiststhe new generation of militants as well as movement veterans from the 1940s and 1950s-believed that now, more than ever, the culture of militarism had to be opposed. What better way to do this than by carrying on the tradition of resistance that activists had used to inaugurate their movement two decades before? Keyes paved the way by publicly burning his draft card in front of his draft board's office in December 1963. He carried his protest farther the following spring when he and two other CNVA members, Russ Goddard and Barry Bassin, made a solemn and public pact to stand in solidarity with each other if authorities charged any one of them with resisting the draft. "The arrest of any one [of us for not cooperating with conscription] will be considered an arrest of us all," the three boldly declared in April 1964. One month later, that vow was put to the test when the federal government indicted Goddard for refusing induction. At Goddard's sentencing hearing in july, Keyes and Bassin watched as the judge handed down an unusually harsh sentence of five years in prison. Then, refusing to renounce their vow, the two men approached the bench themselves and calmly informed the judge that he should either set Goddard free or imprison them as well for committing the same offense. When the judge refused, the two men left the courtroom and headed to the judge's private chambers, where they began a sit-in in protest. The exasperated judge ordered the two men evicted and then charged them with contempt of court, sentencing them to six months

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in jail. With that, the three men joined the growing ranks of imprisoned resisters to the U.S. war in Vietnam. 1 Keyes, Goddard, and Bassin saw themselves as on the leading edge of what they believed would be a growing antiwar movement. The three optimistically declared in their public pact of resistance that "although the draft has been a dormant issue, it is a sleeper that may be about to wake." Time proved them right. By late 1966, draft resistance had moved out of the confines of the radical pacifist movement and into the broader constituency of the student New Left, creating a wide pool of activists who quickly adopted burning draft cards as their tactic of choice and refusing induction as the foundation for mass demonstrations. Within a few short years of the three men's lonely and seemingly quixotic protest, draft resistance had evolved into a broad-based popular movement that helped catalyze an even larger political force of opposition to the Vietnam War. 2 As a vanguard action, this radical pacifist protest against the draft vividly foreshadowed the cultural and political dynamics that would shape antiwar dramas in the years to come. Within the courtroom and the chambers of the federal judge assigned to preside over Goddard's case, it was, in the words of activist priest Daniel Berrigan, "men of maturity and conscience" who took on the masculinist task of actively opposing "the powers of the state." Women who shared such beliefs, in contrast, would apparently follow in the footsteps of Goddard's wife, Joan, who quietly watched her husband's sentencing, occasionally leaving her courtroom seat to retrieve the couple's twenty-month-old daughter, Julie, who toddled poignantly after her father as he stepped before the presiding judge. Carrying on a tradition offemale stoicism and support, Joan Goddard calmly listened to her husband discuss the sacrifices that she and her daughter would have to make on his behalf and then watched as he was taken off in handcuffs to begin his five-year prison term. In spite of the burdens she would now face taking care of herself and her daughter on her own, Joan Goddard steadfastly supported her husband's act of conscience. Her duty was clear: to stand behind her man, the true hero of this tale. 3 These gendered symbols of protest were remarkably similar to those utilized by radical pacifists during World War II and retained a striking similarity to the gendered conventions of military service and life. Male draft resisters stood as the emblem of the militant masculine hero while female antimilitarists occupied the sidelines in secondary and supporting roles. Nevertheless, ideas about gender and relationships between women and men in the 1960s were different than they had been in the 1940s, and much had changed within America's culture of dissent. In the radical pacifist movement, the women of CNVA had recently

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been acknowledged as exemplars of sustained resistance to the pervasive power of violence. Women like Marj Swann, Beverly Kanegson, Barbara Deming, and Edie Snyder had gone beyond joan Goddard's gallant and selfless but nonetheless supportive stance. In the process, they discovered the power of acting for themselves and of being recognized as capable of the same degree of commitment as their male political counterparts. Although women found their influence constrained by longstanding assumptions about masculine militancy and female vulnerability, they had not forgotten the liberation that direct action conferred. No longer content simply to stand behind their men, women struggled to claim a space for female militancy and equality within the rising movement of resistance to their nation's newest war.

''When Men Refuse to Fight": Radical Pacifism's Opposition to the Draft 1965 was, as CNVA proclaimed, "the year of Vietnam." Early that year, President Lyndon B. Johnson launched bombing raids and increased troop deployments to support the U.S.-backed South Vietnamese regime, igniting a vocal antiwar movement at home. That winter and spring, spontaneous demonstrations, rallies, and teach-ins sprouted up on college and university campuses across the nation. In what was the largest peace demonstration in Washington's history until that time, twenty thousand people joined an Easter weekend protest march organized by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), far exceeding the organizers' expectations. Protests proliferated throughout the summer. By October 1965, when the National Coordinating Committee Against the War in Vietnam organized the first International Days of Protest, the war in Vietnam had come to dominate the agendas of student, New Left, and American pacifist politics. 4 In this year of focused response to the Vietnam War, nothing came to symbolize the new opposition to U.S. military policies more than burning draft cards. Although this particular action had long been a part of radical pacifism's favored arsenal of tactics, it was a symbolic form of protest that in recent years had carried little actual risk and garnered even less attention. That all changed in the summer of 1965, when Life magazine prominently featured a photograph of Chris Kearns, a young pacifist member of the New York Catholic Worker, publicly burning his draft card during a protest against the Vietnam War. To the surprise of Kearns's fellow activists, the published photograph set off a wave of hysteria over the burning of draft cards that prompted Congress to pass legislation prohibiting their destruction. By mandating penalties of up to five years in prison and a ten-thousand-dollar fine, Congress elevated

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this form of protest from a once-overlooked act of individual witness into what Kearns's radical pacifist friend from the Catholic Worker, Tom Cornell, described as "a real blasphemy against the state." With draft cards now transformed into "the symbol par excellence of involuntary servitude for the works of death," destroying them became the ultimate act of resistance to military service and the Vietnam War. 5 David Miller, another young pacifist member of the New York Catholic Worker, became the first activist to put this law to the test. On October 15, 1965, during a large demonstration at New York City's Whitehall Induction Center, Miller climbed to a podium and, rather than give a requested speech, provocatively set his draft card on fire. According to the New York Times, Miller and his burning card "brought an electric silence" to the crowd and then ''wild cheers from his supporters," thus confirming Miller's belief that people would view his destruction of the card as "a significant act." Federal authorities recognized the significance of Miller's action as well. Although they did not detain him on the day of his protest, marshals followed Miller to New Hampshire and arrested him three days later for violating the new federal statute, making Miller the first American to be so charged. The groundbreaking arrest was front-page news. Supporters called his action a "providential and inspired act," while photographs and stories about Miller and his burning draft card transformed him and his protest into the newest symbol of radical pacifist opposition to war. 6 David Miller presented a compelling image for the movement to embrace. With his "conservative gray suit" and "close-uopped Nordic hair," he bore little resemblance to the Beat-influenced youth who personified the peace movement's nonviolent direct action wing in the early 1960s. According to Cornell, instead of a culturally rebellious beatnik who represented anarchy and revolt to most Americans, "the nation saw in David a normal, healthy young man, who could be their son or brother." He may have been a political rebel, but Miller embodied the qualities of respectability and honor. 7 Miller tied this socially acceptable image of dissent to the familiar equation of masculinity and militancy, displaying an alternative model of manly citizenship to the public at large. Miller's "vocation," one fellow draft refuser explained, "is that of ... a man, whole and entire, who says simply, irrevocably, with his whole being, 'No, I will not go.' " But Miller was more than just a man; he was, as he and his allies insisted, a model American defending his nation's most fundamental principles of freedom. Miller explained to one reporter on the day that he burned his card, "I think the draft is wrong, it's a form of involuntary servitude." Within this context, he added, his protest became a way to live up to his "duty as a citizen.'' A newspaper interview with Daniel Berrigan, a jesuit

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priest and one of Miller's spiritual mentors, placed Miller's action in a similar light, describing dissent as a critical aspect of the nation's "revolutionary heritage" and "a cherished part of the democratic process." By framing conscription as a violation of civil liberties, resisting it became the principal means by which men could fulfill their national duties. Protest, rather than enlistment, became the paradigmatic act of patriotic manhood. 8 It also became the act of sublime risk taking that radical pacifists had long celebrated as emblematic of manly courage and commitment. Time and again, male draft resisters made public statements similar to that of a young man who bluntly stated, paraphrasing Henry David Thoreau, that "under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is in prison." The government seemed to agree: it had no compunction about sending these war resisters to jail. Indeed, as the 1960s progressed, it was not uncommon for draft resisters and draft card burners to receive multiyear prison sentences for "acting on their own convictions," a situation that stood in stark contrast to the experiences of other men of their racial, class, and educational backgrounds, who easily avoided military service and prison through deferments, exemptions, legal maneuvers, and just plain luck. In the face of public taunts that labeled antiwar protesters as "queers, cowards, draft dodgers," young men could assert their manly fortitude and strength by willingly embracing the risks and sacrifices that going to prison entailed. By doing so, their actions transformed the status of what many Americans considered a cowardly act into one of courage and determination. 9 In the months that followed Miller's protest, this image of respectable but dissenting masculine citizenship quickly moved to the center stage of radical pacifist demonstrations against the Vietnam War. For example, in New York and Boston small groups of neatly dressed young men periodically surfaced at public protests to burn their draft cards. In both cities, the clean-cut resisters found it difficult to maintain "the atmosphere of calm and dignity" that they believed such displays of good citizenship required. New York's draft card burners, with Tom Cornell at the lead, had to reschedule one widely publicized protest when throngs of media reporters and photographers made it impossible for them to carry out their action with any semblance of equanimity or poise. One week later, a counter-demonstrator disrupted their already delayed protest by spraying the group with a fire extinguisher just before they set their cards ablaze. Boston resisters faced even greater obstacles to their efforts, most notably a mob of riled-up teenagers who viciously attacked the small group of men in front of a federal courthouse. Despite such setbacks, these actions generated the responses that organizers had been looking for. Over two thousand people came to witness the New

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York City demonstration, which received front-page news coverage in several of the major dailies. A ]. Muste described the protest as "the most important event in the pacifist movement since the Second World War," and his imprimatur heightened the significance that the burning of draft cards had attained. 10 As draft resistance became the benchmark for radical pacifist opposition to the war, special acclaim was given to those who led and participated in these protests, reinforcing a longstanding gendered hierarchy of militancy that valued the activism of men over that of women. Only young men were subject to the draft, and thus only young men could make what many considered to be the ultimate sacrifices of arrest, imprisonment, and separation from family and friends. Public declarations of intent highlighted the degree to which draft resistance had achieved primacywithin.this movement composed of both women and men. One draft resister called burning his card "the strongest and most effective protest I personally can make against the war in Vietnam." Anything else, this statement implied, would be a weaker and less effective form of witness. The encouragement and assistance given by World War 11-era draft resisters like Dave Dellinger, Jim Peck, and Wally Nelson gave young pacifist men a sense of historical place and masculine mission. So, too, did the rhetoric of a large number of older protesting men and women, who publicly described themselves not as primary political actors but as the steadfast supporters of those who engaged in "acts of conscience." Statements published by the organizers of the 1965 draft card burning demonstrations, which described draft cards as "the symbolic link between every young American and the present war," indicated the invisibility that young women faced. And as the War Resisters League's longtime motto, "wars will cease when men refuse to fight," became the movement's rallying cry, women faded even farther into the background.I 1 This marginalization of women resulted in part from an intentional choice of tactics: a decision to focus on draft resistance protests over blockades and sit-ins that would have more equally involved pacifist women and men. The potency of the Selective Service System as a political target compelled many activists to focus on this issue. Leading organizers and the general public alike viewed the draft as the most immediate symbol of the war and, according to activist and historian Staughton Lynd as "a ready-made issue for radicals eager to stress the way in which the war touches people personally and unjustly." At the same time, as historian Melvin Small notes, young men who protested U.S. policy in Vietnam by burning their draft cards and resisting arrest were particularly "mediagenic." Radical pacifist literature, which had always emphasized

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dramatic examples of nonviolent direct action, now began to describe draft resistance as the first choice in actions of "personal responsibility" against the war. Activists organized a variety of demonstrations and marches on both the East and West coasts, including several notable civil disobedience protests at weapons manufacturers and military installations, but nothing grabbed the attention of the press, the public, or the peace movement like draft card burnings and draft resistance actions. 12 The escalation of the war helped transform draft resistance from an act of personal witness into a powerful organizing tool that quickly spread beyond radical pacifism's limited circle of support. In contrast to the near-unanimous support that the public gave to World War II, the U.S. role in Vietnam faced growing and widespread public opposition, especially among the ranks of young men who were called upon to fight. The intensified draft calls of 1966 and 1967 increased this public resistance to the prospect of military service, pushing antiwar sentiment far beyond the boundaries of the tiny pacifist movement. According to Staughton Lynd and Michael Ferber's account of Vietnam-era draft resistance protests, the impact of these draft calls on the psyches of young men, combined with the ongoing efforts of radical pacifists, the student New Left, and progressive labor organizers, "created enough momentum to make a genuine mass movement of resistance a realistic hope." The draft quickly became what organizers called "the most important and most tangible manifestation of the war in most people's lives," turning military refusal into the most meaningful way for young menpacifist and non pacifist alike-to oppose U.S. policies in Vietnam. 13 Draft resistance was not the only way to protest the escalating war and was, in fact, just one dimension of a much larger antiwar movement that quickly grew beyond the control of radical pacifists or any single organization. On that October weekend in 1965 when David Miller burned his draft card, over 100,000 other demonstrators rallied across the country and the world as part of coordinated international protests against the war. Over the next few years, antiwar efforts gathered steam as local groups too numerous to count rose up in opposition to U.S. military policies. College campuses became the sites of increasingly fierce and militant protests, but such protests were not confined to university communities. By the spring of 1967, diffuse antiwar sentiment had transformed itself into an eclectic and broad-based movement that joined student radicals with moderate liberals and that attracted such renowned public figures as Martin Luther King, Jr., and the famed pediatrician Benjamin Spack. Although grassroots organizing efforts and small local protests were one of the defining features of this movement, large national events such as the April1967 Spring Mobilization, which attracted

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200,000 protesters in New York and over 50,000 in San Francisco, played a major role in strengthening public and activist perceptions of the movement's vitality and power. 14 Within the expanding antiwar struggle, draft card burnings and draft resistance campaigns remained the most commanding and visible acts of defiance, especially as they moved from small-scale demonstrations into the realm of mass action. In April1967, Cornell University draft resisters, under the leadership of student activists Bruce Dancis and Tom Bell and in conjunction with the April1967 Spring Mobilization demonstrations, organized the first large-scale public draft card burning in New York's Central Park. Such gestures soon became commonplace occurrences as young resisters organized highly publicized mass draft card burnings and turn-ins across the country. Groups like the Resistance from Palo Alto, California, the Chicago Area Draft Resisters (CADRE), and the New England Resistance added to the political momentum as they organized demonstrations and provided concrete support and assistance to the growing number of men who refused military service. 'Things have worked out better than we could have planned," the pioneer draft resister Tom Cornell wrote during the summer of 1968. "The isolated acts of a handful of us two and a half years ago have become a major movement of resistance to the draft. "15 The growth of draft resistance into a mass antiwar movement no longer limited to a pacifist few coincided with other changes in the American culture of political protest. By 1966, black power had become the dominant force in the civil rights struggle, effectively replacing the act of turning the other cheek with the image of the raised fist. Resistance to racism and the Mrican American quest for "psychological freedom" became subsumed in what historian William Van De burg describes as "a call to collective manhood" and the self-conscious display of a virile and militant masculinity. This ideological shift empowered men in the movement, but it marginalized women who had long been central to its organizing and mobilizing efforts. The white student Left, always strongly influenced by developments in the black freedom struggle, began to adopt similar styles of political display. Although the New Left had always been dominated by men, its historic emphasis on consensus, community, and participatory democracy had made it amenable to female participation and influence. The generation of male activists who came of age in the mid-1960s, however, increasingly cast themselves as courageous and masculine fighters in a war against the state. In a curious and ironic twist, the radical culture of antiwar protest began to strangely resemble the warrior culture of military men. 16 The newest wave of draft resisters mirrored these developments as they self-consciously adopted hypermasculine rhetoric and behavior.

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David Harris, the prominent cofounder of the Resistance, believed that his "nonviolence came as a function of adventurous, hell-bent, wild-west manhood." Machismo, adventurism, and male sexual "liberation" now permeated the culture of nonviolent resistance, while free-wheeling, motorcycle-riding, militant young men overshadowed the gentle, poetrywriting, Ginsberg-inspired Beats and "normal" Americans of just a few years before. Old themes of manly authenticity and courage assumed renewed prominence. "Like many other people," David Harris recalled about his decision to resist the draft, "I brought my own need to be honest, true, and manly to a public arena where the stakes were high and very visible." For Michael Ferber of the New England Resistance, involvement in a draft resistance protest was akin to "a rite of passage into manhood." The father of another resister echoed these sentiments after seeing his son sentenced to a four-year prison term. "I'm proud of him--damn proud," the father exclaimed; "I've sired a man."17 Despite such masculine assertions, draft resistance also had a distinctly female face. The most obvious female participants included the partners of those men who were sentenced to prison for refusing to cooperate with the war. "My wife shares with me a desire to follow the vocation of peacemaker," Tom Cornell declared in the spring of 1966. ''We who have dedicated ourselves to the war against war," he added, in reference both to his wife and to himself, "cannot shrink from accepting the consequences of our conscientious acts." The consequences for women were real: while organizers tended to highlight the sacrifices of those men who went to prison, "leaving behind wives and children," those left behind faced concrete hardships of their own. For Joan Goddard and other women like her, a husband's resistance meant facing the daunting prospect of fending for themselves as young and essentially single mothers. Even without children, separation from one's partner could prove difficult. 'To feel married and always be lacking a husband is not easy," reflected Marion Brown, the wife of one imprisoned objector. The experience made some feel like unwilling conscripts in their husbands' political battles. But many others used their partners' struggles to create new opportunities through which to express and live out their own pacifist convictions. As Jayne Switzer, the wife of another imprisoned draft resister, wrote, ''we did it together." 18 Some wives went beyond supporting their husbands to joining them in protest, adhering to radical pacifism's longstanding egalitarian thrust. In May 1967, when federal marshals descended upon New England CNVA's headquarters to arrest John Stephens for refusing to report for induction, Stephens and his wife Candy Kricker, both longtime CNVA members and veterans of the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, literally bound themselves together with handcuffs and chains. Troopers

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cut through the handcuffs, separated the couple, and carried Stephens off to jail. But Candy persisted in her protest by vigiling outside the jailhouse and "fasting in union with her husband," all the while wearing the severed cuffs on her wrist. Kricker's persistent belief in an allencompassing "brotherhood of man," rooted in CNVA's earlier culture of protest, pushed her to continue her protests in ways that united her with her husband as well as the besieged men and women of Vietnam. She followed her imprisoned spouse back to California, joined local pacifists at antiwar demonstrations, and, on the couple's third wedding anniversary, staged a sit-in at the Oakland Induction Center in the "name [of her husband] and the name of the Vietnamese peasant ... to confront with our brotherhood the young men who would go to war." 19 This image of women publicly taking risks stands in stark contrast to the widely held perception of women as the passive and often sexualized supporters of their masculine heroes. In spite of the sacrifices that the ''wives and sweethearts" of draft resisters made in the name of peace, women often participated in this movement as second-class citizens, reduced, feminist historian Alice Echols asserts, "to the status of helpmates, or worse." "Quite a number of women worked with resisters," Staughton Lynd and Michael Ferber note, "but most of them were not at the center of decision-making, action, and attention." Many typed and filed in the background. Others, inadvertently or not, provided psychological assistance by bolstering the men's sense of masculine identity. As historian Michael Foley observes about Boston's Vietnam-era draft resistance movement, male activists intentionally surrounded themselves with attractive women and objectified them as sex objects in order "to reinforce their own virility and masculinity." Even radical pacifists who came out of a long tradition of egalitarianism and female militancy were not above characterizing young activist women as the "girls who say Yes to their guys who say No." 20 Women's actions, however, suggest a very different reality and a very different assessment of their value to the movement. Despite women's invisibility in mainstream media coverage of the antiwar movement and in most aspects of the historical record, radical pacifist women actively participated in nonviolent direct action protests against the war. Photos from CNVA's national and regional newsletters repeatedly show women climbing fences, blocking traffic, and picketing military recruiters, while periodicals like the Peacemaker celebrated and chronicled women's resistance and noncooperation. Not many women were as persistent as the young and intrepid Suzi Williams, who racked up over a dozen arrests at Sikorsky Aircraft, the Polaris submarine base, army induction centers, and the Pentagon, and spent three years in prison before reaching the

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age of twenty-three, but many threw themselves into civil disobedience with a fervor and commitment equal to that of men. At the grassroots level, women could and did play a leading role in a diverse array of activities and actions.2 1 Even when women focused on draft resistance tactics, they moved beyond the confines of expected auxiliary behavior, working on equal footing with men besides their husbands and with other women in the movement. Many women took on active roles as skilled draft counselors. Others worked as key organizers. In the New England Resistance, for example, Nan Stone's steadfast labor and commitment moved her into a role akin to that occupied by Marj Swann during World War II: organizational backbone and coordinator of critical day-to-day operations. Then there were those "sisters" who propelled themselves to the front lines of public protest against the draft. In October 1967, Stone burned the draft card of a young male resister as part of a landmark demonstration and draft card turn-in in Boston. Less than a year later, in june 1968, a group of women from CNVA went a step farther by organizing an all-female event where they could "say yes" to resistance and "no" to war as powerfully as the men. On the steps of the United States Supreme Court, in protest of a recent ruling that upheld the constitutionality of the federal statute that prohibited the destruction of draft cards, eleven women defiantly burned draft cards belonging to their male friends in the struggle. Here was a way to take the same risks as men and to become firstclass resisters themselves. As Mary Suzuki, a longtime member of CNVA and veteran of both the QW-G Walk and the Albany Project, explained, "I burn this card and take my place beside them, and joyfully accept with them the responsibility." Another participant exulted about feeling "proud, after growing up in a minister's house where women met to eat cookies [and] sew rag dolls, ... to be a woman with other women who would be taking the same risks as male draft resisters. "22 But the risks for women were not the nearly same as they were for men, and neither was the attention that female resisters received. Universally ignored or relegated to the shadows, radical pacifist women, who until recently had been at the cutting edge of a movement based on direct action, must have chafed at their new and externally enforced roles as invisible supporters. The emergence of second-wave feminism, which by 1968 was in full bloom, undoubtedly provided women with a framework that helped them understand their oppression and likely fueled resentment about their second-class status within the struggle. The language of "sisterhood" at the June 1968 Supreme Court protest and the pride women expressed about organizing this all-female event suggest the ways in which feminism had already percolated into the consciousness of radical pacifist women. Nevertheless, if women complained

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at the time, they limited their complaints to private and unrecorded conversations. Instead, they made every effort to continue participating as serious and militant resisters, even as they placed their activism within the male-dominated and increasingly masculinized framework of draft resistance and draft card burning campaigns. 23 Given radical pacifism's origins in the anticonscription campaigns of the 1940s, as well as the broad appeal of draft resistance to a mass constituency of young, draft-eligible men, it is not surprising that the movement's decision to focus on this inherently masculine tactic generated little substantial debate. Direct resistance to conscription was, in many ways, the most natural tactical choice for radical pacifists to make, rooted in their history as well as the exigencies of the politics of the 1960s. At the same time, and despite women's efforts to the contrary, highlighting draft resistance as the ultimate nonviolent act had profound and largely unexamined consequences for the men and women involved. The dichotomous gender roles scripted by the draft resistance campaigns transformed women from fierce resisters to stalwart supporters and elevated men into the most heroic figures of all, ultimately undermining radical pacifism's movement toward egalitarianism and a political culture that valued the contributions of both women and men. 24 Another Dimension of the Struggle: Catholic Peacemaking and Radical Pacifist Resistance to War The early draft card protests of Chris Kearns, David Miller, and Tom Cornell heralded more than an era of renewed male supremacy within the radical pacifist movement: they also highlighted the growing influence of radical Catholic pacifism within nonviolent direct action circles and the antiwar movement at large. As members of both CNVA and the New York Catholic Worker community, these three men embodied the strengthening connection between Catholic concerns with social justice and opposition to the war in Vietnam. Although they represented minority strains within both the American Catholic Church and the largely secular but Protestant-based radical pacifist movement, the political potency of these men's actions suggests that, just as masculinity was advancing to the forefront of antiwar militancy, Catholic pacifism was moving to the cusp of political visibility and influence. American radical pacifism had always had a strong spiritual component. The movement's first draft resisters in the early 1940s came from the ranks of student seminarians, while the religiously oriented, nondenominational Fellowship of Reconciliation provided much of the movement's early leadership. The influence of radical Protestantism

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was perhaps most visible in the personage of A.J. Muste, former Dutch Reformed minister, devoted proponent of the Social Gospel, executive secretary of the FOR in the 1940s and 1950s, and unofficial spiritual leader of the radical pacifist movement. Muste repeatedly insisted that nonviolent resistance to war was equivalent to an act of "Holy Disobedience." "God calls us to love and serve our fellowmen," he asserted, leaving committed men and women with little choice except to defy the laws of the state as they pursued their pacifist "Christian vocations." The spiritual dynamics of Gandhian nonviolence, which required resisters to treat their adversaries with love and respect and which believed that self-suffering and sacrifice could lead to results beyond those explained by the rational or corporeal world, dovetailed closely with these religious beliefs. So did the Quaker-influenced style of nonviolent action, which emphasized the presence of God in each person and grew in prominence in organizations like CNVA during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Father Daniel Berrigan's description of David Miller's draft resistance protest as "a great act of faith" highlighted these continuities in the pacifist tradition.2 5 Berrigan's statement, at the same time, represented something new. In contrast to Anabaptist Christians-the members of the historic peace churches-who had so heavily influenced the development of America's Protestant-based pacifism, Catholics of the mid-1960s were not clearly linked in the public mind to acts of nonviolent resistance or principled opposition to war. The Church's religious tradition of the past sixteen hundred years had instead emphasized the doctrine of Just War, which argued that some wars were necessary for the preservation of justice and the public good and therefore deserved the support of good Christian citizens. For late nineteenth and twentieth-century American Catholics, this set of beliefs translated into fervent patriotic support for U.S. military endeavors. Living out a longstanding American tradition, Catholics cast their support for the military and their participation in American war efforts as points of entry into mainstream American life. Pacifism was not a part of their modern cultural repertoire. Instead, American Catholics prided themselves on the sacrifices they made as loyal and responsible citizens.26 The participation of Catholics in the radical pacifist and antiwar movements was therefore something of note. When Fathers Philip and Daniel Berrigan, well-knownjosephite and jesuit priests, signed CNVA's "Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam" in the winter of 1965, the National Catholic Reporter pointedly announced that "it was the first public disavowal of the war by a Catholic priest." The Catholic dimensions of David Miller's draft card burning received even more attention. Newspapers and interviews emphasized Miller's religious

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background and his life at the New York Catholic Worker. The support given to him by Catholic clergymen such as Philip Berrigan and lay Catholic leaders such as Dorothy Day reinforced the religious implications of his protest. Nevertheless, although Berrigan justified Miller's action by asserting that "at a certain point a Christian has to say 'no' to something so foreign to his own beliefs," much of the pacifism that Miller espoused was foreign to American Catholics. As New York journalist Pete Hamill explained, Miller's action reflected nothing less than "the dramatic changes being made in the Catholic Church itself."2 7 Change had been brewing for some time. One of the movement's key trailblazers was Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker movement and a vocal early proponent of an explicitly Catholic pacifism. Day established the Worker in the 1930s with the goal of combining "voluntary poverty and gospel nonviolence" with concrete works of mercy and acts of direct political protest. Her original New York house of hospitality provided shelter, food, and direct personal assistance to the poor and homeless and soon inspired other lay Catholics to establish similar communities in urban areas across the nation. Day believed that acts of charity were not enough to counteract the violence and injustice of American society, which led to poverty and dispossession. In the 1940s and 1950s, she and other Catholic Workers joined with radical pacifists in Peacemakers, FOR, NVAANW, and CNVA to protest conscription and nuclear war. By the late 1950s, she had become a leading force in New York City protests against civil defense and civilian preparations for nuclear war. At the same time, the example of her life, publicized through books, articles, and the Catholic Worker's monthly newspaper, made Day one of the most powerful advocates of pacifism within the Catholic Church. Her influence spread, particularly among idealistic youth like Miller, Cornell, and Kearns. "By the 1960s," historian james Farrell notes, "the Catholic Worker movement was an established facet of American radicalism, providing an example of social and political involvement. "28 Theological developments within the Catholic Church inspired Catholic activists who sought to work for social and political change. The most influential individual writer was Thomas Merton, who grappled throughout the 1950s and 1960s with how to reconcile Catholic faith with the realities of life in the nuclear age. Rejecting the established Just War doctrine held by the Church since the age of Constantine, Merton instead insisted that violence, war, and the threat of global annihilation that they now posed were anathema to the coming of the Kingdom of God. With the prospect of nuclear war hanging over humanity's head, Merton argued, human physical and spiritual survival depended upon nothing less than adherence to a new theology of peace

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that built upon examples of nonviolent protest provided by Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King,Jr.29 The groundbreaking work of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council of the early 1960s bolstered such sentiments. This was the era of aggiornamento, of Catholic opening and renewal in response to institutional religious reforms. According to writer James Carroll, a former priest and activist in the antiwar struggle, Vatican II turned Catholics' "fixed attitudes towards the Church ... upside down" and generated a heady sense of optimism, excitement, and freedom. Intended to bring the Church into the modern world, the reforms ushered in by the debates of the Second Vatican Council, coupled with the pope's 1963 peace encyclical, Pacem in Terris, firmly linked the issues of peace and justice and placed them at the top of the Church's social and political agenda. This encouragement of activism from the very pinnacle of church leadership generated excitement among Catholics at the grassroots level and stimulated the faithful to engage in concrete action for change. 30 Within this climate of religious ferment and renewal, a number of Catholic activists began to call for an organized Catholic pacifist presence. With the Fellowship of Reconciliation's help, they founded the Catholic Peace Fellowship (CPF) in the spring of 1964. Fathers Daniel and Philip Berrigan quickly signed on to the project, as did Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton, and several young lay volunteers from the Catholic Worker, including Tom Cornell. CPF leaders viewed their work as a mission that served the Catholic Church and the wider peace movement and would take advantage of this new era when, as Daniel Berrigan explained, "the Catholic community was being summoned to take its place anew as servant and peacemaker." CPF hoped to foster what its cofounder Jim Forest characterized as "deep spiritual renewal." More concretely, it worked to assist Catholic COs and to provide educational material and services that put pacifism and opposition to the Vietnam War within a Catholic framework. 31 Organizers designed the CPF as an educational rather than activist organization. Nevertheless, the connection between Catholic pacifism and nonviolent direct action quickly became impossible to avoid. Jim Forest, one of CPF's two paid staff members, thought of the new organization as "an outgrowth of the Catholic Worker," committed to the Worker's tradition of absolute pacifism, activism, and personalist politics. Forest and Cornell, the other half of the CPF staff, not only belonged to the New York Worker but shared a long history of active involvement with CNVA and the established radical pacifist movement. The CPF's move, in January 1965, into lower Manhattan's "peace ghetto"-a suite of offices shared by the War Resisters League, the Student Peace Union, and

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CNVA-increased the sense of connection and collaboration between its outreach activities and the radical pacifist movement.3 2 The events that followed David Miller's draft card burning in the fall of 1965 linked Catholic radical pacifism even more directly to the historic center of the radical pacifist struggle. In the wake of Miller's arrest, a number of stalwart resisters, spearheaded by the CPF's Tom Cornell and assisted by organizers at CNVA and the WRL, scheduled the New York City draft card burning demonstrations that were disrupted first by unruly reporters and photographers and then by a fire-extinguisherwielding counter-demonstrator. As a reflection of the importance that Catholic pacifists now held to the nonviolent antiwar movement, Dorothy Day and A.]. Muste presided over that day's events by physically flanking the small group of resisters and acting as the figurative godmother and godfather to the young men who risked arrest. Cornell's description of the demonstration and its crowd of over two thousand supporters as "more of a prayer meeting than a demonstration" highlighted the religious significance of this event to its participants. Commonweal magazine, a progressive Catholic biweekly, called the demonstration an "impressive ... liturgical ceremony." Cornell himself began the day by hosting a mass in his family's apartment that Daniel Berrigan led and Muste attended. Although public statements and literature, as well as participants in the action, highlighted CNVA's and the WRL's role in the New York City draft card demonstrations, Catholic pacifists had begun to infuse their religious sensibility into the political culture of radical pacifist protest. 33

In the Apostolic Tradition: Men, Women, and the Catholic Left This joining of forces at first seemed to do little to strengthen the radical pacifist cause. Instead, by the fall of 1967, all the members of this community found themselves in a frustrating and contradictory position: the antiwar movement had grown larger and larger, yet radical pacifism's own strength and influence had waned. Historians repeatedly note radical pacifism's varied influence on the youthful and militant struggles against the Vietnam War, most notably evidenced by the antiwar movement's eager adoption of the imaginative and courageous direct action tactics that radical pacifists had pioneered. Such influence, however, went only so far. Although numerous activists, including A.]. Muste, Dave Dellinger, and Brad Lyttle, put great faith and effort into coalition-organizing campaigns and struggled to uphold a strong pacifist ethos, they could not check what many saw as dangerous "drifts toward violence in the anti-war movement."34

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Violence may have been an inevitable outgrowth of young people's growing frustration with the escalating war in Vietnam. By 1968, popular opposition to the war had cohered into a mass movement that included a broad section of the nation's liberal and radical political communities. Tens of thousands regularly gathered on the streets in organized protest, and many hundreds of thousands more sent letters to Congress and the president, held peaceful vigils in their local communities, and supported the work of the growing numbers of draft resisters, religious leaders, and mainstream politicians who called for an end to the Vietnam War. By 1967, protests were ever-present. Nevertheless, this show of strength seemed to have little impact on U.S. military policies. As the war escalated under the direction of President Johnson and then President Nixon, an increasingly desperate circle of activists struggled to find a way to interject themselves into the conduct of the war. Activists set their sights on more militant forms of action. 35 Radical pacifists, Catholics and otherwise, tried to increase the militancy of their own protests and thereby demonstrate the relevance of "revolutionary nonviolence" to the various forces on the Left that were pushing for political change. They needed to prove that theirs was not a soft kind of pacifism that shied from conflict but rather a tough and hardened radicalism that could hold its own within a culture now dominated by militant forms of machismo, risk taking, and defiance. 'The effective opposition must be, not an expression of sentiment, but an act of obstruction," CNVA's Gordon Christianson wrote in the spring of 1967. Maij Swann complained to the members ofCNVA that "ifwe don't get on the ball and begin to produce a nonviolent revolution that ... really stops the slaughter and destruction ... , then let's stop thinking we're doing the job by talking and meeting and paying our annual dues and showing up twice a year (or twice a week, for that matter) with our placards for an afternoon demonstration. "36 CNVA's activists worked to move their efforts to a more militant stage with little success. In April1966, CNVA's leaders organized a daring trip to South Vietnam, intending to stage protests at the U.S. embassy in Saigon. This was a dramatic and courageous show of pacifist commitment: all six activists expressed great fears about the consequences of their protests, including the very real possibility of imprisonment or death. This small entourage of well-known and respected activists, including A.]. Muste, Bradford Lyttle, and Barbara Deming, traveled to the strategic center of the war to demonstrate their solidarity with the Vietnamese people and to prove to American radicals that pacifists could act in a direct and meaningful way. Their ability to actually do so, however, was limited. South Vietnamese military authorities thwarted their demonstrations and promptly deported the group. Even worse,

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their protest received hardly any publicity outside of a small circle of already committed supporters. As gutsy as a trip to Saigon may have been, it failed to increase radical pacifism's appeal to a wider audience of antiwar radicals. Nor did other small-scale nonviolent protests at the Pentagon, at military contractors, and at Selective Service headquarters shift the broader culture of protest toward a consistent nonviolent stance. 37 Instead, in an ironic turn of events, CNVA's brand of direct action moved into the mainstream of the antiwar movement at the same time that the influence of radical pacifism decreased. Local pacifist direct action groups rose up around the country, but few seemed to capture national attention in the way that CNVA originally had. No longer celebrated as the vanguard of political protest, CNVA lost its very reason for existence. Muste's sudden death in February 1967 compounded CNVA's problems. Muste had long been the movement's primary fundraiser and leading light; his skills and insight could not easily be replaced. By the following September, CNVA was "on the verge of total collapse." On November 30, 1967, a dramatically weakened CNVA folded and merged into the less action-oriented War Resisters League. Radical pacifism did not die. But there was an empty space where CNVA had been. 38 Father Philip Berrigan, from his home base of Baltimore, continued to struggle to find a way to use nonviolent action in order to end the war. At the time of CNVA's demise, Berrigan was a well-seasoned civil rights and antiwar activist who had participated in almost every form of protest against the war in Vietnam: he had marched in demonstrations, written to and met with senators and congressmen, spoken in public forums, and organized local pickets and protests. In the process, he had become, according to Berrigan biographers Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady, "Baltimore's most prominent antiwar leader" and the driving force behind local civil disobedience efforts. And, like other movement leaders and activists, he had discovered that increasing the level of militancy or the number of participants in a demonstration did not necessarily translate into immediate or concrete political change. "History will tell us whether it was too late, too little," he resignedly wrote to A.]. Muste in early 1967, "but not perhaps that we did not try. "39 By 1968, years of vigorous protest had left Berrigan frustrated, disillusioned, and searching for a more effective means of dissent. As CNVA had discovered, the old methods of protest no longer seemed germane, especially since, as Berrigan later reflected, "it became clear to us that the government was going to let us carry picket signs and write letters indefinitely." Instead of giving up, Berrigan upped the ante. In October 1967, he and three other members of Baltimore's Catholic peace community marched into the local Selective Service headquarters and poured blood over its draft records. FBI officers quickly arrested the men

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and charged them with multiple felony offenses. The forceful reaction of the federal government convinced Berrigan that he had taken the appropriate step. ''We have stood against them so forcibly," he triumphantly wrote on the eve of his conviction, "that they cannot ignore us. "40 The Baltimore action, while audacious, had only a limited immediate political impact. The action that followed changed that dynamic and propelled Berrigan and his cohorts to national news headlines and to the forefront of the culture of militant nonviolent protest. In May 1968, a week before his sentencing for the Baltimore action, Philip, along with his brother Daniel and seven other Catholic men and women, entered Selective Service offices in Catonsville, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore, and, before the eyes of astonished and protesting office workers, emptied hundreds of draft files into wire trash cans, carried the baskets out to the front parking lot, doused them with homemade napalm, and set them on fire. The nine joined hands, prayed, sang hymns, and waited for arrest. News reporters, who had been discreetly alerted beforehand, "emerged as if from nowhere" to snap pictures and shoot footage of this incredible sight. Local police arrived within a few minutes and with the help of the FBI quickly arrested the crew, but not before the nine had completed their work and, in doing so, created a new model of protest. 41 It is difficult today to imagine just how shocking and compelling the Catonsville action was to Americans at that time. The open and public destruction of draft records, the use of napalm, the involvement of priests and nuns, and the willful breaking of the law transformed this symbolic action into a startling and spectacular event. The nine protesters, neat and respectable-looking in their suits, dresses, short hair, and clerical collars, stood in stark contrast to the anarchic and unkempt image of countercultural protesters that so many Americans by now equated with public opposition to the Vietnam War. The Catonsville Nine's respectability only heightened the significance of their transgression of social and political order. As priests and nuns, these were people who embodied authority, not rebellion. Yet here they were, facing felony charges for destroying government property and celebrating their ability to cause what Daniel Berrigan poetically labeled "the fracture of good order. "42 In the midst of a year marked by calamity and political upheaval, it was not surprising that activists, even nonviolent activists, would embrace such dramatic means to make themselves heard. The fighting in Vietnam, highlighted by the January 1968 Tet Offensive against U.S. military strongholds, had illustrated just how far the United States was from winning the war and just how brutal and vicious fighting that war could be. President Johnson, embattled within his own Democratic Party and challenged by protesters on the streets, withdrew from the 1968

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presidential campaign in what appeared to be a victory for the increasingly mainstream antiwar forces. The April assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, however, quickly shattered any sense of hope or optimism and instead only deepened the country's sense of rage and despair. Many young activists, weary of fighting what seemed like a never-ending battle, began to embrace ever more militant and violent tactics. A peaceful solution seemed elusive at best. The Catonsville raid represented not just a nonviolent approach to political change but a controversial escalation in radical pacifist tactics. This was more than a symbolic act of witness; by destroying government property, the draft board raiders were, quite literally, impeding the government's conduct of the war. In Tom Cornell's eyes, the burning of the draft files signaled "a shift in tactics from nonviolent protest to resistance to revolution." Daniel Berrigan similarly insisted "that we were starting something new, ... offering others a practical, war-impeding, symbolically powerful, grabbing way of saying NO to the war." In the eyes of its supporters, Catonsville became one way to fill the political void left by CNVA's decline. One dedicated pacifist journalist described the act as "a deeply significant example of revolutionary nonviolenceperhaps the most important in the United States in many years."43 Not every pacifist agreed. Despite receiving public acclaim, the Catonsville raid and the copycat actions that followed set off a fierce debate about the definition of nonviolence and its relationship to this new form of "ultra-resistance." Prominent and experienced radical pacifists, including jim Peck, Brad Lyttle, and Dorothy Day, expressed their reservations over whether such actions were truly nonviolent. The secrecy of the raids flew in the face of their movement's commitment to the Gandhian principles of openness and truth, principles that had long underlaid radical pacifism's direct action campaigns. Others found the destruction of property most troubling, a violation of their fundamental belief that pacifism involved renouncing violence in any and every form. In this light, one Catholic journalist sharply observed in a note of open condemnation that "the raid had taken on the rather startling features of a regular terrorist strike. "44 Nevertheless, a sizable number of activists believed that the Catonsville raid pointed the way toward a satisfying new model of nonviolent protest, one that would, in the words of Barbara Deming, effectively "communicate the urgency of stopping this war." Pacifists such as Deming gave the action a strong stamp of approval, finding it hard not to admire the draft board raiders' great "moral commitment to peace." Marj Swann expressed similar sentiments when she wrote that ''while many of us could not take such action ourselves ... nevertheless we are compelled to admire, respect, and give support to those involved." Suzi Williams, a

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young member of New England CNVA, did not feel quite so constrained and in June 1968 joined with a friend to conduct a draft board raid of her own. Others were similarly undeterred by the threat of long prison sentences that such actions entailed, and new groups quickly formed to carry out raids and "rip-offs." The Milwaukee Fourteen. The New York Eight. The Dow Chemical (or D.C.) Nine. By 1972, over 230 people had participated in at least fifty-three separate actions against draft boards, military contractors, and the FBI. Even Brad Lyttle, who seriously questioned whether the raids could fit within a pacifist framework, soon conceded that "the actions have, in a sense, filled a gap between classic nonviolent civil disobedience protests and violent resistance."45 The draft board raids promised to fill another gap as well, since they held open the opportunity for women as well as men to become authentic agents of protest. Like earlier radical pacifist demonstrations against racial inequality and nuclear weapons, the Catholic resistance's nonviolent direct action raids were ostensibly open to all. Anyone, regardless of their age or sex, could raid a draft board, destroy its records, and risk arrest and imprisonment. All that was required was courage, commitment, and perhaps a little faith. Although the prominence of priests in the movement's leadership gave the draft board actions a distinctively masculine edge, activists defined their identities as neither male nor female but simply, in the words of the Catonsville Nine, as nongendered "American citizens" and "Catholic Christians."46 Men nevertheless dominated both the reality and the perception of the draft board raids. The Catonsville Nine raid included only two women, Marjorie Melville and Mary Moylan, while the Baltimore Four were all men. The next action in the series, the all-male and largely clerical Milwaukee Fourteen, similarly showcased men as the ultimate war resisters. Subsequent raids carried out over the next two years involved significantly higher percentages of women, but by then media coverage had largely reduced such actions to the highly masculinized image of "priests and fire. "47 The strong connection that the draft board raiders made to the allmale draft resistance movement heightened the masculine implications of these radical Catholic protests. Many raiders made direct links between their own destruction of draft files and the destruction of draft cards made by young men in the "resistance." Baltimore Four and Catonsville Nine member Tom Lewis described the mass destruction of files as providing "a way to connect" with the young men who had burned their own draft cards in protest. Others, like Bob Cunnane and Jim Harney of the Milwaukee Fourteen, as well as Daniel and Philip Berrigan, had already connected with these resisters by playing critical public roles in earlier draft resistance demonstrations. It was no accident that Daniel Berrigan's

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public apology for "burning paper instead of children" echoed the statements of earlier draft resisters such as Tom Cornell, who helped draft a leaflet in October 1965 entitled "Burn Draft Cards-Not People" and who had written at the time that the "real crime" was "not burning this scrap of paper; the crime is burning villages, burning hospitals, burning children." Given the symbolic similarities-the flames and the paperinvolved in these two types of actions, it was easy to cast the draft board raids as simply the next step along an established line of male-dominated protest. 48 The connections were cultural as well as political. Like the militantly masculinized draft resistance movement, the Catholic resistance conveyed an aura of toughness and bravura. The Baltimore and Catonsville actions, undertaken in the middle of the day, involved outsmarting and overpowering office workers through creativity and physical prowess. An Ithaca, New York, underground paper picked up on these themes in its coverage of the September 1968 Milwaukee Fourteen raid. The paper's banner headline-"Priests vs. Army"-and the accompanying photograph of the fourteen men running and dragging huge bags of confiscated files all invoked images of football players ready for the scrimmage, of manly athleticism wed to political protest. 49 The rhetoric of the Catholic resistance reinforced these tendencies. Philip Berrigan typically described involvement in the resistance as part of the process of "becoming a man" and was known to "guilt trip" young men into acting by bluntly telling them they had "no balls" if they didn't commit themselves to a raid. Many young men took this message to heart as they struggled to live up to the challenge. "I try to grow to manhood each day," a close friend of Philip's typically wrote to Dan, "so that I too will be prepared for prison." Other's noted the machismo inherent in the draft board raids and openly celebrated what they called the "resistance brotherhood of scholars, students, and clergy." Even when women acted in the raids, masculine assumptions about militant action often rendered them invisible. When Dorothy Day wrote about the Catonsville and Milwaukee actions, she lauded only "these men, priests and laymen," as if the two women of the Catonsville Nine simply did not exist. 5° These attitudes arose without question largely because they so closely reflected the patriarchal and hierarchical underpinnings of the Catholic Church. Venerated as priests, the Berrigans cast themselves as modern prophets and apostles carrying out the work of God and Christ himself. Philip emphatically argued that "both Christ and Paul exhorted disciples to civil disobedience." 'The word," he elaborated many years later, "has to take flesh." This movement's values mirrored those of its religious base, where priests were valued above all others and where

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women, by definition of their sex, were excluded from positions of authority and power and deemed unworthy of attention. These beliefs stood in stark contrast to the spiritual values of Quaker egalitarianism, which had dominated radical pacifism until then. 51 The new prominence of the priestly raiders, and of the brothers Berrigan in particular, added another dimension to the complicated mix of power and politics that defined the culture of Catholic resistance. Daniel and Philip were already well known in activist circles, but the Catonsville raid quickly turned these two photogenic priests into national celebrities and political stars. Philip, the mastermind and main organizer behind the continuing series of draft board actions, became the movement's earliest public martyr when he received a six-year sentence for his part in the initial Baltimore raid. Daniel, free on bail, became the enigmatic speaker and poetic spokesperson for the resistance efforts. These men's fame, however, came at the price of relative anonymity for the other actors involved. As Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady observe, the photos that appeared the day after the Catonsville raid presented neatly cropped images of Daniel and Philip, as if the rest of the Nine did not matter. ''To some of the raiders," these writers remark, "the Catonsville Nine had suddenly been transformed into the Catonsville Two."52 The women involved must have viewed the Berrigans' notoriety and the movement's Catholic heritage as a double-edged sword. The activist priests drew public attention to the draft board raids and gave the resistance actions a degree of power and influence that they likely could not have achieved on their own. But with the Berrigan brothers at the movement's visual masthead, the rhetoric of masculinity quickly came to dominate the discourse of militant Catholic opposition to the Vietnam War. Placing political protest within the context of the apostolic tradition by definition excluded women from its ranks. There were no female apostles. Instead, in Daniel Berrigan's words, acts of resistance became "man's movement toward himself," a highly masculinized rite of passage, a way to remove what he characteristically called the "bars to manhood. "53 Nevertheless, even within this male-dominated framework, female activists encountered pressure to act and reaped valuable social and political benefits by participating in the draft board raids. Catholic activist Anne Walsh, for example, understood that risking arrest in a raid was "a credential I had to earn" and knew that if she didn't go through with the ritual, she would "never be respected within the group." By joining a number of organized raids, she gained this respect and became one of the most influential members of the extended action community. "I think I was the strongest woman," she recalled, "and that was heady. I got to be on the visiting list at prison. I got written back to. I was always

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commended as gutsy." Mary Moylan, one of the Catonsville Nine, was also a gutsy, take-charge kind of woman. During that action she distinguished herself by seizing control of the office telephones so that workers could not call the police. A charismatic and inspiring orator, she had been known to give speeches that incited young men to bum draft cards in her honor. Even the unapologetic patriarch Philip Berrigan extolled her virtues. "Great gal," he wrote to his brother, Daniel; in another letter he exclaimed, "she will be one of our great people. "54 Despite such praise, there was a qualitative difference between the way that women and men in the community were valued and perceived. For men, militant action was necessary to prove themselves as men. It was an expectation that touched at the core of one's male identity. This was not true for the women, whose femininity depended not on their ability to act but rather on their willingness to take on supportive, nurturing roles that emphasized moral purity and persistence. Leaders in the movement praised female activists like Walsh and Moylan for their resistance activities, but always as exceptional women. People took note of the "obstreperous" nuns who came into a courtroom and, in the words of the presiding judge, "had a pitched battle with the marshals." Activists stood in awe of young Suzi Williams, who was arrested twelve times in five years and who was the subject of numerous short articles in the alternative peace press. But this visibility did not necessarily mean power. As scholar Robyn Wiegman asserts, it is often the privileged body that is invisible, not the other way around. In other words, the noteworthiness of these particular women suggests just how little power they actually had and how normative the images of the resisting male and the nonresisting female really were. Indeed, Williams recalled that her militancy put her in "the position of it being hinted a lot that I wasn't being appropriate for my gender." Some women could break the mold. But it was men who were cast as the true resisters and who ultimately dominated the community's circles ofpower. 55 At the same time, the action communities provided a unique venue for strong women to assert their ideals and become role models for the female activists around them. How could one not be inspired by the courage and audacity of women who took leadership roles, boldly spoke out, and put their lives and their freedom on the line? Within the Catholic tradition of female saints and modem-day nuns, who distinguished themselves through sacrifice and service even as they remained subordinate to men, such exemplary women made perfect sense. Joanne Sheehan drew a straight line between her childhood fascination with the book The Lives of the Saints and her understanding of the role that powerful women could play in movements for social change. The reallife examples of female activists only reinforced these longstanding

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beliefs while providing a powerful countercurrent to male domination within the movement. As Sheehan explained, "while we can look on one level ... [that these groups were] pretty male, and pretty hierarchical, on the other hand, some of my earliest experiences were ones where women made a real stand, and were able to make personal changes. "56 According to historian Patricia McNeal, Catonsville marked the beginning of "a new political and theological movement" that inspired women as well as men to intensify their resistance to the Vietnam War. Of the over 230 people who participated in Catholic resistance actions between Catonsville and the 1973 U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, almost one-third were women. Women who did not raid draft boards themselves participated in the simultaneously militant and arduous work of "support." They raised money, organized rallies, and published newsletters and articles to publicize these events. Linda Forest, wife of Catholic Peace Fellowship cofounder and Milwaukee draft board raider Jim Forest, proudly reported about her behind-the-scenes efforts that "here in Milwaukee we keep dozens of balls in the air. "57 These examples of women burning draft files, jousting in courtrooms, and juggling the details of organizing work and financial responsibility likely encouraged female activists to believe that participation in the Catholic resistance, despite its patriarchal undertones, could be a source of empowerment and political strength. They could also finds signs of hope and inspiration in the nascent feminist uprising that in 1968 was beginning to come into its own. The emerging women's liberation movement, deeply rooted in the civil rights, New Left, and antiwar struggles, fundamentally challenged the social assumptions and gender dynamics that relegated female activists to second-class status. By linking female oppression to both the personal and the political abuses of power, women's liberationists projected an appealing message of female militancy and independence. For women involved in a movement that so dramatically challenged the structures of power in American life, it seemed only natural to think that feminism could enhance their cause. This movement toward an empowered sisterhood made its first public appearance within the Catholic Left on july 1, 1969. Late that night, five women, closely affiliated with the Catholic resistance movement and calling themselves 'Women Against Daddy Warbucks," broke into Selective Service headquarters in midtown Manhattan and destroyed sixty-five hundred 1-A high-priority draft files that covered thirteen local draft boards. 'When Selective Service employees came to work [the next] morning," the Village Voice reported, "they discovered mounds of shredded records, torn-out telephone lines, and typewriters with the letters '1-A' obliterated." Rather than wait for arrest like earlier draft board raiders had done, the women left a written statement notifying authorities

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that they had been in the office and would appear in Rockefeller Center the following afternoon to explain what they had done. In a daring act of celebration and defiance, the women surfaced the next day in the midst of the center's lunchtime crowd, distributed their statements, and threw shredded draft files in the air like confetti at a parade. FBI agents literally pounced on the women and hustled them off to jail. Dramatic photos, emblazoned on the front page of the next day's New York Times, publicized the action and its feminist message to the world. 58 Women Against Daddy Warbucks was far more than just a female-led raid. By intentionally excluding men from the group and by preparing a public statement with an explicitly feminist analysis, the action's organizers brought women's liberation straight into the heart of the Catholic Left. For these women, challenging the war and challenging traditional gender roles were all part of the same struggle. ''We acted together as women against the draft," they explained, "because conscription rests on women's accepted role as insulated comforter and supporter of violence." Echoing the basic tenets of the new feminist struggle, the group emphasized the connections between the draft, imperialism, corporate greed, and female subordination. By acting explicitly as women in opposition to the war, they clearly hoped to tum ideas about gender, militarism, and militancy upside down. 59 Charles Meconis's study of the Catholic Left argues that Women Against Daddy Warbucks "marked the opening round of a struggle within the [Catholic resistance] movement concerning the role of women." The women's insistence on acting alone alienated many key members of the Catholic Left's community of resistance, women and men, who criticized the group for its gender exclusivity. As Anne Walsh described the Daddy Warbucks group, "they were repudiating the male bullshit." The price they paid for this repudiation was high. Male leaders of the Catholic Left publicly supported the women's action but, according to Walsh, privately viewed and treated its participants as the "enemy." Without significant help from the larger Catholic resistance community, the five women struggled, essentially on their own, to raise money and to publicize their protest and court appearances. Exhausted and demoralized, they ultimately found themselves shut out, shunned, and isolated from an important network of support. 60 Women Against Daddy Warbucks set a precedent for other antiwar feminists, but participants in subsequent actions suffered the same disheartening fate. The pattern of feminist critique followed by political exile and ostracism within the Catholic Left was repeated until it aroused opposition. Other women involved with the draft board raids began to complain about being relegated to "the behind-the-scenes dirty work, such as typing, cooking and housework" and vocally protested their exclusion from

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important meetings and decision-making processes. Despite the movement's radical culture of dissent, its leaders tenaciously held on to traditional Catholic notions of patriarchal authority and power. Echoing the rampant antifeminism of the Catholic Church, these leaders evinced little sympathy for the feminist cause. Male activists such as the Berrigans regularly characterized the women's liberation struggle as a trivial issue and a distraction from the primary goal of ending the war. But, as the Women Against Daddy Warbucks discovered, openly challenging male chauvinism within the movement was not a trivial affair. As Walsh explained, when people tried to challenge the priorities of the movement's leaders, "they were outside the community" and therefore cut off from lifelines of friendship and support. 61 Mary Moylan's situation vividly embodied these contradictory experiences of women's liberation and male domination. In the two years that followed the Catonsville raid, Moylan, a "spunky" and fiery advocate for peace, joined her fate to the feminist revolt. According to feminist theologian, Rosemary Radford Ruether, who was her longtime friend, for Mary, her membership in the Catonsville Nine became increasingly enraging. She saw rampant clericalism and patriarchalism in the way the Berrigan brothers were the center of attention. She was angered by lack of equal regard for others, especially women like herself, who had taken the same risks but who remained in the shadows. She blamed not only the media but the two priestheroes.

Never one to be undone by male authority and control, Moylan continued her protests against the Vietnam War and social injustice as she struggled against what she called "dehumanization" and "enshrinement" within the movement. 62 Moylan faced even greater difficulties after April 1970 when authorities ordered the Nine to turn themselves in and begin serving lengthy prison terms. In open defiance of the judicial orders, Moylan, along with Catonsville members George Mische, Daniel and Philip Berrigan, and David Eberhardt (a veteran of the first Baltimore action), publicly announced their decisions to go underground instead. As Ruether recalls, Moylan ''wanted to [both continue the resistance and] show them [the Berrigans] that they were not the only ones who could take this further step of protest." In fact, she took her protest several steps further by explicitly linking her resistance to feminist and revolutionary struggles for change. From her new status as a fugitive, Moylan openly expressed her solidarity with feminist outlaws in the Black Panther Party and the Weather Underground. "I refuse to turn myself in," she maintained, "because of the fear that 'we' [Catholic peace activists] will be the good guys and they [black and white 'revolutionary' radicals] the bad." She

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expressed her faith in the power of an all-encompassing and militant siS:.. terhood to act as the vehicle for social and political change. "Free Our Sisters," her broadside statement boldly proclaimed, "Free Ourselves."63 But even militant feminism could not save Mary Moylan from fading into obscurity. Daniel and Philip Berrigan, already media darlings, captured the public's imagination as famous fugitive priests. Although authorities quickly captured Philip in a dramatic FBI raid, Daniel stayed out of the clutches of the law for months. In a stunning game of cat-andmouse that only increased his public notoriety and fame, Daniel appeared and disappeared at rallies, in newspaper interviews, and behind church pulpits. It took four months and the help of an FBI informant for federal authorities to finally track him down and bring him to jail. Photos of the smiling, handcuffed priest, flanked by federal agents, appeared in newspapers and on TV screens across the country. 64 Mary Moylan, in contrast, "dyed her beautiful red hair black" and simply disappeared. The media and the movement gave her little attention, and if the FBI searched for her, they did so with little fanfare and even less success. George Mische, who lasted for only one month underground, proudly recalled: "they never did catch Mary Moylan." Yet without the public acclaim and widespread support that Daniel Berrigan received, life underground must have been a lonely and difficult existence. Eight years later, after an exhausting routine of moving from place to place and trying to keep her identity hidden, Moylan gave up and turned herself in. "Staying in the underground itself had become an extended imprisonment," Ruether explains, an experience that left Moylan broken and disillusioned. She ultimately served a three-year prison sentence, one year longer than her original two-year term, and then emerged from prison deeply emotionally scarred. As an indication of how alienated she felt from the movement to which she had given so much of her life, Moylan declined to attend the twenty-fifth anniversary reunion of the Catonsville Nine. When she died, alone, in the spring of 1995, only a few heard of her death. She had not been entirely forgotten during her sojourn underground; one dedicated supporter fondly named his adopted daughter, Maria, "after a certain elusive redhead." But Moylan had, for all intents and purposes, vanished from the movement and its historical memory. 65 As Jean Bethke Elshtain and other scholars have shown, war has played a critical role in forging male and female identities and in transforming the relationships between women and men. More than anything else, they argue, war dichotomizes societal understandings of masculine and feminine behavior because it serves "to re-create and secure women's social position as noncombatants and men's identity as warriors." If militarism

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and violence have shaped gender identities, so too, sociologist and peace researcher Elise Boulding asserts, have the acts of making peace and resisting war. Such endeavors, she argues, influence ideas of masculinity and femininity and are often predicated on the creation of new gender roles and new styles of political action. 66 The Vietnam War years, and particularly those years between 1965 and 1973, brought these dynamics to a head. War permeated American culture at the same time that an active and public resistance to war challenged militarism's hegemonic hold on national policies and public priorities. Forces that encouraged the dichotomization of gender roles and celebrated images of masculine might came face to face with a new and militant feminist opposition to patriarchal oppression. Radical pacifists, inextricably bound to the mainstream of American life, yet dedicated to building a world based on an alternative set of values and behaviors, found themselves caught in the midst of this tumultuous and rapidly changing situation. The men of the movement dealt with these circumstances in strikingly familiar ways. Pacifist organizers, draft resisters, and draft board raiders overwhelmingly defined masculinity as peaceful and nonviolent, but also as militant and bold. Deeply committed to nonviolence and a refusal to kill, radical pacifist men seemed compelled to prove their manhood by taking risks, sacrificing their freedom, and participating in the militant actions that tested their courage, bravado, and commitment to the cause. It was through resistance that one became a man, and the more militant and frequent the resistance, the better. Through their words and especially their actions, radical pacifist men cast themselves as "warriors for peace," breaking the mold of wartime masculine expectations by refusing to participate in the military, yet strongly adhering to its norms of manly assertion. Women, as they always had, took militant nonviolent action for the cause of peace and, as George Mische later reflected about Mary Moylan, showed that they "could be very effective in a revolutionary way." Nevertheless, in these times of war, the egalitarianism of the radical pacifist movement found itself challenged by an increasingly masculinized culture of resistance. No matter how hard they tried or how fearlessly they behaved, activist women found it difficult to transcend the traditional gender expectations that relegated them to the role of self-sacrificing and noble supporters. The contrast between the gains women had made in the early 1960s as strong and respected resisters and their invisibility as militant female warriors against the Vietnam War is striking. One cannot help but note the irony that in the era of women's liberation, during a time when women publicly and actively worked to challenge and reshape societal definitions of femininity and female behavior, radical

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pacifist women could not break free from the forces of what jean Elshtain calls "the Beautiful Soul. "67 The decision to focus on draft resistance played a part in keeping women in this supporting role, but the dynamic was certainly more complex. The masculinization of the radical pacifist movement paralleled the masculinization of the political culture of American radicalism overall. By 1967, the studiously dignified resisters who burned their draft cards while dressed in suits and ties had been largely replaced by the "Easy Rider" school of youthful activists who characterized their resistance in terms of manly exploits and countercultural revolt. The men of the Catholic resistance combined key qualities of both: they maintained an aura of respectability and traditional honor, yet displayed a unique combination of adventurism and prowess. The movement's decision to turn them into the leading symbols of resistance ultimately left women out in the cold. Even within the socially conservative Catholic resistance community, the privileging of manliness could not suppress the stirrings of the women's liberation struggle. As the years progressed, radical pacifism's female members formed consciousness raising groups and frequently criticized what they viewed as men's "heavily sexist, elitist, and hierarchical" tendencies. But the men were slow learners, especially the movement's most prominent male members, who viewed women's liberation as a dangerous diversion and instead argued that women should be most concerned with liberating themselves and humanity from the "bloody yoke" of war. Women confronted what Barbara Deming called the ''vertigo" that came from "seeing [men] in a kind of double vision: comrades in many ways, but they also oppress us. "68 Mary Moylan experienced the gender conundrum that radical pacifists faced in a particularly painful way. Moylan's unquestionable commitment to ending the war, her willingness to take great personal risks, and her daring attitude and acts of resistance certainly placed her on a par with male resisters in the struggle, even as the attitude of celebration that marked her defiance set her apart. Nevertheless, the most lasting visual image of Moylan, a photograph published in Daniel Berrigan's The Trial of the Catonsville Nine, shows her not as a militant activist standing behind a blazing pyre of draft records and files but as a calm and peaceful demonstrator, looking up from behind one small lit candle with a hopeful but quizzical smile. It is hard to reconcile this gentle and tame portrait with Moylan's actions or with the flier she distributed after going underground, adorned with the clenched fist salute of the militant feminist and political revolts. 59 ''The function of the prophet," Daniel Berrigan is quoted as having said, "is to enlarge the areas of choice." There is little doubt that radical

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pacifists expanded the opportunities and options for resistance during the Vietnam War as they took nonviolent direct action in new and more militant directions. Nevertheless, the movement did little to challenge the constraints that limited women's participation and recognition as strong and militant activists in their own right, or to even accept the challenges that women made to these constraints. If radical pacifist resistance worked to remove what Daniel Berrigan called "the bars to manhood," it failed to remove the barriers to full inclusion for its female members. No matter how militant they were, women discovered that their male cohorts would not recognize them as equal citizens of the resistance movement, activists who bore full responsibility for protesting a war they were not compelled to fight. Pacifists readily opposed the violence of war and the injustice of American military policy, but, despite the emergence of a strong feminist critique, still were unable to challenge militarism's patriarchal foundations or to transform the models of masculine militancy that supported radical protest against the war. 70

Conclusion

From 1940 to 1970, activists within the radical pacifist movement had numerous opportunities to learn from their experiences and change the racialized and gendered dynamics that repeatedly defined, distorted, and undermined this vanguard movement for social and political change. Theirs was not a history of social learning, however, but of recurring missteps and missed opportunities. The white activists who dominated decision making in early CORE and CNVA clearly grasped the power that working for civil rights and engaging in nonviolent direct action for racial justice could bring to their efforts to achieve disarmament and world peace. The men of the radical pacifist movement similarly recognized the importance of women's participation. Nevertheless, these vanguard activists, committed to a revolutionary and egalitarian vision of a transformed society, never fully grasped just how thoroughly race and gender shaped their actions and pronouncements, even on path breaking and courageous projects like the Journey of Reconciliation and the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace. Ultimately, and despite their best efforts, activist leaders failed to see how racialized assumptions impeded opportunities for solidarity and cooperation between their organizations and the black freedom movement. Nor did they ever come to understand the importance of transforming their model of political action into a gender-inclusive one that recognized women as first-rate political actors. Instead, radical pacifists repeatedly fell into patterns of action and evaluation that had more in common with the dominant culture they opposed than with the egalitarian alternatives they sought to create. By giving the quest for peace primacy over issues of social justice, activists placed the black struggle in a secondary role that replicated the secondclass status that African Americans were fighting to escape from. And by valorizing the rugged masculinity of their resistance "heroes"-be they the draft resisters of the 1940s and 1960s, the submarine climbers of the Polaris Action project, the stalwart crew of the Golden Rule, or men like Jim Peck who embodied the rough-and-tumble style of workingclass machismo that many male activists looked up to-radical pacifists

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mirrored the culture of war and reinforced the manly and martial models of active political citizenship that marked society at large. This blindness to the power of race and sex to shape the culture of their movement led to problematic results that seem predictable in retrospect but that caught movement leaders by surprise. As they unconsciously pushed white women and Mrican Americans of both sexes to the farthest peripheries of their movement, white male leaders scratched their heads in wonder at why their campaigns lacked mass appeal and transformative power. These two sets of limitations had analogous and ambivalent results. Radical pacifism's continued adherence to racist and sexist practices and dynamics undoubtedly hurt its cause. Yet the temporary alliances that groups like FOR, Peacemakers, and CNVA forged with the civil rights movement, as well as the involvement of Mrican American men and women in pacifist nonviolent direct action campaigns, contributed to the movement's vitality. The participation of white women whose primary commitment was to peace was invaluable as well, even though their contributions were often circumscribed or ignored. In the end, the tensions that arose around gender and race were productive as well as difficult, and might have been even more productive had these issues been directly engaged rather than evaded or overlooked. Struggles over putting principles into practice and breaking free of unconscious assumptions inherited from the dominant culture can be positive processes. Conflicts challenge complacency and lend vitality to a movement. They are signs of the potential for growth and change. This history of the radical pacifist movement indicates that learning from these chronic tensions was an exceedingly difficult task. People naturally resist the hard work of taking an honest look at themselves and their privilege, be it the privilege of gender or of race. Finding the willingness to relinquish that privilege can prove to be even more discomforting-perhaps especially in a movement that seemed so singularly focused on demonstrating its moral purity through public acts of resistance. The absolutist statements of movement leaders, from Bradford Lyttle's insistence that Turner Air Force Base was the most "evil institution" in the violently segregationist city of Albany, Georgia, to activists' continuing determination to cast resistance to the draft as the most meaningful way to oppose a war, impeded radical pacifism's ability to find a middle ground that included the values and perspectives of all of its members and potential allies. Certainly there were those who demonstrated an ability to reflect upon and learn from their experiences, but their minority position made it difficult to raise questions from within or to gain concrete support from outside the movement's ranks. Working from the margins, radical

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pacifist women repeatedly tried to uphold standards of gender solidarity and egalitarian inclusiveness. Just as important, in campaigns as varied as the 1950 Fast for Peace, the Gano Peacemakers' protest at Coney Island, the hunger strike waged by the imprisoned members of the QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, and the draft board raids of the Catholic Left, women worked to create the kinds of spaces that would allow each person to define his or her own style of militancy and act within flexible networks of personal and community support. But there were limits to what they could accomplish within these venues. Isolation posed a particularly significant obstacle. As radical pacifist women discovered, their determination to remain in the movement and work side by side with men set them apart from those women who chose to organize in all-female groups. Staying in the radical pacifist movement and refusing to go as far as New Left socialist feminists, who organized autonomously as women but then worked in coalition with male-led and mixed-sex groups, was a brave and principled decision: it showed their commitment to the egalitarian beliefs and ideological principles that radical pacifists had long promoted. In retrospect, however, it was an isolating and disempowering choice. Women who remained in the radical pacifist movement struggled to act upon their ideals and their vision of social justice but, as the members of Women Against Daddy Warbucks quickly discovered, they did so without the support of either all-female feminist collectives or male pacifist activists. Mrican Americans within the radical pacifist movement must have felt even more isolated: they were more outnumbered than their white female colleagues and, as members of a white-dominated movement, too far removed from their brothers and sisters in the black freedom struggle. Little wonder, then, that so many committed resisters simply departed. Isolated politically, such activists found it difficult to raise difficult questions and to push the movement toward developing a satisfactory response. Instead, they faced overwhelming pressure to conform or found discussions of decision-making processes and organizing strategies to be so limited that they were of little use. As the leadership of this movement pushed its internal critics to the sidelines or out of the movement entirely, it relinquished the possibility of developing a more inclusive and transformative political practice. The pressure to conform to, rather than critique, the prevailing mode of pacifist activism only increased as the stakes of political protest rose. The kinds of risks that radical pacifists took through their actions made the need for solidarity extremely high. The movement played a critical role in providing the sustenance that participating in militant protest and risking imprisonment or physical harm required. But this risk taking made the cost of dissent and internal criticism too high for most to

Conclusion

185

contemplate. With the emotional and logistical safety net that the movement provided, radical pacifists felt free to embrace the hazards of going to prison, jeopardize their physical safety, and throw concerns about economic security to the wind. To risk unraveling that net by criticizing the movement's philosophical underpinnings-its inherently masculine model of heroic action and its white set of political priorities-was simply too much for most activists to consider. There was some room for experimentation. The Gano Peacemakers, for example, presented a clear alternative to the style of protest that had come to dominate the radical pacifist movement. Yet, despite its success in putting integration and equality into practice in ways that supported sustained and effective public activism, it was a model rarely emulated by others. Instead, most radical pacifists found themselves in "action communities" defined more by action and short-term sacrifices than by the long-term work of building community, where they encountered an increasingly limited and limiting set of political possibilities. Again and again, instead of prefiguring utopia or creating the "beloved community," the radical pacifist movement mirrored the very culture of militarism that it vociferously opposed. As the experiences of today's troops in Iraq suggest, options shrink as dangers rise, leaving frightened soldiers with few choices except to shoot at any perceived threat and making many unwilling to challenge the egregious abuse of prisoners of war. As activists in the antiwar movement discovered as well, the greater the degree of risk taking, the narrower the range of political choices and discourse about those choices became. A considerable number of activists chose to leave the movement, among them pacifists who had moved to the center of the struggle by partaking in serious direct action efforts but then found that they could not support the movement's internal culture. Radical pacifism's rhetorical commitment to egalitarianism stood in stark contrast to its adherents' actions, which reinforced socially dominant hierarchies of gender and race. Similarly, the high value that the movement placed on political and tactical innovation conflicted with its members' reluctance to challenge the fundamental assumptions that shaped its culture of protest. To the most insightful and sensitive members of this movement, these contradictions were too much to bear, much less to endure in silence, so they left organizations like CORE, Peacemakers, and CNVA, and movements like the Catholic Left, behind. As they departed, they took their knowledge and memories with them. Activists at the time lost the insights and perspectives that might have encouraged them to learn from their mistakes. The generations of activists who followed lost even the memories of those conflicts and the alternative possibilities and approaches to protest that they had raised. As a result, the movement and

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Conclusion

its members repeated the same errors over and over again, following a cycle that limited their radicalism and inhibited their ability to facilitate the social, cultural, and political changes that they sought. The radical pacifist movement moved on the cutting edge of American radical thought and action, its actions and experiences indicating the outer margins of what activists on the Left considered acceptable to consider and possible to achieve in American society at that time. By embracing the techniques of nonviolent direct action and civil disobedience as the way to effect social and political change, radical pacifists struggled to create a vanguard political culture that would challenge the prevailing consensus and forge new forms of dissent. Yet their historical experiences reveal that even this most radical of countercultural revolts could not escape the influence of the dominant culture it sought to subvert. And, because activists failed to see just how pervasive the forces of militarism were, they failed to recognize how compromised their methods of protest had become. These limitations by no means diminish the innovation or significance of the radical pacifists' efforts. This amorphous group of activists made important and necessary contributions to the American culture of dissent, most notably by expanding the tactics of political protest and by presenting a multidimensional critique of the use and abuse of power. Ultimately, however, gendered and racialized relations of power distorted and undermined the movement's strategic perspective, its militant tactics, and the work of outreach that was necessary to achieve its goals. As this book makes clear, radical pacifists' most determined efforts to exemplify alternative definitions of personhood and community were riddled with contradictions. Shackled to a history that they did not remember and clinging to a position that they could not critique, activists found it difficult to break free from the constraints of the past and of the culture in which they remained, however reluctantly, immersed. There they replicated the pervasive and powerful, though often invisible, patterns of racial and gender subordination and exclusion that prevailed in the militarized culture of the mid- to late twentieth century. Indeed, as radical pacifism's history from World War II through the war in Vietnam makes clear, the dominant culture of the United States remained profoundly militarized, even during times of supposed peace, shedding light on both the possibilities and the limitations of egalitarianism in radical movements for social, political, and cultural change and on the forces that shaped the nation's political culture.

Notes

Introduction

1. According to historians Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, the radical pacifists "differed from traditional pacifists, whose absolute repudiation of war and militarism did not extend to activism, and also from liberal pacifists, whose efforts for social reform did not extend to direct action or civil disobedience." They also differed from nuclear pacifists, who were solely opposed to the production and use of nuclear weapons. See Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 20. 2. There is a vast and growing literature on egalitarian impulses in social movements and the empowering and transformative impact they had on the women involved. On the relationship between women's rights and the radical abolitionist movement, see Blanche Glassman Hersh, The Slavery of Sex: FeministAbolitionists in America (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1978); Ellen Carol DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women s Movement in America, 1848-1869 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1978); Julie Roy Jeffrey, The Great Silent Army of Abolitionism: Ordinary Women in the Anti-Slavery Movement (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998); and Gerda Lerner, The Grimke Sisters from South Carolina: Pioneers for Women's Rights and Abolition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). On the emergence of women's rights from socialist and communist movements, see MariJo Buhle, Women and American Socialism, 1780-1920 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981); Crystal Eastman, Crystal Eastman on Women and Revolution, ed. Blanche Wiesen Cook (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978); Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women sRights (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001); and Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998). The grassroots radical labor movement also provided its share of inspiration to women seeking to work to advance women's rights in the workplace and beyond. See, for example, Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing, Gender, and the Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Annelise

188

Notes to Pages 3-6

Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995); Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "0. Delight Smith's Progressive Era: Labor, Feminism, and Reform in the Urban South," in Visible Women: New Essays on American Activism, ed. Nancy Hewitt and Suzanne Lebsack (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics ofJob Segregation fly Sex During World War II (Urbana: University oflllinois Press, 1987). The black freedom struggle provides one of the most striking examples of the ways in which egalitarian rhetoric on behalf of one issue-in this instance, race-translated into women's efforts to gain equal footing with men. See Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892; New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); JoAnn Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (New York: Norton, 1999); and Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1985). 3. On the complex relationship between masculinity, citizenship, and martial duty, see Linda Kerber, "'A Constitutional Right to Be Treated like American Ladies': Helen Feeney, Robert Goldberg, and Military Obligation in Contemporary America," chap. 5 in No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998); Ilene Rose Feinman, Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Antimilitarists (New York: New York University Press, 2000); Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 4. David Dellinger, "Policing the Peace Movement," editorial, Liberation 7 (Jan. 1963): 4. Most histories of the peace movement focus on organizational and ideological dynamics rather than the actual actions of the people involved. See Charles Chatfield, For Peace and justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971); Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984); Robert Kleidman, Organizing for Peace: Neutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1993); James Farrell, The Spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (New York: Routledge, 1997); James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Scott Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2003). On the importance of discourse and language in the construction of meaning, see Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988); and Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, An Introduction (New York: Random House, 1978). On the importance of experience as a criterion of meaning, see Patricia Hill Collins, "The Social Construction of Black Feminist Thought," Signs 14 (Summer 1989). On performance and gender, see Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990).

Notes to Pages 8-10

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Chapter 1. The War for Total Brotherhood

1. "Conscience in Prison: An Appeal from COs," leaflet, FOR and WRL, 26 Nov. 1943, Bayard Rustin Papers, ed.John Bracey, Jr., and August Meier, Reel20 (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1988), microfilm (hereafter cited as Rustin). For a description of the Danbury prison strike, see Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 87-89; and James Peck, We Who Would Not Kill (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1958), 101-59. 2. "An Open Letter to the FOR, February 3, 1944," cited in Wittner, Rebels Against War, 89. For details on the prison strikes, see Lawrence Templin, "How the War Changed My Life," in A Few Small Candles: War Resisters of World War II Tell Their Stories, ed. Larry Gara and Lenna Mae Gara (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1999), 187-90; Ralph DiGia, "Prison," in Against the Tide: Pacifist Resistance in the Second World War, an Oral History, ed. Deena Hurwitz and Craig Simpson (New York: War Resisters League, 1983); Ralph DiGia, "My Resistance to WWII," in Gara and Gara, A Few Small Candles, 43-45; Peck, We Who Would Not K.il~ 101-30; George Yamada, Roger Axford, Joseph Guinn, and Wally Nelson to Sirs, Oct. 1946, Wally Nelson Papers, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Nelson). 3. Christopher Isherwood, "Preface" to Prison Etiquette: The Convict's Compendium of Useful Information, ed. Holley Can tine and Dachine Rainer ( 1950; Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2001), xxix. 4. On the dynamics of labor and race during the World War II era, see Steve Fraser, 'The 'Labor Question,' " in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980, ed. Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1989), 55-84; Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History 70 (1988): 786-811; and George Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). On black militancy during this time, see also Adam Fairclough's discussion of the wartime NAACP in Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Viking Penguin, 2001), 181-202; Herbert Garfinkel, When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement in the Organizational Politics for FEPC (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959); Paula Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990); Harvard Sitkoff, "Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War," Journal of American History 58 (1971): 661-81;John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Knopf, 1994); Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993); and Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet, 101-23. 5. On the religious and political roots of pacifism in American history, see Charles DeBenedetti, The Peace Reform in American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980); Charles Chatfield, The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (New York: Twayne, 1992). 6. There are numerous studies of the birth of the modern American peace movement during World War I. See, most notably, Frances Early, A World Without War: How U.S. Feminists and Pacifists Resisted World War I (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1997); Barbara Steinson, American Women's Activism in

190

Notes to Pages 11-12

World War I (New York: Garland, 1982); Blanche Wiesen Cook, "Democracy in Wartime: Antimilitarism in England and the United States, 1914-1918," in Peace Movements in America, ed. Charles Chatfield (New York: Schocken Books, 1974); and Charles DeBenedetti, Origins of the Modern American Peace Movement, 1915-1929 (Millwood, N.Y: KTO Press, 1978). On the interwar peace movement and the more general cultural revulsion against war, see Charles Chatfield, For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971); Wittner, Rebels Against War, 1-33; Harriet Alonso, The Women's Peace Union and the Outlauny of War, 1921-1942 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989); Betty Lynn Barton, "The Fellowship of Reconciliation: Pacifism, Labor, and Social Welfare, 1915-1960" (Ph.D. diss., Florida State University, 1974). See also Ronald White, Jr., and C. Howard Hopkins, The Social Gospel: Religion and Reform in Changing America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976); William Marty, ''The Liberal Protestant Peace Movement between the World Wars: A Realist Critique," in Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism from Unexpected Qyarters, ed. Theron Schlabach and Richard Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 185-203; and Harriet Hyman Alonso, Peace as a Womens Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Womens Rights (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 85-124. 7. On the significance of the Depression-era labor movement and the influence of the Communist Party, see Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919-1939 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Christopher Tomlins, The State and the Unions: Labor Relations, Law, and the Organized Labor Movement in America, 1880-1960 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Melvyn Dubofsky, The State and Labor in Modern America (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994); Staughton Lynd, "We Are All Leaders": The Alternative Unionism of the Early 1930s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996); Maurice Isserman, Which Side Wem You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (1982; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 1-31; Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (New York: Verso, 1998); Robin Kelley, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990); and Nell Irvin Painter, The Narrative of Hosea Hudson: His Life as a Negro Communist in the South (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979). 8. "For Pacifists," Time, 1939, FOR reprint, Papers of A.]. Muste, Reel 1 (Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), microfilm (hereafter cited as Muste). On Muste's work in the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, see A.]. Muste, interview by Harlan B. Phillips, Columbia University Oral History Collection; A.]. Muste, "Sketches for an Autobiography," in The Essays of A. J Muste, ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 55-174; A.]. Muste, "Sit-Downs and Lie-Downs," in The Essays of A. J Muste, 203-6; Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J Muste (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981), 19-61; Charles Howlett, Brookwood Labor College and the Struggle for Peace and Social Justice in America (Lewiston, N.Y: Edwin Mellen Press, 1993). 9. On student activism in the 1930s, see Robert Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young: Student Radicals and America's First Mass Student Movement, 1929-1941 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993); Wittner, Rebels Against War, 6-7; Chatfield, For Peace and Justice, 259-61, 271-73, 295-96; Dave Dellinger, "Why

Notes to Pages 12-14

191

I Refused to Register," Arthur Dole, "My War and My Peace," and Larry Gara, "My War on War," all in Gara and Gara, A Few Small Candles. 10. David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 17-58. 11. A. J. Muste, What the Bible Teaches About Freedom, FOR booklet, 1943, 7, Muste, Reel6;James Farmer, ''The Race Logic of Pacifism," reprint from Fellowship, Feb. 1942, Papers of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Series A, Box 26, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as FOR); 'Workshop on Race and Nonviolence-Sheet No.6: Lesson Plan on Faith, Discipline, Action," typescript, 9 Oct. 1943, Rustin, Reel 5; A.]. Muste, "The Foundations of Democracy," typescript, 1938, 18, Muste, Reel4; Muste, What the Bible Teaches About Freedom, FOR booklet, 1943, 7, Muste, Reel6. Members of the FOR, the preeminent pacifist organization of the 1940s, used the term "brotherhood" everywhere, from the title of proposed projects (i.e. the Brotherhood Mobilization) to pamphlets, speeches, and private correspondence. On the egalitarianism of the secular Left of the 1930s, see Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young, 188-277; Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 33-87; Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 15-45; and Lynd, "We Are All Leaders". See also Robinson, Abraham Went Out, and A.]. Muste's autobiographical essays in The Essays ofA. J Muste, ed. Hen toff. On the importance of collective frameworks in the process of creating movements for social change, see David Snow and Robert Benford, "Master Frames and Cycles of Protest," and Sidney Tarrow, "Mentalities, Political Cultures, and Collective Action Frames," both in Frontiers in Social Movement Theory, ed. Aldon Morris and Carol McClurg Mueller (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992); see also Doug McAdam, "Culture and Social Movements" and Scott Hunt, Robert Benford, and David Snow, "Identity Fields: Framing Processes and the Social Construction of Movement Identities," both in New Social Movements: From Ideology to Identity, ed. Enrique Laraiia, Hank Johnston, and Joseph Gusfield (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 12. On the male breadwinning ideal, see Alice Kessler-Harris, "Providers: An Exploration of Gender Ideology," in Alice Kessler-Harris, A Woman's Wage: Historical Meanings and Social Consequences (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1990), 57-80. On the relationship between soldiering and citizenship, see Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 221-302; and Ilene Rose Feinman, Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Anti-Militarists (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 13. Dave Dellinger, "Introduction," in Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson; Bayard Rustin, "The Negro and Non-Violence," Fellowship reprint, Oct. 1942, Rustin, Reel17. Quaker lawyer Richard Gregg popularized Gandhi's theories of nonviolent resistance during the 1930s in his pioneering study, The Power of Non-Violence (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1934). See also Wittner, Rebels Against War, 31-32; Chatfield, For Peace and justice, 202-12; Barton, "The Fellowship of Reconciliation," 166; Dellinger, 'Why I Refused to Register," 30; A.]. Muste, "Gandhi and the Future," typescript, June 1942, 1, Muste, Reel 4; A.]. Muste, "The World Task of Pacifism," 1941, The Essays of A.J Muste, ed. Hentoff, 215-33; Larry Gara, interview by author, tape recording, Wilmington, Ohio, 11 Apr. 1997;

192

Notes to Pages 15-17

Sudarshan Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet: The African-American Encounter with Gandhi (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992). 14. Ian Thiermann, quoted in William Everson, "Civilian Public Service," Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson. On conscientious objectors and the Civilian Public Service system of World War II, see Cynthia Eller, Conscientious Objedars and the Second World War: Moral and Religious A?gUments in Support of Pacifism (New York: Praeger, 1991); Heather Frazer and John O'Sullivan, eds., "We Have Just Begun to Not Fight": An Oral History of Conscientious Objedars in Civilian Public Service During World War II (New York: Twayne, 1996); Hurwitz and Simpson, eds., Against the Tide; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 70-85; James Tracy, Dired Action: RadicalPacifismfrom the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 1-20. Of the six thousand COs who served federal prison sentences during World War II, approximately 75 percent were Jehovah's Witnesses, whose refusal to cooperate with the national war effort was theological rather than political. That left only a small number of militantly politicized pacifists, perhaps fifteen hundred or less, scattered throughout the vast federal prison system. 15. Ralph DiGia, "Background," Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson. The federal government refused to pay wages to the COs in CPS for the work that they performed, under the assumption that the difficulties of CPS life would deter men from applying for CO status. Nor did the government pay for the upkeep of the camps. That was the responsibility of the historic peace churches, who each took responsibility for the functioning of various CPS sites. See Wittner, Rebels Against War, 74. On the relationship between military duty and citizenship rights, see Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, 236-302; Feinman, Citizenship Rites, 87-94. Examples of the harassment of COs can be found in Everson, "Civilian Public Service," in Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson; John H. Abbott, in Studs Terkel, "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), 168; Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 96; and John Griffith, 'War Resistance in World War II," in A Few Small Candles, ed. Gara and Gara, 114. 16. Ted Allenby, in Terkel, The Good War, 179. See also Roger Tuttrup, in The Good War, 174-75. For discussions on the relationship between masculinity and military duty, see Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, 236-45;Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987), 3-13, 194-225; and Joshua Goldstein, War and Gender: How Gender Shapes the War System and Vice Versa (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 1-58, 251-331. For examples of male COs being treated as boys rather than as men, see Larry Gara, ''The Road Less Traveled: War Resisters in World War II," unpublished typescript (Wilmington, Ohio, 1995), 10; George Houser, "Reflections of a Religious War Objector," in A Few Small Candles, ed. Gara and Gara, 134, 141; William Roberts, Jr., "Prison and Butterfly Wings," in A Few Small Candles, 157. On COs being publicly labeled cowards, see Griffith, 'War Resistance in World War II," 104; Dellinger, "Why I Refused to Register," 34; and DiGia, "My Resistance to World War II," 47. See also Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 91. As Michael Kimmel pointedly explains, men have historically defined their manhood in opposition not only to boyhood, but also to femininity. See Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996), 7. 17. Abbott, in Terkel, The Good War, 167; DiGia, "My Resistance to World War II," 47. 18. Gara, "My War on War," 85; David Dellinger, "Statement on Entering Prison," 1943, reprinted in David Dellinger, Revolutionary Nonviolence (New York:

Notes to Pages 17-20

193

Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 14;James Peck, Upperdogs vs. Underdogs (Canterbury, N.H.: Greenleaf Books, 1969), 10-17; Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 58. See also David Dellinger, "Introduction," in Revolutionary Nonviolence, 5; Houser, "Reflections of a Religious War Objector," 138. 19. Houser, "Reflections of a Religious War Objector," 142. See also Kimmel, Manhood in America, 214; Dellinger, From Yale to Jai~ 18; Harold Schoenfeld, "The Danbury Story," in Prison Etiquette, ed. Cantine and Rainer, 24; Gara, interview; and The Good War and the Men Who Refused to Fight It, dir. Judith Ehrlich and Rick Tejada-Flores, 57 min., Paradigm Productions, 2001, videocassette. 20. Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 28; James Peck, "The Ship That Never Hit Port," in Prison Etiquette, ed. Can tine and Rainer, 48, 60; Templin, "How the War Changed My Life," 189. For more on the nighttime "bull sessions" see Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 20; Peck, "The Ship That Never Hit Port," 46-69; Houser, "Reflections of a Religious War Objector," 147; Gara, "My War on War," 86. On Peck's correlation between upper-class privilege and male effeminacy, see Peck, Upperdogs vs. Underdogs, 5. 21. Dellinger, "Why I Refused to Register," 35, 36; Dole, "My War and My Peace," 65; DiGia, "My Resistance to World War II," 48. 22. David Dellinger, Introduction in Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson; Holley Can tine and Dachine Rainer, Introduction in Prison Etiquette, xxxvii; Gara, "My War on War," 95. 23. Schoenfeld, "The Danbury Story," 14; A. J. Muste, "Reflections on the Problems of COs in Prison," Fellowship (n.d., 1941?), Muste, Reel 4; Corbett Bishop, quoted in The Power of the People: Active Nonviolence in the United States, ed. Robert Cooney and Helen Michalowski (Culver City, Calif.: Peace Press, 1977), 107; Gara, "The Road Less Traveled," 11; Abbott in Terkel, The Good War, 173. On Lowell Naeve's resistance, see Lowell Naeve, "A Field of Broken Stones," in Prison Etiquette, ed. Can tine and Rainer, 28-44. 24. James Farmer, "Youth Field Worker" report, 2 Apr. 1942, FOR, Series A, Box 3. The pacifist emphasis on race as a "social problem" paralleled similar dynamics in the culture of American politics overall. See Ira Katznelson, ''Was the Great Society a Lost Opportunity?" in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed. Fraser and Gerstle. 25. On growing pacifist interest in the struggle for racial justice, see Robinson, Alffaham Went Out, 109-37; Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: &cialJustice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick, N J.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 68-93; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 64-66; Daniel Levine, Bayard Rustin and the Civil Rights Movement (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 2000), 25-39; and Tracy, Direct Action, 20-35. 26. A. J. Muste, "Two Tactical Problems," in "Civil Disobedience: Is It the Answer to Jim Crow?" FOR Non-Violent Action NEWSBULLETIN, nos. 2-3, 1943, 24, Muste, Reel4; A.J. Muste, What the Bible Teaches About Freedom, FOR booklet, 1943, 7, Muste, Reel 6; James Farmer, ''The Race Logic of Pacifism," reprint from Fellowship, Feb. 1942, FOR, Series A, Box 26; George Houser?, handwritten note, n.d. (1942), Papers of the Congress of Racial Equality, Reel 11 (Sanford, N.C.: Microfilming Corporation of America, 1987) (hereafter cited as CORE). 27. "Conscience in Prison: An Appeal From COs," FOR and WRL, 26 Nov. 1943, Rustin, Reel 20. On the CO prison strikes, see Tracy, Direct Action, 12-20, 35-59; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 84-94; Peck, We Who Would Not Kill; Dellinger, From Yale to Jai~ 68-98, 115-37; Gara, ''The Road Less Traveled"; Mulford Sibley

194

Notes to Pages 21-24

and Asa Wardlaw, "Conscientious Objectors in Prison," in Nonviolence in America: A Documentary History, ed. Staughton Lynd and Alice Lynd (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1995), 169-73. The most notable sites of protest were the federal prisons in Danbury, Connecticut; Milan, Michigan; Ashland, Kentucky; and Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. 28. Gara, interview; George Yamada, Roger Axford, Joseph Guinn, Wally Nelson, to Sirs, Oct. 1946, Nelson, Box 1. See also Gara, "The Road Less Traveled," 8; Peck, Underdogs Vs. Upperdogs, 47; "Conscience in Prison," FOR-WRL leaflet, Nov. 1943, FOR, Series A, Box 26. 29. Cliff Bennett, "Resistance in Prison," in Cantine and Rainer, Prison Etiquette, 4; Wally Nelson, "I Don't Close Jail Doors," typescript (n.d.), 3, Nelson, Box 1; Bayard Rustin, "Workshop on Race and Nonviolence," typescript, 9 Oct. 1943, 1, Rustin, Reel5. 30. George Houser to A.J. Muste, 28 Dec. 1943, FOR, Series A, Box 8. 31. George Houser to Juanita Morrow, 7 July 1948, CORE, Reel 8. See also CORE Membership Committee to CORE Applicant, form letter, n.d. (1942/ 1943), FOR, Series E, Box 4; August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 4-24; George Houser, Erasing the Color Line (New York: Fellowship Publications, 1945). 32. George Houser, "Report of the Chicago Youth Secretary," 12 Sept. 1942, FOR, Series A, Box 3; Houser, Erasing the Color Line, 59; Krishnalal Shridharani, War Without Violence (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1939); Swann, interview. 33. Swann, interview. For details of CORE's wartime campaigns, see Houser, Erasing the Color Line. 34.James Farmer to A.J. Muste, Memorandum On Provisional Plans for Brotherhood Mobilization, 8 Jan. 1942, FOR, Series A, Box 7; Bayard Rustin, Report of Youth Secretary, 12 Sept. 1942, FOR, Series A, Box 3; A. Philip Randolph, quoted in Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet, 112. On Randolph's endorsement of CORE, see James Farmer to George Houser, 5 Feb. 1943, CORE, Reel 11. On masculinity and the black struggle for equality, see Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: &bert F. Williams and the Rnots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 35. Wally Nelson, "Background," in Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson. On the gender composition of CORE's charter group, see Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 8. On CORE's interracial composition, see CORE, 3-10. On women's positions on the front lines of protest, see photograph, The Power of the People, ed. Cooney and Michalowski, 151; Houser, Erasing the Color Line. FOR did hire black staffers, most notably James Farmer and Bayard Rustin, but, like the rest of the pacifist movement, was predominantly white. The ratio of men to women among CORE's officers and its Executive Committee was consistently about 50/50 throughout the 1940s. (See lists of Officers and Executive Committee members on CORE letterhead, 1943-1949, CORE, Reels 8 and 9.) FOR's national staff and Executive Committees, in contrast, were dominated by men, who held 75-80 percent of all leadership posts and who tended to relegate women to office and editorial positions. (See lists of National Secretarial Staff and Executive Committee members on FOR letterhead, 1945-1947, CORE, ReelS.) 36. On assumptions about women's essentially peaceful nature, see Elshtain, Women and War, Alonso, Peace as a Woman's Issue. On women's political work in

Notes to Pages 25-27

195

pursuit of social order, see Robyn Muncy, Creating a Female Dominion in American Reform, 1890-1935 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Elizabeth Israels Perry, Belle Moskowitz: Feminine Politics and the Exercise of Power in the Age of Alfred E. Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Ellen F. Fitzpatrick, Endless Crusade: Women Social Scientists and Progressive Reform (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 52. On women and men in the civil rights struggle, see Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (New York: Norton, 1999). 37. "H.U. Student Pickets Force Restaurant to Drop Color Bar," Baltimore Afro-American, 24 Apr. 1943, Pauli Murray Papers, Box 18, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College (hereafter cited as Pauli Murray); Pauli Murray, Pauli Murray: The Autobiography of a Black Activist, Feminist, Lawyer, Priest, and Poet (1987; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 207. For more information about the Howard University sit-in campaign, see Juanita Nelson, interview by author, tape recording, Deerfield, Mass., 13 Mar. 1995; Murray, Pauli Murray, 206-8; Harry McAlpin, "Howard Students Picket Jim Crow Restaurant," Chicago Defender, 24 Apr. 1943, Murray, Box 18; "Howard Students Close 14th Street Cafeteria," Washington, D.C., Sentry, 23 Apr. 1943, Murray, Box 18; letterhead, Howard NAACP Civil Rights Committee, 1944, Murray, Box 18; Pauli Murray, "A Blueprint for First Class Citizenship," reprint, n.d., Murray, Box 18. On strengthbased definitions of Mrican American womanhood, see Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 21. 38. For Murray's reflection on the power that women gained by participating in such actions, see Murray, Pauli Murray, 205, 202. On Murray's earlier experiences resisting racist practices, see Murray, Pauli Murray, 114-49, 182-85. On the general qualities of black activist womanhood that prevailed during this time, see Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 71. 39. Murray, Pauli Murray, 205, 208, 206. 40. Gertrude Bussey and Margaret Tims, Pioneers for Peace: Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1965 (1965; Oxford: Alden Press, 1980); Carrie Foster, The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1946 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1995); Alonso, Peace as a Women's Issue, 125-56. 41. Quotes and biographical details from Swann, interview. See also A.]. Muste, "The Foundations of Democracy," typescript, 1938, 16, Muste, Reel 4; Cohen, When the Old Left Was Young, 188-237. 42. Swann, interview. On women's increased opportunities during World War II, see Karen Anderson, Wartime Women: Sex Roles, Family Relations, and the Status of Women During World War II (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981); Nancy Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 1990), 47-100; Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics ofJob Segregation l!y Sex During World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique, 69-120; Step l!y Step: Building a Feminist Movement, 1941-1977, prod. Joyce Follett, 60 min., Step by Step Productions, 1998; and Wiegand, Red Feminism, 25-45.

196

Notes to Pages 27-30

43. Rachel Waltner Goossen, Women Against the Good War: Conscientious Objection and Gender on the American Home Front, 1941-1947 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), 4, 42, 6. Goossen describes these "female COs" as "nonconformists in relation to the larger home front culture ... [as they conformed] to the values and expectations of religious pacifist communities" (31) . 44. Swann, interview; NCCO Newsletter 14 (March 1945), Papers of the American Civil Liberties Union-National Committee on Conscientious Objectors, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as ACLU-NCCO); Swann, interview. 45. Swann, interview; photograph of Marj Swann and others outside of the British Embassy, Power of the People, ed. Cooney and Michalowski, 95. See also "A Call to Action for the Cause of Freedom," Non-Violent Action Committee, FOR, n.d. (June? 1943), FOR, Series A, Box 5. 46. Elshtain, Women and War, 3-13; Esther Eichel, "Forms of Resistance," in Against the Tide, ed. Hurwitz and Simpson; Erna Harris, "Forms of Resistance," in Against the Tide; Peck, We Who Would Not Kil~ 126; Harris, "Forms of Resistance." On Frieda Lazarus's activities, see War Resisters League, minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 8 Jan. 1945, War Resisters League Papers, Box 2, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as WRL); Scott Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America,

1915-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 139-41. 47. On Swann's and Harris's memories of the opportunities that "support" work provided, see Swann, interview; and Harris, "Forms of Resistance." On wartime gender stereotypes, see Elshtain, Women and War, Goldstein, Gender and War, and Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies, 221-302. 48. Arthur G. Billings, "Memorandum to the National Committee on Conscientious Objectors," n.d. (1945), ACLU-NCCO, Box 1. For more general information on women's increased opportunities during World War II, see interviews with Mary Lou Munts and Arvonne Fraser in Step by Step; Cabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement, 47-11 0; Milkman, Gender at Work; Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique, 69-120; Wiegand, Red Feminism, 28-45; and Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph. On the prevalence of masculine imagery in the racial militancy of the World War II era, see Sitkoff, "Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War." 49. David Dellinger, "Declaration of War" (1945) in Revolutionary Nonviolence, 19. 50. Lewis Hill et al. to "Dear Friends," 26 May 1945, FOR, Series A, Box 6; Bayard Rustin, "Forward from Pacifism," 2 Apr. 1944, Rustin, Reel 1; Dellinger, "Declaration of War," 19. On the debates over the future of postwar militant pacifism, see Rex Corfman et al. to Dear Friends, 27 Apr. 1945, FOR, Series A, Box 6; "Call to a Conference-Preliminary Announcement," fall1945, Papers of the Committee for Non-Violent Revolution, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as CNVR); "A Discussion of Problems in Non-Violent Revolution," 4-5 Nov. 1945, CNVR, Box 1. On the emphasis on race relations, see George Houser, "Background Statement for Pacifist Political Action," 18 Aug. 1944, FOR, Series A, Box 6. On the anticapitalist thrust in radical pacifism, see Morris Milgram, "Pacifist Activity in the Labor Movement," typescript from FOR Study Conference on Revolutionary Pacifism," 1 Feb. 1945, FOR, Series A, Box6. 51. "Where Radicalism in the Next 5 Years?" preconference report, July? 1947, 4, CNVR, Box 1. On CNVR's activities, see "Reports of the February Conference

Notes to Pages 31-32

197

on Non-Violent Revolution," 6-9 Feb. 1946, CNVR, Box 1; "Resist Conscription: A Sit-Down to Prevent a Blow-Up," CNVR leaflet, n.d. (1946 or 1947), CNVR, Box 1; Bulletin of the CNVR, Aug.-Oct. 1946, Papers of Igal Roodenko, Box 4, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Roodenko); "Where Radicalism in the Next 5 Years?"; and Peck, We Mlho Would Not Kill, 176. 52. Peck, We Mlho Would Not Kill, 171; "Some Children ... ," CNVR leaflet, n.d. (1946-1947), CNVR, Box 1; "Noah Had An Ark!" CNVRleaflet, n.d. (1946-1947), CNVR, Box 1. See also "Some Words Will Fool You," CNVR leaflet, 1 May 1946, CNVR, Box 1. As one of their number explained, CNVR hoped to appeal to those pacifists who "found the FOR, WRL, and peace church types of pacifism as quite unsatisfactory, and who felt that a more radical program should be adopted." Robert Ludlow, "Meeting at Newburgh: Plans Made for Non-Violent Revolt," Catholic Worker 14 (Sep. 1947), 1. 53. "Where Radicalism in the Next 5 Years?" preconference report, July? 1947, 4, CNVR, Box 1; "Some Children ... ," CNVR leaflet, n.d. (1946-1947), CNVR, Box 1; Dan West, "Disciplines for Revolutionary Pacifism," typescript, for FOR Study Conference on Revolutionary Pacifism, 1 Feb. 1945, FOR, Series A, Box 6. Although there are no minutes of CNVR meetings or complete membership lists, one can glean information from various conferences and listings. The initial call to the conference that led to the formation of CNVR had 13 signers, all men. Lewis Hill et al., "Call to Conference-Preliminary Announcement," fall 1945, CNVR, Box 1. The Bulletin of the February Conference of Non-Violent Revolutionary Socialism from 9 January 1946, a year after CNVR's founding, similarly lists 24 men and one woman as sponsoring committee members (CNVR, Box 1). This low representation of women was typical. 54. George Houser, "Plan for Non-Violent Campaign Against Jim Crow," 19 June 1944, Rustin, Reel 5; A. J. Muste to George Houser, 28 June 1944, CORE, Reel 11. Minutes from a CORE Executive Committee meeting in December 1945 notes A. Philip Randolph's enthusiastic response to "the idea of a mass movement" and implied that the members of the Executive Committee believed the time was ripe for such an action (minutes, CORE EC meeting, 8-9 Dec. 1945, CORE, Reel 16). See also George Houser, "Plan for a Non-Violent Campaign Against Jim Crow," 16June 1944, CORE, Reel14; and minutes of National EC of CORE, 14 Oct. 1944, CORE, Reel16. 55. Bayard Rustin, "Beyond the Courts," typescript, 28 Dec. 1946, Rustin, Reel 17; George Houser, interviewed in You Don't Have to Ride jim Crow! prod. Robin Washington, New Hampshire Public Television, 1995; George Houser, "A Personal Retrospective on the 1947 Journey of Reconciliation," typescript, n.d. (1992), 3, Papers ofthe Congress of Racial Equality, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Houser, "A Personal Retrospective"). See also Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 33-34; Catherine Barnes, journey from jim Crow: The Desegregation of Southern Transit (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), 1-65; Robin Kelley, "Congested Terrain: Resistance on Public Transportation," in Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994), 55-75; and JoAnn Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Mlho Started It (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987). 56. Bayard Rustin, "Beyond the Courts," typescript, 28 Dec. 1946, Rustin, Reel 17; "Memorandum Number 2: Bus and Train Travel in the South," FOR RacialIndustrial Department, nd (Sept.-Oct. 1946), FOR, Series E, Box 1; Houser, "A Personal Retrospective," 3. On initial discussions about the Journey see minutes of CORE EC meeting, 14 Sept. 1946, CORE, Reel16.

198

Notes to Pages 33-37

57. Wally Nelson, interview by author, Deerfield, Mass., 13 Mar. 1995. On the struggle to recruit a team of volunteers for this project, see minutes of FOR Racial and Industrial Department meeting, 17 Sept. 1946, FOR, Series A, Box 5a; George Houser to Dear Friend, 26 Feb. 1947, CORE, Reel 13; George Houser to Wilson Head, 15 Oct. 1946, CORE, Reel 11. By late February 1947, only four people were committed to going on the trip. See George Houser to Dear Friends, Journey of Reconciliation recruitment letter, 26 Feb. 1947, CORE, Reel13. 58. James Peck, Freedom Ride (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1962), 15. See also Wally Nelson, interview; Wally Nelson quoted in You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow!; George Houser and Bayard Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow! A Report on the Journey of Reconciliation (New York: FORE/CORE, 1947), 2. It should be noted that having an equal number of blacks and whites on the Journey achieved the true interracial character that marked CORE's philosophy. 59. Swann, interview. On the welljustified fears that organizers and volunteers had about bringing their protest into the Deep South, see Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow!2; and Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 34. For details of other CORE direct action efforts and the responses they provoked, see Houser, Erasing the Color Line. On the threats posed by white supremacists and the "epidemic of violence" in the wartime South, see Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day, 359-75. On the particular hardships faced by Southern white interracialists, see speak Now Against the Day; Virginia Durr with Hollinger Barnard, Outside the Magic Circle: The Autobiography of Virginia Foster Durr (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1985); and Catherine Fosl, Subversive Southerner: Anne Braden and the Struggle for Racial justice in the Cold War South (New York: Palgrave, 2002). 60. Bayard Rustin, Strategies for Freedom: The Changing Patterns of Black Protest (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 25; Peck, Freedom Ride, 16. 61. George Houser, interviewed in You Don't Have to Ride jim Crow! See also Peck, Freedom Ride, 15; and Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow!. 62. Homer Jack, 'journeyofReconciliation," Common Ground (Autumn 1947), 23; Igal Roodenko, handwritten note, 14 Apr. 1947, CORE, ReellO;Jack, 'journey of Reconciliation," 23. 63. Houser, "A Personal Retrospective," 15; Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow!6, 10-11. 64. Houser, "A Personal Retrospective"; Houser, Erasing the Color Line, 11;Journey of Reconciliation contact list, "Very Confidential," Apr. 1947, Roodenko, Box4. 65. Houser, Erasing the Color Line, 11; Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow! 12. 66. Bernice Fisher to George Houser, 12 July 1944, CORE, Reel 11; George Houser to A. J. Muste, 21 Feb. 1945, CORE, Reel 14; George Houser to C. H. Wellman, 4June 1945, CORE, Reel11. See also George Houser to Bond Collier, 5 July 1945, CORE, Reelll; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 19-20. 67. Ernest Bromley, interview by author, tape recording, Cincinnati, Ohio, 4-7 Sept. 1996. On the debates with FOR about the organization's relationship to CORE, see A.J. Muste to John Nevin Sayre, 13Aug. 1946, FOR, Series D, Box 1; and minutes of FOR National Committee meeting, 24 Oct. 1946, FOR, Series A,Box3. 68. A.J. Muste, "The Next Period and Our Tasks," manuscript, n.d. (1945), 3, back side, Muste, Reel 5; A. J. Muste, "What Do Pacifists Propose Now?" n.d. (1946?), 2-3, Muste, Reel 5. See also FOR, "Interracial Workshop-Progress

Notes to Pages 38-40

199

Report," Summer 1947, 12, CORE, Reel 13. These attitudes toward work for racial justice within the pacifist movement were not unique to the FOR. The American Friends Service Committee, for example, the activist arm of American Quakerism, similarly increased its involvement with racial justice work in the 1940s but put these efforts within the context of their tradition of working against injustice, not as part of its efforts to resist war. See Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times, 68-93. 69. Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 10; Bayard Rustin, ''The Negro and Nonviolence," Fellowship (Oct. 1942), reprinted in Bayard Rustin, Down the Line (Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971), 11; Thurgood Marshall quoted in Bayard Rustin, "Beyond the Courts," 28 Dec. 1946, typescript, Rustin, Reel17. 70. Peck, Freedom Ride, 17. On the Journey's outreach to African Americans, see minutes of FOR Racial-Industrial Committee meeting, 7 Jan. 1947, FOR, Series A, Box 5a; Houser, "A Personal Retrospective," 8. 71. Peck, Freedom Ride, 17. On Rustin's and Houser's efforts to gain local support for the project, see Houser, "A Personal Retrospective"; minutes of FOR Racial-Industrial Committee meeting, 7 Jan. 1947, FOR, Series A, Box 5a; George Houser to "the participants in the Journey of Reconciliation," 28 Mar. 1947, Roodenko, Box 4. At least 50 percent of the Journey's public meetings in the South were officially sponsored by local chapters of the NAACP. See Journey of Reconciliation contact list, ''Very Confidential," Apr. 1947, Roodenko, Box 4. Unlike the national office of the NAACP, the local chapters and grassroots activists had developed a deep interest in Gandhi's anticolonial struggle and the possibility of transplanting his techniques to American soil. See Kapur, Raising Up a Prophet. The di~unction between the will of the national organization and the desires of local branches became eminently clear to NAACP organizers like Ella Baker, who worked as the NAACP's traveling Field Secretary and Director of Branches in the early 1940s, and who chafed under the conservative directives of the national Executive Board. See Joanne Grant, Ella Baker: Freedom Bound (New York: Wiley, 1998) 45-90; and Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 105-47. 72. George Houser toT. V. Mangum, North Carolina NAACP, 7 June 1947, CORE, Reel 44. Wrangling over obtaining and paying for lawyers overshadowed most discussions about the legal and moral issues involved in the cases. See miscellaneous correspondence, June 1947-March 1949, CORE, Reel 44; Bayard Rustin, "A Report on Twenty-Two Days on the Chain Gang at Roxboro, North Carolina," Apr. 1949, Rustin, Reel17; FOR and CORE, Background Statement on the North Carolina Case, typescript, 1949, Rustin, Reel3; Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow! 73. George Houser, Wally Nelson, and Juanita Nelson, all interviewed in You Don't Have to Ride jim Crow!; minutes of FOR National Committee meeting, 24 Oct. 1946, FOR, Series A, Box 3. 74. Houser, "A Personal Retrospective," 6. On the psychosexual dynamics of racism, see Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "'The Mind that Burns in Each Body': Women, Rape, and Racial Violence," in Powers of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, ed. Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1983), 328-49. 75. George Houser, interviewed in You Don't Have to Ride jim Crow!; Report to the FOR National Council about the Racial-Industrial Work, 30 May 1947, FOR, Series E, Box 1; minutes of FOR National Committee meeting, 29-31 May 1947, FOR, Series A, Box 3; Peck, Freedom Ride, 27; minutes of FOR National Committee

200

Notes to Pages 40-45

meeting, 29-31 May 1947, FOR, Series A, Box 3; Alice Merritt to Catherine Raymond, 21 Jan. 1948, CORE, Reel 10; Catherine Raymond to Alice Merritt, 23 Jan. 1948, CORE, Reel 10. See also Report on the Fifth CORE Convention, 19June 1947, CORE, Reel9; minutes of CORE Executive Committee meeting, 14 Sept. 1947, CORE, Reel16. 76. Anderson, Wartime Women, 4. For other examples of the ways wartime demobilization affected American women, see Milkman, Gender at Work; Cabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement, 111-42; Step by Step, interviews with Mary Lou Munts and Arvonne Fraser; Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique, 117-52; and Goossen, Women Against the Good War, 112-28. 77. Alice Merritt to Catherine Raymond, 21 Jan. 1948, CORE, Reel 10 (according to this letter, at least four and possibly six women were committed to a second Journey); Juanita Nelson interviewed in You Don't Have to Ride Jim Crow! On Ella Baker's interest in the Journey, see Ella Baker, transcript of interviews with Joanne Grant, 1966-1969, courtesy of Joanne Grant. On women's involvement in the early planning of the Journey, see minutes of FOR Racial and Industrial Department meeting, 17 Sept. 1946, FOR, Series A, Box 5a. 78. Swann, interview; A.]. Muste, "The Foundations of Democracy," typescript, 1938, 16, Muste, Reel4. 79. Memorandum 2: Bus and Train Travel in the South, FOR Racial-Industrial Department, n.d. (Sept.-Oct. 1946), FOR, Series E, Box 1. See also Joffre Stewart, "Tacticsvs. Principles," Chi-CORE News (18 Oct. 1947), 7, CORE, ReelS; and Houser and Rustin, We Challenged jim Crow! 13. On the stereotypical images of noncombatant women in war, see Elshtain, Women and War. 80. Peck, Freedom Ride, 15; Rustin, Strategies for Freedom, 26; Meier and Rudwick, CORE, 39. Marj Swann and Wally and Juanita Nelson echoed this evaluation of the Journey's importance in interviews with the author. So did Marion Bromley, wife of Journey member Ernest Bromley, in an essay written in the 1980s. See Marion Bromley, "Feminism and Nonviolent Revolution," in Reweaving the Web of Life, ed. Pam McAllister (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1983) , 146. 81. "Where Radicalism in the Next 5 Years?" pre-conference report, July(?) 1947, CNVR, Box 1; "Report from August Conference," Bulletin of the CNVR (1 Sept. 1947), 6, Roodenko, Box 4; David Dellinger paraphrased in "Report from August Conference," Bulletin of the CNVR (1 Sept. 1947), 2, Roodenko, Box 4.

Chapter 2. The Peacemakers' Alternative Vision 1. "News of Coney Island," CCHR Newsletter, July 1952, 3, Ernest Bromley Papers, Carton 3, 'Writings by and about Marion Bromley," private collection (hereafter cited as Bromley). See also George Houser, CORE, to "Dear Friends," 30 June 1952, Papers of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, Series E, Box 4, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as FOR). 2. Marion Bromley, "Talk on Tax Refusal," audiotape of lecture, Wilmington, Ohio, 7 Mar. 1984. On Bromley's adventurous spirit, see Marion Bromley, "The Bromleys on Nonviolence," tape recording, Wilmington, Ohio, 24Jan. 1985. Susan Ware's biography of Amelia Earhart highlights the culture of community forged by female aviators and their sense of themselves as part of vanguard of feminist change, women who openly challenged the constraints and expanded the possibilities that defined women's lives. See Susan Ware, Still Missing: Amelia Earhart and the Search for Modern Feminism (New York: Norton, 1993).

Notes to Pages 45-49

201

3. Marion Coddington to Ernest Bromley, 6 Aug. 1947, Carol Rainey private collection. See also Marion Bromley, ''The Bromleys on Nonviolence." For details of her work and activism in New York, see Marion Coddington to Ernest Bromley, correspondence Jan.-Apr. 1948, Carol Rainey private collection. 4. On the political culture of the immediate post-World War II era and the optimism of radical activists regarding the possibilities for change, see Robbie Lieberman, The Strangest Dream: Communism, Anticommunism, and the U.S. Peace Movement, 1945-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2000), 33; Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 151-64; James Tracy, Dired Action: Radical Pacifism From the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 47-53; Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 3-41; Maurice Isserman, Which Side Were You On? The American Communist Party During the Second World War (1982; Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 214-43; Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 49-89; John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press, 2003), 142-53; Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 124-31; Kate Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women's Liberation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 46-64; Nancy Cabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-1975 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1990), 111-42. 5. On the rise of anticommunism and the contracting boundaries of postwar political debate, see Schrecker, Many An the Crimes, 119-305; Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978); and Griffin Fariello, ed., &d Scan: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: Avon Books, 1995). 6. "Call to a Conference on Non-Violent Civil Disobedience to the Draft," July 1948, Peacemakers Collection, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Peacemakers). See also Roy Kepler, "New York Street Meetings," Peacemaker 1 (7 Sept. 1949): 4. 7. On Americans' attitudes toward the Communist Party, see Schrecker, Many An the Crimes, 119-53. 8. Lieberman, The Strangest Dnam, 81. See also Wittner, Rebels Against War, 203-7; and Lieberman, TheStrangestDnam, 81-113. 9. Abe Kaufman quoted in "Notes from the 17th Annual Conference of the War Resisters League," 14-16 June 1946, Papers of the War Resisters League, Box 9, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as WRL); Proceedings of National Committee of Peacemakers, 28-30 Dec. 1948, 2, Peacemakers, Box 1. 10. On the official evaluation of the Communist threat, see Schrecker, Many An the Crimes, 154-200; Caute, The Great Fear. On the government purge of Communists in the American labor movement, see Harvey Levenstein, Communism, Anticommunism, and the C/0 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1981); and George Lipsitz, Class and Culture in Postwar America: A Rainbow at Midnight (New York: Praeger, 1981) . On the minimal power of pacifists, and particularly radical pacifists, during this time, see Wittner, Rebels Against War, 182-212; Lawrence Wittner, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement

202

Notes to Pages 49-52

through 1953, vol. 1, The Struggle Against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993), 71-76; Tracy, Direct Action, 56-68; D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 141-60, 175-83;Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J Muste (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Scott Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 173-196. For evidence of F.B.I. surveillance of radical pacifists, see FBI Records on WRL, Section #5, 56, WRL, Series B, Box 35. June Hahner's study of the women's movement in Brazil, provides an compelling example of the benefits that invisibility due to government indifference can provide a social movement. See June Hahner, Emancipating the Female Sex: The Struggle for Women s Rights in Brazil, 1850-1940 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1990). 11. "Call for a Conference on More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity," Mar.? 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; "Introducing ... Peacemakers," leaflet, n.d. (1948), Peacemakers, Box 1; Marion Bromley, "Feminism and Nonviolent Revolution," in Reweaving the Web of Life: Feminism and Nonviolence, ed. Pam McAllister (Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1983), 145 (emphasis in original); "Call for a Conference on More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity," Mar.? 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; Dave Dellinger, ''To Resist Draft," Alternative 1 (May 1948) : 1. 12. For general information on Peacemakers' Resist Conscription Campaign, see Tracy, Direct Action, 63-65; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 185-87. 13. On the campaign against Jim Crow in the military and its connection to more general opposition to Truman's peacetime draft, see Paula Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990) 133-34; D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 146-47. 14. Robinson, Abraham Went Out, 115. 15. Randolph quoted in D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 159. More detailed discussions of Randolph's campaign against racial segregation in the armed forces, and of he difficult participation of radical pacifists in these affairs, can be found in Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 133-68; D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 144-60. 16. On Peacemakers' protests against the new conscription act, see "Peacemakers' Demonstrations Spotlight Opposition to Draft," Peacemakers Bulletin (10 Sept. 1948), Peacemakers, Box 1; "Millions Forget to Register," Alternative 1 (Sept.-Oct. 1948): 1; Ben Price, "900,000 Sign for the Draft on First Day," New York Herald Tribune, 31 Aug. 1948, 21, FOR, Series D, Box 51. 17. "Sex is here to stay ... ," Peacemakers leaflet, July-Aug. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; A. J. Muste, "Pacifism and Perfectionism," 1948, in The Essays of A. J Muste, ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 320; "Sex is here to stay ... "; Mohandas Gandhi quoted in "Call to a Conference on Non-Violent Civil Disobedience to the Draft," July 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1. 18. Roy Kepler and A. J. Muste to "Dear Friend," 5 July 1949, WRL, Box 4; Bayard Rustin to Marion Bromley, 1 Sept. 1948, Bromley, Carton 3, ''Writings By and About Marion Bromley" folder; Jim Peck, quoted in minutes ofWRL Executive Committee meeting, 9 Aug. 1948, WRL, Box 2. On the movement's celebration of protests that resulted in arrest, see "Fourteen Anti-Draft Pickets Acquitted," Peacemakers Bulletin, 13 Oct. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; Roy Kepler, "Local Reports-NY Street Meetings," Peacemaker 1 (7 Sept. 1949): 4. For an example of the media's emphasis on masculine militancy, see the photograph accompanying "Anti-Draft Pickets Fight Segregation and War," New York Star, 31 Aug. 1948, FOR, Series D, Box 51.

Notes to Pages 53-55

203

19. "10,000 in 1st Draft Call," New York Post, 30 Aug. 1948, FOR, Series D, Box 51; "Call to a Conference on Non-Violent Civil Disobedience to the Draft," July 1948, 1, Peacemakers, Box 1; Peacemakers Bulletin, 13 Nov. 1948, 1, Peacemakers, Box 1. The Nuremberg-inspired photograph can be found on the Peacemakers' flier "Do You Know ... ," n.d. (1948/1949), Peacemakers, Box 1. On radical pacifists' reframing of dissent as the defense of national security, see "Sex is here to stay ... ," Peacemakers leaflet, 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; Peacemakers Bulletin, 28 March 1949, Peacemakers, Box 1. For a description of various Resist Conscription demonstrations, see minutes of "Resist Conscription" meeting, 16 Jan. 1948, Bromley, Carton 3, "Early Peacemakers Documents"; Jim Peck, "Demonstrations Get Publicity for Pacifism," reprint from Peace News, 28 Mar. 1952, WRL,Box3. 20. "A Call to American Christians of Draft Age," Peacemakers leaflet, July 1948, WRL, Box 10; "Freedom and Civil Disobedience," n.d. (1948/1949), Peacemakers, Box 1; FBI Records on WRL, Section #5, 56, WRL, Series B, Box 35; Ben Price, "900,000 Sign for the Draft on First Day," New York Herald Tribune, 31 Aug 1948, 21. 21. "Do You Know ... ," Peacemakers leaflet, Jan. 1949, Peacemakers, Box 1; Peacemakers Bulletin, 10 Dec. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; "Peacemakers Groups, Attention!" Peacemakers Bulletin, 13 Oct. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; Peacemakers Bulletin, 10 Dec. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1. On Peacemakers's various structures of community support see Marion Bromley, "The Bromleys on the Peacemakers Movement," tape recording, Wilmington, Ohio, n.d. (late 1970s); Ernest Bromley, interview by author, tape recording, Cincinnati, 4-7 Sept. 1996. For accounts of nonregistrants and resisting COS, see Peacemakers Bulletin, Oct. 1948-March 1949, Peacemakers, Box 1. 22. Minutes of Resist Peacetime Conscription meeting, 2 Jan. 1948, Bromley, Carton 3, "Early Peacemaker Documents"; "Dedication to Peacemaking," reprint from Yellow springs (Ohio) News, 26 Aug. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1. On the awareness of risks that activists took for counseling refusal, see "An 18-year-old boy is behind bars," Peacemakers leaflet, n.d. Qan.? 1949), WRL, Box 10. On the Gara case, see "The Larry Gara Case," CCCO leaflet, n.d. (spring 1949), Bromley, Carton 2, "Gara Case" folder; Peacemakers Bulletin, 24Jan. 1949, Peacemakers, Box 1; A. J. Muste to "Dear Friend," 19 Dec. 1950, Bromley, Carton 1, "Peacemakers, 1950-51," folder. 23. Marion Bromley to Larry Gara, 17 Feb. 1949, Bromley, Carton 2, "Gara Case"; "A Call to American Christians of Draft Age," Peacemakers pamphlet, July 1948, WRL, Box 10; WRL Conference Notes on Direct Action, 20 June 1948, WRL, Box 9. For a description of Marion Bromley's organizing activities, see minutes of Resist Peacetime Conscription meeting, 2 Jan. 1948, Papers of Igal Roodenko, Box 4, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Roodenko). An account of the Bromleys being question by the FBI can be found in Peacemakers Bulletin, 28 Mar 1949, 2, Peacemakers, Box 2. For general accounts of women picketing and getting arrested along with men, see Dorothy Day, "On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker 15 (Sept. 1948): 1; Dorothy Day, ''The Trial," Catholic Womer 15 (Oct. 1948): 1; Peacemakers Bulletin, 13 Oct. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; and minutes of Peacemakers Executive Committee meeting, 10 Oct. 1949, Peacemakers, Box 1. 24. A.J. Muste, "One World Groups: Draft of Manifesto," 15 Jan. 1948, Papers of A.J. Muste, Reel 6 (Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), microfilm (hereafter cited as Muste).

204

Notes to Pages 55-57

25. For general studies of Cold War culture and its power over life in 1950s America, see Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes, 119-200; Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War, Margot Henricksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Lary May, ed. Recasting America: Culture and Politics in the Age of the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988). 26. On women in the postwar industrial and pink-collar workforce, see Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics ofJob Segregation by Sex During World War II (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Cabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement, 111-59; Susan Hartmann, "Women's Employment and the Domestic Ideal in the Early Cold War Years," and Susan Rimby Leighow, "An 'Obligation to Participate': Married Nurses' Labor Force Participation in the 1950s," both in Not june Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). On manly conformity in the 1950s, see Sloan Wilson, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955); Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural History (New York: Free Press, 1996), 223-58; Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N .Y: Doubleday, 1983), 14-41. 27. On the privatization of family and its impact on women's lives and expectations of feminine behavior, see May, Homeward Bound; and Ruth Rosen, The World Split open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000), 3-36. 28. On the impact of suburbanization on American life and culture, see Kenneth Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985); Becky Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920-1965 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). On the linked ideologies of female domesticity and male breadwinning, see Stephanie Coontz, The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap (New York: Basic Books, 1992); Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men; Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). On cultural conformity and the cult of appearances, see Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). On female wage-earnings during the age of domesticity, see Joanne Meyerowitz, "Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958," and Hartmann, 'Women's Employment and the Domestic Ideal in the Early Cold War Years," both in Not june Cleaver, ed. Meyerowitz. 29. For discussions of community within the Peacemakers movement, see Marion Bromley, "The Bromleys on the Peacemakers Movement;" Ernest Bromley, interview; Marjorie Swann, interview by author, tape recording, Voluntown, Conn., 4 Mar. 1995. For examples of activism studies that evaluate community in its more normative sense, see Charles Payne, I've Got the Light ofFreedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Aidon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1994); Elizabeth Faue, Community of Suffering and Struggle: Women, Men, and the Labor Movement in Minneapolis, 1915-1945 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991); and Ann Bookman and Sandra Morgen, eds., Women and the Politics of Empowerment (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988).

Notes to Pages 58-61

205

30.James Peck, We Who Would Not Kill (New York: Lyle Stuart, 1958), 171. See also Ernest Bromley, interview, for a discussion of the strong desire for community among numerous radical pacifists of this time. 31. On antebellum utopian communities, see Lawrence Foster, Women, Family, and Utopia: Communal Experiments of the Shakers, the Oneida Community, and the Mormons (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1991); Carl Guarneri, "Reconstructing the Antebellum Communitarian Movement: Oneida and Fourierism, "Journal of the Early Republic 16, 3 ( 1996): 463-88; Michael Barkun, Crucible of the Millennium: The Burned-Over District of New York in the 1840s (Syracuse, N .Y: Syracuse University Press, 1986); Christopher Clark, "A Mother and Her Daughters at the Northampton Community: New Evidence on Women in Utopia," New England Qyarterly 75, 4 (2002): 592-621; Richard Cherok, "No Harmony in Kendal: The Rise and Fall of an Owenite Community, 1825-1829," Ohio History 108 (Winter-Spring 1999) 26-38. 32. Elizabeth Dellinger, ''What We Can Do Now: Some Suggestions," Alternative 1 (Mar.-Apr. 1949): 1. See also David Dellinger, From Yale to jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 145-47. 33. Roy Kepler, "Report on Country-Wide Trip," June 1949, WRL, Box 4; Roy Kepler, Letter to the Editor, Peacemaker 1 (9 Aug. 1949): 4; Roy Kepler, "Report on Country-Wide Trip," 5. 34. Alan Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Bomb (1993; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 57-83; Wittner, One World or None, 247-75; Richard Rhodes, Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995). 35. Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, 57; Eugene Rabinowitch quoted in Wittner, One World or None, 59. On initial public attitudes toward the bomb, see Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), 22-23; Wittner, One World or None, 54-59. On the Federation of Atomic Scientists, see Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, 34-56; Wittner, One World or None, 59-66. 36. Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, 19. Boyer notes that, depending on how questions were phrased and who asked them, support for the world government movement varied from one third to over half to less than one quarter of the American public (37-38). On the world government movement, see Wittner, One World or None, 66-71; Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, 33-45. On how fear of the Soviets came to outweigh fear of the bomb, see Wittner, One World or None, 27 4. On growing public acceptance of the bomb, see Wittner, One World or None, 310-13; Winkler, Life Under a Cloud, 74. 37. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 220. On the culture of nuclear war, see Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light, Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America. On how definitions of manhood became domesticated in the 1950s, see Kimmel, Manhood in America, 223-58; May, Homeward Bound, 92-134; Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 14-28; Laura McEnenany, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 2000). 38. Sandy Katz, "Against the Race to Death," Alternative 2 (Feb. 1950): 1; Bayard Rustin to A.J. Muste, 2 Feb. 1950, FOR, Series D, Box 2 (emphasis in original). On the proposal to march on war industries, see Ross Anderson to Bayard Rustin and Friends, 18 Mar. 1950, Fast for Peace Papers, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Fast for Peace). 39. Roy Finch, "What Now? 3 Views on H-Bomb: New Centers of Action," Alternative 2 (Mar. 1950): 1, 3; Roy Kepler to Bayard Rustin, 7 Feb. 1950, FOR, Series D, Box 52. See also Wittner, One World or None, 72.

206

Notes to Pages 62-64

40. Albert Camus, Neither Victims Nor Executioners (1946; trans. Dwight MacDonald 1947; reprint, Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1986); Roy Kepler to Dear Friend, WRL appeal, Apr. 1950, WRL, Box 4. Although the rhetoric and writings by pacifists in response to the bomb do not directly credit Camus, they bear a striking resemblance to his line of argument and phraseology. 41. Peacemakers Fast Committee, "Call to a Seven-Day Fast for Peace," Mar. 1950, WRL, Box 10; A. J. Muste, "Fast for Peace in Retrospect," typescript, n.d. (Apr. 1950), Fast for Peace, Box 1. 42. Mohandas Gandhi, from "Non-Violence in Peace and War," quoted in Gandhi on Nonviolence, ed. Thomas Merton (New York: New Directions, 1965), 69; Roy Kepler, Dynamic Peacemaking, booklet, Mar. 1950, 15, WRL, Box 3. On Rustin's and Muste's trips to India, see D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 161-67; Robinson, Allraham Went Out, 176; "World Pacifists Meet," Peacemaker 1 (1 Dec. 1949): 1; A. J. Muste, "Letter from Muste on India Peace Meet," Peacemaker, Special Supplement (15 Jan. 1950); Wittner, One World or None, 156-57. 43. Call for a Conference on More Disciplined and Revolutionary Pacifist Activity, Mar. 1948, Peacemakers, Box 1; "Brief Definition of Peacemakers Movement, typescript, n.d. (1948), Peacemakers, Box 1. On the call for divine intervention, see Dorothy Day, "The Satan Bomb," Catholic Worker 16 (Mar. 1950): 2. On the relationship between power and powerlessness in Christian theology, see A. J. Muste, "Pacifism and Perfectionism," 1948, in Essays of A. J Muste, ed. Hentoff, 308-21, esp. 313. On "repentance," see Ross Anderson to Bayard and Friends, 18 Mar. 1950, Bayard Rustin Papers, ed. John Bracey, Jr. and August Meier, Reell (Frederick, Md.: University Publications of America, 1988), microfilm (hereafter cited as Rustin). On "sacrifice," see Bayard Rustin to A.J. Muste, 2 Feb. 1950, FOR, Series D, Box 2; and David Dellinger, "What Now? Two Views on H-Bomb," Alternative 2 (Feb. 1950): 3. On "prayer," see "Bomb Protest and Vigil," Peacemaker 1 ( 15 Mar. 1950): 4. 44. David Dellinger, ''What Now? Two Views on H-Bomb," Alternative 2 (Feb. 1950): 4; "Holy Week Fast," Peacemaker 1 (15 Mar. 1950): 3. The actions of the radical pacifists were, as psychiatrist Robert Lifton describes, "an attempt to break through the official suppression and personal numbing that surround the atomic bombings" and to accept moral responsibility for the escalation of the arms race. See Robert Jay Lifton and Greg Mitchell, Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial (New York: Putnam, 1995), 252, 307. Camus also spoke of the "terrible dividing line" that separated "those who accept the consequences of being murderers themselves or the accomplices of murderers, and those who refuse to do so with all their force and being." See Camus, Neither Victims Nor Executioners, 55. 45. Dr. Sushila Nayyar quoted in "Inspiration," Peacemaker 1 (5 June 1949): 4; Winifred Rawlins, "An Experiment with Truth," typescript, n.d. (Apr. 1950), Fast for Peace, Box 1; Horace Champney, "Higher Unity," Peacemaker 2 (1 June 1950): 2. On the Fast for Peace's activities, see "[Fast for Peace] Weekly Schedule," Apr. 1950, Rustin, Reel 1; "Fasting for Power," Peacemaker 1 (25 Apr. 1950): 1; Fast for Peace Committee to Mr. Alexander S. Panyushkin, 4 Apr. 1950, Fast for Peace, Box 1; "Pacifists to Hold Seven Day Fast in National Capital," Press Release, 20 Mar. 1950, Fast for Peace, Box 1; "Report from Fast for Peace Committee," n.d. (Apr. 1950), Fast for Peace, Box 1. 46. AI Anderson, "Defenselessness," Peacemaker! (7 Sept. 1949): 2; 28 women and 26 men participated in the Washington, D.C., fast. See "Fast for Peace," list of participants, Apr. 1950, Fast for Peace, Box 1. On how militancy continued to

Notes to Pages 65-67

207

hold masculine connotations, see Tracy, Direct Action, 67-75; Dellinger, Yale to jail, 155-70. 47. "Fast for Peace," list of participants, Apr. 1950, Fast for Peace, Box 1;Jim Peck, "Amnesty Refused Santa," Peacemaker 1 (13 Jan. 1950): 4; "Rest in Pieces," Peacemaker2 (24Jan. 1951): 4; "Mter the Brawl," Peacemaker2 (1June 1950): 1. 48. "Emergency Conf. Drafts Policy Statement," Peacemaker2 (31 Aug. 1950): 2; "May Day Celebration," Peacemaker 2 (12 May 1951): 4; "Do You Want the A-Bomb to Drop on You?" FOR/WRL/Peacemakers flier, Dec. 1950, WRL, Box 10. On the Peacemaker trip to Eastern and Western Europe, see "Peacemaker Message to the People of Europe: East and West," Peacemaker3 (1 Sept. 1951): 1. On the American political conflation of peace and containment, see Lieberman, The Strangest Dream, 10. 49. "Protest PoliticalJailings," Peacemaker2 (26July 1950): 1. The Peacemakers pickets called for the release of Eugene Dennis, General Secretary of the CPUSA, and Harry Justiz, Miguel Magana, and Louis Miller, all accused CP members and members of the Joint Anti-Fascist Spanish Refugee Committee. On government harassment of radical pacifists, see "Banned From Mails!" Peacemaker2 (9 Dec. 1950): 1; "Letson Loyalty Probed," Peacemaker2 (26July 1950): 4; "Proceedings of National Conference of Peacemakers," 1-3 Apr. 1949, 3, Peacemakers, Box 1; FBI Records on the War Resisters League, Section #5, 59, WRL, Series B, Box 35. 50. "Fasting for Power," Peacemaker 1 (25 Apr. 1950): 1; Winifred Rawlins, "An Experiment with Truth," typescript, n.d. (Apr. 1950), Fast for Peace, Box 1. In October 1949, Rawlins spent 30 days in prison for her part in a demonstration at the French Embassy in Washington, D.C. See Winifred Rawlins, "Occoquan Record," Fellowship (Oct. 1950): 13-18, Fast for Peace, Box 1. 51. Wittner, Rebels Against War, 207. See also A.J. Muste, "Pacifists and Korean Crisis," 25 July 1950, typescript, 1, Bromley, Carton 1, "Peacemakers, 1950-51 "; Peacemaker2-3 (11July 1950-18Jan. 1952). 52. Marion Bromley, ''The Bromleys on Nonviolence." On the Bromleys experiences in upstate New York, see "Minister Urges Youth DefY Draft Law," Albany Times Union, 23 Aug. 1948, 1; "Draft Defier Disclaimed by Pastor," Knickerbocker News, 24 Aug. 1948, 1; "Brown to Ask U.S. Probe of Draft-DefYing Minister," Knickerbocker News, 24 Aug. 1948, 1; William Hawley, "Stranger in the Village," typescript, Oct. 1948, all in Bromley, Carton 2, "A Summer in Nassau." On the Bromley's experiences in Wilmington, Ohio, see ''Wilmington Cop Arrests, Jails Militant Minister," (Columbus) Ohio Sentine~ 25 Mar. 1950, 1; "Minister Sues Constable," press release, Ernest Bromley, 23 May 1950, all in Bromley, Carton 2, "Nassau and Wilmington" folder; "Bromley Evicted, Jailed," Peacemaker 1 (25 Apr. 1950): 3. 53. Ernest and Marion Bromley to "Dear Friends," 11 Feb. 1951, Carol Rainey collection; Wally and Juanita Nelson, interview by author, tape recording, Deerfield, Mass., 13 Mar 1995. On the importance of community and communal living to the Peacemaker vision, see Margaret Champney, "Way of Life-A Positive Program," Peacemaker 2 (26 May 1951): 2; Minutes of Peacemakers Executive Committee, 22 Feb. 1952, WRL, Box 10; "Peacemaker Statement on Community," June 1952, Peacemakers, Box 1. The Bromleys also used the language of "family" to describe life in their communal household. See Ernest and Marion Bromley, "Greetings from Gano," Christmas 1952, Carol Rainey collection. On the workings of the Gano community, see Ernest and Marion Bromley to "Dear Friends," 11 Feb. 1951, Carol Rainey collection; Ernest Bromley, interview.

208

Notes to Pages 67-70

54. Juanita Nelson, Operation Brotherhood, to Dear Friend, 2Jan. 1952, CORE, ReelS. On the Bromleys' and the Nelsons' work in Cincinnati, see Interracial Workshop Newsletter, 6July 1951, CORE Papers, George Houser Scrapbooks; Roger Hanson, "Pioneers in Nonviolent Action: The Congress of Racial Equality in Cincinnati, 1946-1955," Queen City Heritage (Fall 1994), 23-25. See also miscellaneous correspondence from Marion Bromley to Ernest Bromley, Aug. 1951, Carol Rainey collection. 55. The travails of the Gano Peacemakers were described by James Peck in his article for the NAACP's national newsletter. See James Peck, "Not Like In Cicero," Crisis 58 (Dec. 1950): 653-56, 696. The Bromleys remained in this house until forced out by old age in the early 1990s. 56. On Juanita Nelson's work with CCHR, see Juanita Nelson to Catherine Raymond, 13 Aug. 1951, CORE, ReelS; miscellaneous correspondence, Marion Bromley to Ernest Bromley, Aug. 1951, Carol Rainey private collection; Juanita Nelson to George Houser and/or Catherine Raymond, 2 May 1949, CORE, Reel 8. On CCHR's efforts to integrate the music academies, see miscellaneous correspondence to and from George Houser and CORE, 1949-1951, CORE, ReelS. On Juanita Nelson's central role in these efforts, see miscellaneous correspondence, Marion Bromley to Ernest Bromley, Aug. 1951, Carol Rainey collection. On the Bromleys' work with CCHR, see Ernest and Marion Bromley, "Greetings from Gano," Christmas 1952, Carol Rainey collection. 57. Juanita Nelson to George Houser, 30 Sept. 1951, CORE, Reel 8; "Help Open Coney Island to Everyone," CCHR flier, n.d. (Mar? 1952), CORE, ReelS; Juanita Nelson to Jim Peck, "Coney Island Project-for CO RElator," n.d. (May 1952), CORE, ReelS. See also Hanson, "Pioneers in Nonviolent Action," 27. 58. Lew Moores, "Coney Was No Fun for Blacks,: Cincinnati Post, 23 May 1981, 8A; "News of Coney Island," CCHR Newsletter, July 1952, Bromley, Carton 3, "Writings by and about Marion Bromley". See also Juanita Nelson to Jim Peck, "for CORElator," n.d. (May 1952), CORE, Reel 8; George Houser, CORE, to Dear Friends, 30 June 1952, FOR, Series E, Box 4. Roger C. Hanson notes that "the distinctiveness of the CCHR stemmed from the radical pacifist orientation of several of its key members, who pioneered in techniques of nonviolent direct action." See "Pioneers in Nonviolent Action," 23. 59. George Houser, CORE, to Dear Friends, 30 June 1952, FOR, Series E, Box 4; "For Immediate Release," CCHR Press Release, 27 June 1952, CORE, Reel 8; "Late Flash to the CORElator-Win Coney Island Campaign," n.d. (1955), CORE, Reel 8. For details of the amusement park and jailhouse protests, see "Three Peacemakers Jailed as Participants in Campaign to End Park Segregation," Peacemaker4 (12July 1952): 1; "Cincinnati City Council Hearing On Racial Discrimination at Park Result of Non-Violent Campaign," Peacemaker 4 (2 Aug. 1952): 1; "Campaign to End Racial Ban at Coney Island Continued," unidentified news clipping, n.d. (Aug? 1952), CORE, Reel 8; Maurice McCrackin to George Houser, 28June 1952, CORE, Reel 8; August Meier and Elliot Rudwick, CORE: A Study in the Civil Rights Movement, 1942-1968 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 58-59. 60. Billie Ames, St. Louis CORE, to (Cincinnati) Mayor Carl W. Rich, 3July 1952, CORE, Reel 8. See also Peacemaker 4 (12July 1952 and 2 Aug. 1952); George Houser, CORE, to Dear Friends, 30 June 1952, FOR, Series E, Box 4; "Group Defies Racial Ban," New York Times, 28June 1952, CORE, ReelS. 61.Juanita Nelson to Catharine Raymond, 13 Aug. 1951, CORE, Reel 8; "News of Coney Island," CCHR Newsletter, July 1952, Bromley, Carton 3, "Writings

Notes to Pages 71-75

209

by and about Marion Bromley;" Marion Bromley, "Feminism and Nonviolent Revolution," 149-50. See also Ernest Bromley, interview; Maurice McCrackin to George Houser, 28June 1952, CORE, Reel8. 62. Tracy, Direct Action, 76-81. On the dynamics of gender and women's involvement in the American Communist Party, see Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique, 124-40; Wiegand, Red Feminism, 67-96. On black women and the politics of respectability in the Cold War years, see Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A &dical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 128. 63. "Call to Peacemaker National Conference," May 1952, Peacemakers, Box 1; A.J. Muste, "Problems of Non-Violent Revolution," Peacemaker3 (1 Mar. 1952): 7. 64. "Peacemaker Statement on Community," June 1952, Peacemakers, Box 1. 65. Marion Bromley to A.]. Muste, 17 Nov. 1956, Bromley, Carton 3, ''NonPayment of Taxes-Legal." On the prevalence of family concerns in the Peacemakers movement, see, for example, Minutes of Ohio Area Peacemakers Meeting, 10 Jan. 1954, Bromley, Carton 3, "Peacemaker History." According to Ernest Bromley, Juanita precipitated the Nelsons' move from Gano because of her desire to leave Cincinnati. The Nelsons moved to Columbus, where Juanita attended Ohio State for several years while Wally returned to Gano on the weekends; later they moved to Pennsylvania. Bromley notes that Wally was devastated by the departure since he considered the community "his family." See Ernest Bromley, interview.

Chapter 3. Familialism and the Struggle Against the Bomb 1. "Atom-Lopers to Quit State After Prayer Vigil at Test Site Today: Guilty 11 Get Year Probation," Las Vegas Sun, 7 Aug. 1957, 1; "Summary Information on Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," nd (July 1957), Lawrence Scott Papers, Box 2, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Scott). For a detailed description of the protest see "Hold Major Protest Demonstration at Mercury, Nevada Atomic Test Site," Peacemaker 10 (26 Aug. 1957): 2. 2. Statement by Dave Andrews, "Biographies and Statements by Participants of Reasons for Undertaking Non-Violent Direct Action Against Nuclear Weapons," preliminary draft, n.d. (Aug. 1957), Scott, Box 3; Lillian Willoughby quoted in NVAANW, "Biographies and Brief Statements of Team Members," For Immediate Release, 4 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; Lawrence Scott, "Reason and Morality: Requisites for Human Civilization," typescript, n.d. (Aug. 1957), Scott, Box2. 3. "A Call to Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," July 1957, Scott, Box3. 4. Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 19331983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 213; "The Peacemaker Movement in the United States: What? Where? Whither?" 10 May 1953, Ernest Bromley Papers, Carton 3, "Peacemaker History," private collection (hereafter cited as Bromley). On activists' focus on nonviolent protests overseas, see Peacemaker 5-6 (June 1953-June 1955). 5. Laura McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home: Militarization Meets Everyday Life in the Fifties (Princeton, N J.: Princeton University Press, 2000), 152. On the impact of McCarthyism on the culture of the late 1950s, see Ellen Schrecker,

210

Notes to Pages 75-77

Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1998), 359-415; Stephen Whitfield, The Culture of the Cold War (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991); Griffin Fariello, ed., Red Scare: Memories of the American Inquisition (New York: Avon Books, 1995); Daniel Horowitz, Betty Friedan and the Making of The Feminine Mystique: The American Left, The Cold War, and Modern Feminism (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), 153-79. 6. On the political implications of 1950s domesticity, see Elaine Tyler May, Homeward Bound: American Families in the Cold War Era (New York: Basic Books, 1988); McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home; Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965 (Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press, 2000), 62-85. 7. 1 Jan. 1956, Ernest and Marion Bromley to Dear Friends, Carol Rainey private collection; David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 171, 173. On the preoccupation with familial concerns, see Peacemaker4-5 (June 1952-June 1954). See also James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 77. 8. A. J. Muste to Art Springer, 15 May 1959, Papers of A. J. Muste, Reel 19 (Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), microfilm (hereafter cited as Muste); Bradford Lyttle, interview by author, tape recording, Chicago, 25-26 Apr. 1997; Speak Truth to Power: A QJ.taker Search for an Alternative to Violence (Philadelphia: American Friends Service Committee, 1955). On the radicalization of the WRL, see Tracy, Direct Action, 56-59; Scott Bennett, Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2003), 134-72. On the pivotal nature of the Speak Truth to Power document, see Wittner, Rebels Against War, 230; and Elizabeth Walker Mechling and Jay Mechling, "Hot Pacifism and Cold War: The American Friends Service Committee's Witness for Peace in 1950s America," QJ.tarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992): 173-96. 9. "Tract for the Times," Liberation 1 (Mar. 1956): 5; Report to WRL Executive Committee on First Year of Liberation, Jan.? 1957, Papers of the War Resisters League, Series B, Box 12, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as WRL); Tracy, Direct Action, 86. On the "little magazines" of the postwar era, see Penina Glazer, "A Decade of Transition: A Study of Radical Journals of the 1940s" (Ph.D. diss., Rutgers University, 1970); and Paul Gorman, Left Intellectuals and Popular Culture in Twentieth-Century America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 54, 158-85. 10. On growing public fear of the nuclear threat, see Margot Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Ag11 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Ag11 (New York: Pantheon, 1985); Allan Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Bomb (1993; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 93-108; Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970, vol. 2, The Struggle Against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 1-10; Robert Divine, Blowing in the Wind: The Nuclear Test Ban Debate, 1954-1960 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 3-35; Milton Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE, 1957-1985 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 1-20. 11. Lawrence Scott to Members of the Peacemakers Continuations Committee, 28 Jan. 1957, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957." For details of

Notes to Pages 78-79

211

Scott's efforts to spark a national disarmament movement, see Lawrence Scott, "Memo One-Shared Thinking," 30 Apr. 1957, Scott, Box 2; Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 53; Lawrence Scott, "Memo Three-Shared Thinking," 18 May 1957, Scott, Box 2. SANE employed a combination of advocacy and respectability in its campaign against the bomb. Politically moderate and only marginally pacifist, SANE's program during this time centered on dramatic, nationally run newspaper advertisements and political lobbying. For more information on SANE, see Katz, Ban the Bomb, 21-35; Robert Kleidman, Organizing for Peace: Nrutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 96-106. For more about Lawrence Scott, see Allen Smith, "Converting America: Three Community Efforts to End the Cold War, 1956-1973" (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1995), 85-86. 12. Lyttle, interview; George and Lillian Willoughby, interview by author, tape recording, Deptford, NJ., 15 Nov. 1996; "Summary of Meeting on H-Bomb Tests," 22 Apr. 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lawrence Scott, "A Movement Against H-Bomb Tests," n.d. (Apr.-May 1957), Scott, Box 2. 13. "Nonviolence and the New Year," Liberation 1 Uan. 1957): 3. On the Montgomery bus boycott and radical pacifist contributions to it, see JoAnn Gibson Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987); Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1984), 51-63; Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988), 143-205. 14. Lawrence Scott to the Peacemaker Executive Committee, 27 Feb. 1957, Bromley, Carton 4; Lawrence Scott to Ernest Bromley and Ralph Templin, "Memorandum," 13 June 1957, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957." On the organization of the Nevada action, see Lawrence Scott, "Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Tests, a Timetable of Promotion," 18 June 1957, Scott, Box2. The pacifist representatives sent to Montgomery were Wally Nelson for Peacemakers, Glenn Smiley for the FOR, and Bayard Rustin for the WRL. For Rustin, this trip was the beginning of perhaps the most influential period of his political life. See Branch, Parting the Waters, 168-80;Jervis Anderson, Bayard Rustin: Troubles I've Seen (New York: HarperCollins, 1997), 185-96; John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press, 2003), 223-48, 262-78; Tracy, Direct Action, 88-98; minutes of the WRL Executive Committee, 21Jan. 1957, WRL, Series B, Box 1. 15. "List of Participants in Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," 3-7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lawrence Scott to Lloyd Danzeisen, Ernest Bromley, et al., 30 Apr. 1957, Bromley, Carton 2, "Peacemakers-2"; Jim Peck quoted in "Hold Major Protest Demonstration at Mercury, Nevada Atomic Test Site," Peacemaker 10 (26 Aug. 1957): 2; "A Call to Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," July 1957, Scott, Box 3. For details of the Nevada protest, see Lawrence Scott, ''What Happened from the Time of the First Arrest to the Time We Were Loaded on a Bus to Go to Beatty," typescript, 7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 4; "List of Participants in Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," 3-7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 2. 16. Sam Tyson, quote from "Statements Made in Court at Beatty, Nevada," typescript, 6 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 4; Dave Andrews, quote from "Biographies and Statements by Participants of Reasons for Undertaking Non-Violent Direct Action Against Nuclear Weapons," preliminary draft, n.d. (Aug. 1957), Scott,

212

Notes to Pages 80-83

Box 3. See also NVAANW, "Biographies and Brief Statements of Team Members," For Immediate Release, 4 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3. 17. George and Lillian Willoughby, interview. See also WRL Executive Committee minutes, 23 Jan. 1956, WRL, Series B, Box 1; WRL Nws (Sept./Oct. 1956). 18. George Willoughby, text of speech given in San Pedro, Calif., 9 Feb. 1958, Albert Bigelow Papers, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Bigelow); Lillian Willoughby, "How I Came to Be a Member of the Civil Disobedience Team," 6 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 4. See also George and Lillian Willoughby, interview. 19. On Scott's repeated concern that fallout would harm children of this generation and those of future generations, see Lawrence Scott, "Draft Statement of Principles," 25 Apr. 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lawrence Scott to "those interested in action against nuclear weapons tests," 1 July 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lawrence Scott, "Some Thoughts on the Nevada Project," 8 July 1957, Scott, Box 2; NVAANW, For Immediate Release, 3 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; Lawrence Scott to Miriam Keeler, 15 July 1957, Scott, Box 2; Miriam Keeler to Lawrence Scott, 18 July 1957, Scott, Box 2. For other evidence of Scott's efforts to recruit women for the Nevada action, see Lawrence Scott to Jeanette Jamison, 16 July 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lawrence Scott to Emily Parker Simon, 23 July 1957, Scott, Box 3. 20. Miriam Keeler to Lawrence Scott, 18 July 1957, Scott, Box 2; Lillian Willoughby, interview. On the gender composition of the Nevada team, see "List of Participants in Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," 3-7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 2. 21. Bob Vogel to Bob [Pickus], A. J. [Muste], or Larry [Scott], 7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; Lawrence Scott to Peacemaker Continuation Committee, 3 Sept. 1957, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957"; Lawrence Scott, "A Proposal for Continuance of Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," 20 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 2; George Willoughby, interview. On the extensive media coverage of the Nevada protest, see Lawrence Scott, "The Nevada Witness," typescript, n.d. (Aug. 1957), Scott, Box 2; Ernest and Marion Bromley to "Dear Friends," 7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; Franklin Zahn to NVAANW, 6 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; and William Lloyd to Lawrence Scott, 7 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3; George Willoughby to Robert Pickus, 29 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 3. 22. "A Call to a Prayer and Conscience Vigil," n.d. (fall1957), Bromley, Carton 1, "Peacemakers-1953"; Lawrence Scott, ''The Pacific Project," preliminary working paper, n.d. (fall 1957), Scott, Box 5. For details of the Washington vigil, see "Summary Information on Prayer and Conscience Vigil," n.d. (Oct. 1957), Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957"; Lawrence Scott, "A Proposal for Continuance of Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons," 20 Aug. 1957, Scott, Box 2; Albert Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule: An Experiment with Truth (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1959), 25; Press Release, Prayer and Conscience Vigil-Washington, D.C., 21 Oct. 1957, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957" 23. According to Lawrence Wittner, SANE, had approximately 130 local chapters, representing 25,000 people, by the summer of 1958. See Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 125-42; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 244; Katz, Ban the Bomb, 21-44; Kleidman, Organizing for Peace, 96-106; Divine, Blowing in the Wind, 160-65. On the British antinuclear movement, see Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 44-51. 24. NVAANW news release, 25 Jan. 1958, Papers of the Committee for NonViolent Action, Box 11, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited

Notes to Pages 83-86

213

as CNVA). On the planning for the Golden Rule see, George Willoughby, interview; Lawrence Scott, "The Pacific Project," preliminary working paper, n.d. (fall 1957), Scott, Box 5; Lawrence Scott to Ernest and Marion Bromley, 22 Dec. 1957, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1957." 25. Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule, 48; George and Lillian Willoughby, interview; "MEN Against the BOMB," announcement of meeting about the Golden Rule, Philadelphia, 8 Sept. 1958, CNVA, Box 11. The NVAANW Executive Committee was made up entirely of men during this time. See miscellaneous minutes and summaries of meetings, NVAANW, Nov. 1957:June 1958, CNVA, Box 1. 26. Photograph of the men of the Golden Rule, spring 1958, Bigelow photos, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection. On constructions of masculinity in the postwar era, see Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1983), 1-67; Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 62-85; Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left (New York: Verso, 1993), 51-58; Michael Kimmel, Manhood in America: A Cultural Histary (New York: Free Press, 1996), 223-58. 27. Kimmel, Manhood in America, 233; Summary of NVAANW Committee meeting, 12 Nov. 1957, CNVA, Box 1; David Gale to "My Friends," 31 Jan. 1958, Bigelow, Box 1; Albert Bigelow, ''Why I Am Sailing This Boat Into the Bomb-Test Area," Liberation reprint, Feb. 1958, Scott, Box 5. See also Anthony Rotundo, American Manhood: Transformations in Masculinity from the Revolution to the Modern Era (New York: Basic Books, 1993), 286, on the concept of the "existential hero."

28. Bigelow, ''Why I Am Sailing This Boat Into the Bomb-Test Area"; George Willoughby, text of speech in San Pedro, Calif., 9 Feb. 1958, Bigelow, Box 1. See also "Biographies and Personal Statements-Crew of the Golden Rule," n.d. (Winter 1958), CNVA, Box 11. 29. On iconic figures of masculinity in the late 1950s, see Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 14-28; Kimmel, Manhood in America, 226-27, 245-50; May, Homeward Bound. Ruth Feldstein notes that, under Cold War liberalism, "visions of restrained masculinity became virtually synonymous with citizenship." SeeFeldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 85. For the relationship between proper masculine behavior and civil defense preparedness, see May, Homeward Bound, 27; McEnaney, Civil Defense Begins at Home, 68-87. 30. NVAANW, "Biographies and Personal Statements-Crew of the Golden Rule," n.d. (1958), CNVA, Box 11. On notions of disciplined masculinity, see Kimmel, Manhood in America, 228; Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 18-22; Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 63-73. 31. Lawrence Scott, "The Pacific Project," preliminary working paper, fall 1957, Scott, Box 5; Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule, 23; NVAANW, "Stop the Tests-Reverse the Arms Race-Free the Men of the Golden Rule," leaflet, 11 June 1958, CNVA, Box 11; Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule, 20; Albert Bigelow, "Why We Are Sailing Again," 1 June 1958, Bigelow, Box 1. 32. NVAANW, minutes of Executive Committee, 17 Apr. 1958, CNVA, Box 1; A.]. Muste to Bert, Bill, George, and Orion, 17 May 1958, Bigelow, Box 1. Articles in the New York Times and other papers explicitly linked the AEC's prohibition on travel in the testing area to the voyage of the Golden Rule. See Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule, 90-91; Denver Post, 11 Apr. 1958; Philadelphia Inquirer, 11 Apr. 1958; New York Times, 12 Apr. 1958. The overflowing scrapbooks of newspaper clippings about the Golden Rule, which include hundreds of articles

214

Notes to Pages 87-90

from small-town papers as well as major metropolitan dailies, provide a good indication of just how much attention this small action received. See scrapbooks, "CNVA, 1957 and Golden Rule Clippings," "CNVA: Golden Rule Clippings: Feb. 1958," "CNVA: Golden Rule Clippings, March and April1958," "CNVA: Golden Rule Clippings, May 1958," "CNVA: Golden Rule Clippings, 6/1/58 to End of Year," all in CNVA, Box 23. The New York Times, the Boston Herald, and Newsweek all published articles about the project, assisted by the steady stream of press releases and news conferences distributed and held by NVA organizers. See also Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 56; Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (1987; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 154; and Wittner, Rebels Against War, 249-250. 33. Bigelow, The Voyage of the Golden Rule, 196. 34. The Phoenix family to Dear Friends, all over the world, 2 May 1958, Phoenix Defense Fund Paper, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Tracy, Direct Action, 104. On the response of the Golden Rule's crew to the Phoenix's endeavors, see Orion Sherwood, George Willoughby, Bill Huntington, Albert Bigelow, andJim Peck to NVAANW, 14July 1958, CNVA, Box 11. 35. Ena Curry and Frances Ross to Mrs. Bigelow, 16 Feb. 1958, Bigelow, Box 1. 36. George and Lillian Willoughby, interview. 37. Parallel and support demonstrations included a deputation to Moscow to appeal to "the Russian people and leaders to stop tests unilaterally," a major Walk for Peace to the United Nations, a picket at Cape Canaveral, and a variety of public protests at local federal buildings and offices of the Atomic Energy Commission. See NVAANW, Press Release, 29 Apr. 1958, CNVA, Box 11; Peacemaker 11 (1 March 1958-26 April 1958); NVAANW, For Immediate Release, 3 May 1958, CNVA, Box 11; Elinor Ashkenazy to Dear Crew, 6 May 1958, Bigelow, Box 1. For detailed accounts of the sit-in, see "Protesters Given Hearing by AEC," Peacemaker 11 (17 May 1958); Em est Bromley, "A Week in the AEC Lobby," "Prisoners for a Night," and "Quizzing an AEC Commissioner," all in Peace News (Aug.-Sept. 1958), clippings in Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1958"; Emest Bromley, interview by author, tape recording, Cincinnati, 4-7 Sept. 1996. 38. Bromley, "Quizzing an AEC Commissioner." On "good" mothers and "bad" mothers, see May, Homeward Bound; Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White, 167; Annelise Orleck, "Good Motherhood as Patriotism: Mothers on the Right," in The Politics of Motherhood: Activist Voices from Left to Right, ed. Alexis Jetter, Annelise Orleck, and Diana Taylor (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997), 225. 39. Bromley, "A Week in the AEC Lobby." See also Lillian Willoughby, interview. In 1870, in the aftermath of the American Civil War and the FrancoPrussian War in Europe, American writer Julia Ward Howe promoted the idea of a Mothers' Day for Peace. This became the seed for what eventually became Mother's Day in the early 1900s. 40. Loren Miner quoted in Bromley, "Quizzing an AEC Commissioner." On the Japanese visitor to the Golden Rule, see Bigelow, The Voyag11 of the Golden Rule, 180. 41. Liberation cover article, 3 (May 1958). On the disarmament movement's failure to ease international and nuclear tensions, see Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 48; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 252. NVAANW was transformed into CNVA in September 1958 during a weekend-long conference to discuss the future of radical pacifist action. See 'Westtown Consultation on Direct Action," 17-18 Sept. 1958, CNVA, Box 39. On tensions within the movement, see CNVA, Summary of

Notes to Pages 90-93

215

meeting held in New York, 12 Feb. 1959, CNVA, Box 1; Neil Katz, "Radical Pacifism and the Contemporary American Peace Movement: CNVA, 1957-1967," Ph.D. dissertation, University of Maryland, 1974), 76-80; Tracy, Direct Action, 106-9; Lyttle, interview. Omaha Action meetings were centered in Chicago by mid-April 1959 and were dominated by new and student-age members. See Ted Olson, "Omaha Missile Base Project Underway," Peacemaker 12 (6 June 1959): 8; Minutes of meetings of Omaha Action Administrative Committee, May 1959, Scott, Box 5. For more on the development of Omaha Action, see "Omaha Action," CNVA News (June 1959), CNVA, Box 12. 42. For descriptions of the civil disobedience protests, see Ed Lazar, 'The Vigil," Omaha Action Bulletin 4, 27 June 1959, Scott, Box 5; "Statement by A.]. Muste, Cocoordinator of Omaha Action," 29 June 1959, CNVA, Box 12; "Federals Arrest 3 Protesters," Omaha Action Bulletin 5, 1 July 1959, Omaha Action Papers, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Omaha Action). For general descriptions of the campaign and the radical pacifist assessment of it, see Omaha Action Bulletin 4-16, 27 June-16 Dec. 1959, Omaha Action, Box 1. 43. Omaha Action, "Call to Nonviolent Action," May 1959, CNVA, Box 23; "Why Are the Pacifists In Jail?" Omaha Action leaflet, n.d. (July 1959), CNVA, Box 12. 44. "Why Are the Pacifists in Jail?" Omaha Action leaflet, n.d. (July 1959), CNVA, Box 12. 45. Jhan and June Robbins, '"You Are a Bad Mother.'" Redbook (Aug. 1960), 98; Marjorie Swann quoted in "'You Are a Bad Mother,' " 98. See also Peacemakers Executive Committee to Dear Friends, 15 July 1959, CNVA, Box 12. 46. "Statement by Marjorie Swann," 21 July 1959, Horace Champney Papers, Box 4, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Champney). 47. Bill Hefner to Ernest Bromley, 11 Nov. 1959, Bromley, Carton 3, "Correspondence"; Marj Swann to "our relatives, friends, and co-workers in the peace movement," 20 July 1959, Scott, Box 5. For Bob Swann's position on his wife's activism, see "Statement by Robert Swann in support of his wife," 21 July 1959, Champney, Box 4. On women's familial roles in 1950s America, see May, Homeward Bound. On the ways in which women used domesticity for unconventional ends, see Joanne Meyerowitz, ed., Not june Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994). 48. "To the Swann Children, by an Omaha Participant," reprinted in "Friends of Marj Swann" to "Friends of Marj Swann and Sympathizers with her Concerns,'' n.d. (fall 1959), Champney, Box 4; "Harvey, Swann and Young Put on Probation Despite Their Protests,'' Omaha Action Bulletin 12, 28 July 1959, Omaha Action, Box 1. See also Omaha Action, 16 mm, 30 min, CNVA, 1960. 49. Wilmer Young and Maij Swann to Federal Judge Richard E. Robinson, reprinted in Omaha Action Bulletin 12, 28 July 1959, Omaha Action, Box 1; Maij Swann quoted in Omaha Action Bulletin 13, 5 Aug. 1959, Omaha Action, Box 1. 50. "Maij Swann, Arthur Harvey Go to Prison; Action at Omaha Continues," Peacemaker12 (22Aug.1959): 1; Marj Swann to Horace Champney, 11 Aug.1959, Champney, Box 4; Dave Dellinger, "Mrs. Swann's Way,'' Liberation 4 (Dec. 1959): 3; Headline of Redbook article on Marj Swann,Jhan andJune Robbins, "'You Are a Bad Mother.' " 51. Dellinger, "Mrs. Swann's Way"; Marj Swann to "our relatives, friends, and co-workers in the peace movement," 20 July 1959, Scott, Box 5; "Statement by Marjorie Swann," 21 July 1959, Champney, Box 4. "For myself,'' Swann wrote just prior to her release, "I still feel the same joy and satisfaction I did in August, only

216

Notes to Pages 93-105

more so." See Marj Swann to Marion Bromley, 10 Jan. 1960, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1960(2)." 52. Text of letter from "A Participant in Omaha Action" to Mruj Swann, reprinted in "Friends ofMruj Swann" to "Friends ofMarj Swann and Sympathizers with her Concerns," n.d. (Fall 1959), Champney, Box 4; Eleanor Ostroff, "Christian Witness at Omaha, Nebraska," typescript, n.d. (fall 1959), Bromley, Carton 3, "Correspondence"; Clare Hutchett Bishop to Malj Swann, reprinted in "Friends of Marj Swann" to "Friends of Mruj Swann and Sympathizers with Her Concerns," n.d. (fall 1959). The portrait of Swann's four children was featured prominently in a flier published by Marion and Ernest Bromley as an insert to the Peacemaker. See "A Mother at the Gate to the Missile Silo in Omaha," flier, n.d. (fall 1959), CNVA, Box 34. For news articles in the pacifist press on Swann's travails, see Peacemaker 12 (22 Aug.-21 Nov. 1959); Dellinger, "Mrs. Swann's Way." 53. "Statement from Wilmer Young," reprinted in "Friends of Marj Swann" to "Friends of Marj Swann and Sympathizers with Her Concerns," n.d. (fall 1959), Champney, Box 4; Eleanor Ostroff, "Christian Witness at Omaha, Nebraska," typescript, n.d. (fall1959), Bromley, Carton 3, "Correspondence" (my emphasis). 54. Text of letter from "a Participant in Omaha Action" to Bob Swann, reprinted in "Friends ofMarj Swann" to "Friends ofMarj Swann and Sympathizers with Her Concerns," n.d. (Fall 1959), Champney, Box 4; Horace Champney?, "Swann Family Carries On," typescript, n.d. (Nov./Dec. 1959), Champney, Box 4. On the running of the Swann household during Marj's prison term, see miscellaneous correspondence about the Swann household in "Friends of Mruj Swann" [Marion Bromley and Marion Dockhorn] to "Friends of Marj Swann and Sympathizers with her Concerns," n.d. (Fall1959);Juanita Nelson to Ernest Bromley, 16 Sept. 1959, Bromley, Carton 3, "Non-Payment of Taxes"; Marion Bromley to A.]. Muste, 4 Nov. 1959, Muste, Reel 19; Ernest Bromley to David Gale, 16 Nov. 1959, Bromley, Carton 3, "Non-Payment of Taxes"; Wally Nelson to the Bromleys, 14 Dec. 1959, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1959." 55. Text of anonymous letter to Marj Swann, reprinted in "Friends of Mruj Swann" to "Friends of Marj Swann and Sympathizers with Her Concerns," n.d. (Fall1959), Champney, Box 4; Horace Champney?, "Swann Family Carries On," typescript, n.d. (Nov./Dec. 1959), Champney, Box 4; Lillian Willoughby, interview. 56. Champney?, "Swann Family Carries On." 57. Lyttle, interview; Dan Berrigan to Karl Meyer, 15 Sept. 1959, Papers of Daniel and Philip Berrigan, Box 89, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library. 58. "Omaha Action: A Preliminary Report on the Pacifist Demonstration at Mead ICBM Base," typescript, n.d. (July 1959), CNVA, Box 12; Lawrence Scott to Bob and Marj Swann, Bob Lutweiler, et al., 9 May 1957, Bromley, Carton 2, "Peacemakers-2"; David McReynolds, "After the Beat Generation: Hipsters Unleashed," Liberation 4, 8 (June 1959): 8.

Chapter 4. Reviving the Compact of Brotherhood 1. "Hiroshima Day," Polaris Action flier, 6 Aug. 1960, Papers of the Committee for Nonviolent Action, Box 33, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter

Notes to Pages 105-108

217

cited as CNVA). On some of the competing activities organized by the Polaris Action project, see "Hiroshima Day and Walk Schedule," Polaris Action Bulletin 6 (31 July 1960), author's collection. 2. On the Swanns' move to the New London area, see Bradford Lyttle, Polaris Action, to Dear Friend, 5 Aug. 1960, CNVA, Box 13. Protecting children was the dominant theme of the leaflet distributed in New London during the vigil. See "A Child's Right to Live," Polaris Action leaflet, 6 Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook Uune 1960), CNVA, Box 23;Jhan and June Robbins," 'You Are a Bad Mother,' " Redbook, Aug. 1960; "Marjorie Swann in Redbook,'' Polaris Action Bulletin 7 (2 Aug. 1960), author's collection. As the CNVA leadership noted, the article "was recognized as ... perhaps the most significant single publicity success since CNVA began." See Minutes of the Polaris Action Advisory Committee, 23 July 1960, Horace Champney Papers, Box 2, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Champney). 3. "A Child's Right to Live," Polaris Action leaflet, 6 Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook Uune 1960), CNVA, Box 23. A front page article announcing the vigil appeared in Bulletin 6; CNVA press release-Polaris News 12, 5 Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (May-Nov. 1960), CNVA, Box 23. Otherwise, in-house publicity was almost nonexistent. See Polaris Action Bulletin 6-10 (31 July-23 Aug. 1960), author's collection. 4. Quote from narrator, Polaris Action, 16 mm, 25 min., Hilary Harris Films, New York, 1960. For descriptions of Henry's and Martin's protests, see also Polaris Action Bulletin 16 (3 Dec. 1960), author's collection; Richard H. Parke, "Biggest Submarine in the Polaris Fleet Launched by U.S.,'' New York Times, 23 Nov. 1960, 1,3. This article included a front-page photo of Don Martin resting on the hull of the submarine. Articles and photos also appeared in papers across the country, including the New York Post, the Christian Science Monitor, and the Chicago Daily News. See press clippings from 20 Oct. and 22 Nov. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23. Fox Movietone purchased film footage of the event and aired it on television as well as in cinemas across the nation. See Polaris Action Bulletin 16 (3 Dec. 1960), author's collection. 5. On the use and abuse of political ritual, see Robert Bellah, "Civil Religion in America,'' Daedelus 96 (Winter 1967): 1-21; Steven Lukes, "Political Ritual and Social Integration," Sociology 9 (May 1975): 289-308;John Bodnar, Remaking America: Public Memory, Commemoration, and Patriotism in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1992). 6. Brad Lyttle, interview by author, tape recording, Chicago, 25-26 Apr. 1997; David Dellinger, "Polaris Action,'' editorial, Liberation 5 Uuly-Aug. 1960): 4; Lyttle, interview. 7. Lyttle, interview. See also Brad Lyttle, "POLARIS as a Symbol for a Nonviolent Action Project," mimeo,Jan. 1960, CNVA, Box 2; Lyttle, interview; Marj Swann, "Some Suggestions for a Long-Range Campaign of Non-Violent Protest and Non-Violent Alternatives Centered in New London-Groton," 28 Apr. 1960, CNVA, Box 34. 8. On the impact of the nuclear threat on late 1950s and early 1960s popular culture, see Margot Henriksen, Dr. Strangelove's America: Society and Culture in the Atomic Age (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 194-95; Allan Winkler, Life Under a Cloud: American Anxiety About the Bomb (1993; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 101, 105. 9. On the rising strength of the disarmament movement in the United States and Great Britain, see Milton Katz, Ban the Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee

218

Notes to Pages 108-110

for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1957-1985 (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1986), 21-44; Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 257-75; Lawrence Wittner, Resisting the Bomb: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement, 1954-1970, vol. 2, The Struggle Against the Bomb (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 246-64; Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement of the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, N. Y: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 51; Robert Kleidman, Organizingfor Peace: Neutrality, the Test Ban, and the Freeze (Syracuse, N. Y: Syracuse University Press, 1993), 96-109.

10. Gene Keyes, "Crisis and the Individual," 15 June 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook Oune 1960), CNVA, Box 23; Holley Cantine to Barbara Deming, 30 Nov. 1961, Barbara Deming Manuscript Collection, Box 38, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College (hereafter cited as Deming). On the quest for authenticity, see Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998) ;James Farrell, The spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (New York: Routledge, 1997); James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987). 11. Irving Kravsow, '"Peacemaker' Unit Sets Up in Norwich," Hartford Courant, 20 Aug. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Feb.-Dec. 1961), CNVA, Box 24; David McReynolds, "Does a Constituency Exist ... ," typescript, Feb. 1961, CNVA, Box 3; "From: Brad Lyttle, To: All CNVA Committee Members, Re: Program for CNVA," 30 Nov. 1961, Papers of the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action Papers, Carton 1C, private collection (hereafter cited as NE/CNVA); Gene Keyes and Ed Guerard, "Crisis and the Individual," Polaris Action leaflet, May 1961, included in Polaris Action Bulletin 22 (6 May 1961), author's collection. 12. Bill Henry, "A Call to Youth Everywhere," Polaris Action leaflet, Jan. 1961 [?],Polaris Action Scrapbook-June 1960, CNVA, Box 23; Doug McAdam, Freedom Summer (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 14; Carl Brauer, John F. Kennedy and the Second Reconstruction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 66; notice in Table of Contents, Liberation 5 Oune 1960): 2. 13. "Polaris Protesters Converge on Area," New London Day, 17 June 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (May-Nov. 1960), CNVA, Box 23; Ed Sanders, Introduction to Tales of Beatnik Glory (1975; New York: Citadel Press, 1990), vii-viii; Barbara Deming, "The Peacemakers," in Revolution and Equilibrium (New York: Grossman, 1971), 25, originally published in Nation (17 Dec. 1960). The apolitical and nihilistic characterization of the Beat Generation is primarily based on the influence of Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassidy during the 1950s. While they certainly reflected a major segment of Beat culture, their influence was by no means hegemonic. See Paul Goodman, Growing Up Absurd: Problems of Youth in the Organized Society (New York: Random House, 1956); Barbara Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men: American Dreams and the Flight from Commitment (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1983), 52-67; Van Gosse, Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America, and the Making of a New Left (New York: Verso, 1993), 183; Wini Breines, Young, White, and Miserable: Growing Up Female in the 1950s (Boston: Beacon Press, 1992), 127-66. For a more idealistic portrayal, see Sanders, Tales of Beatnik Glory. 14. Deming, 'The Peacemakers," 25;JuliusJacobs, "My Reasons for Committing Civil Disobedience," Polaris Action Bulletin 10 (23 Aug. 1960), author's collection; "A Message to Armed Forces Day Visitors," Polaris Action leaflet, n.d. (15 June? 1961), CNVA, Box 33; Gosse, Where the Boys Are, 1. Local and regional papers often commented on the pervasiveness of Beat culture and the bohemian

Notes to Pages 111-113

219

style of dress among the Polaris Action participants. See "Pacifists Picket Sub Base by Both Land and Water," New London Evening Day, 18 June 1960; Noah Gordon, "Pacifists Walk as Foes Ride to Battlefront," Boston Herald, 3 Aug. 1960; Richard Ahles, "Pacifists at Work," Hartford Courant, 25 Sept. 1960; John Wicklein, "100 Pacifists March at Groton to Protest Polaris Submarines," New York Times, 17 Sept. 1961, all in Polaris Action Scrapbooks (May-Nov. 1960, Feb.-Dec. 1961), CNVA, Boxes 23 and 24. See also Ed Sanders, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 13 Aug. 1998. 15. Minutes of CNVA and New England CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 1 Sept. 1961, CNVA, Box 1; A.J. Muste, "Our Editors in the Field," editorial, Liberation 5 (Apr. 1960): 3. 16. Maij Swann, "Some Suggestions for a Long-Range Campaign of NonViolent Protest and Non-Violent Alternatives Centered in New London-Groton," 28 Apr. 1960, CNVA, Box 34; Holley Cantine to Barbara Deming, 30 Nov. 1961, Deming, Box 38; Robert Beck to Ernest Bromley, n.d. (Dec.? 1960), Ernest Bromley Papers, Carton 4, "Corresp, etc-1960(2)", private collection (hereafter cited as Bromley); "Suggestions for Conduct," summer 1961, CNVA, Box 33; "Polaris Action Discipline of Nonviolence," 5 June 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook, June 1960, CNVA, Box 23. For more discussions and debates over the conduct of young people in CNVA projects and their reaction to the imposition of the Executive Committee's "discipline," see Ted Olson, 'The Direction and Tone of Direct Action," typescript, 9 Jan. 1962, CNVA, Box 7; Barbara Deming to Holley Can tine, 15 Dec. 1961, Deming, Box 38; Michael Itkin, "Open Letter to CNVA Executive Committee, etal.," 24June 1961, Bromley, Carton 4, "Corresp, etc-1961(1)." 17. George Willoughby, interview by author, tape recording and transcript, Deptford, NJ., 15 Nov. 1996; Minutes ofCNVA Executive Committee meeting, 25July 1961, Papers of A.J. Muste, Reelll (Swarthmore College Peace Collection; Wilmington, Del.: Scholarly Resources, 1990), microfilm (hereafter cited as Muste); Sanders, interview. See also Lyttle, interview; Art Harvey to Ernest Bromley, 16 June 1961, Bromley, Carton 4, "Corresp, etc-1961 ( 1)." 18. NE/CNVA, "Suggestions for Conduct," n.d. Uune? 1961), CNVA, Box 33; Michael Itkin, "Open Letter to CNVA Executive Committee, et al.," 24 June 1961, Bromley, Carton 4, "Corresp, etc-1961(1)." 19. "Memo," Lawrence Scott to members of the National and Advisory Committees, 2 Feb. 1959, CNVA, Box 3; Brad Lyttle to George Willoughby, 21 Dec. 1959, Muste, Reel 11. On the struggles over the direction of the radical pacifist movement, see Minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 7 Jan. 1960, Muste, Reel 11; Lawrence Scott, "The Principles and Practice of Nonviolent Action," typescript, Feb. 1961, CNVA, Box 3; Lyttle, interview. 20. Brad Lyttle to "All CNVA Committee Members," 30 Nov. 1961, NE/CNVA, Carton 1C, "Nat'l CNVA General"; minutes of CNVA and NE/CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 1 Sept. 1961, CNVA, Box 1; Marj Swann, "Seeds of Hope," Polaris Action Bulletin 26 (30 Aug. 1961), author's collection. On Lyttle's appeal to youthful recruits, see Sanders, interview. 21. Lyttle, interview; "Act for Peace-Polaris Action Walk," leaflet, Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook Uune 1960), CNVA, Box 23; Holley Cantine to Ernest Bromley, 22 Oct. 1960, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence-1960(1);" Bill Henry, "For Release at Will," 29 Nov. 1960, CNVA, Box 3; Deming, "The Peacemakers," 32. Ed Sanders's short stories of early 1960s radical pacifists suggest the trepidation many felt before engaging in civil disobedience. See Ed Sanders, 'The AEC Sit-In" and "Fabrente Rose," in Tales of Beatnik Glory, 224-25,406.

220

Notes to Pages 114-117

22. Gene Keyes, "Crisis and the Individual," 15June 1961, CNVA, Box 23, Polaris Action Scrapbook-June 1960; Gene Keyes, "Polaris Action Staff Decimated As All But One Face Jail-Emergency Volunteers Needed Immediately," Polaris Action Bulletin 22 (6 May 1961), author's collection. See also Sanders, interview. 23. Victor Richman, "Double Trespass at Sub Base Is Done with Impunity," Polaris Action Bulletin 13 (9 Sept. 1960), author's collection; Bill Henry, "Episode in Sub-terfuge," typescript, 15 Nov. 1960, Bromley, Carton 4, "Correspondence, etc-1960 (2);" Minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 22 Oct. 1960, CNVA, Box 1. For images of the two men climbing aboard the Ethan Allen submarine, see Polaris Action, 16mm, 25 min., Hilary Harris Films, New York, 1960. 24. "Polaris Action Discipline of Nonviolence," 30 May 1961, CNVA, Box 13; Gene Keyes and Ed Guerard, "Crisis and the Individual," Polaris Action leaflet, n.d. (May 1961), included in Polaris Action Bulletin 22 (6 May 1961), author's collection; Bill Henry, "A Rationale for Civil Disobedience," Polaris Action Bulletin 10 (23 Aug. 1960), author's collection. 25. "A Message to Armed Forces Day Visitors," Polaris Action leaflet, n.d. (summer 1961), CNVA, Box 33; "Why Break the Law?", Polaris Action Leaflet, 25 Aug. 1960, NE/CNVA, Carton 11, 1960 Polaris Action Notebook; "Statement by Richard Zink," Polaris Action Bulletin 12 (3 Sept. 1960), author's collection; "The Purpose of Polaris Action," Polaris Action leaflet, n.d. (summer 1960), CNVA, Box 23, Polaris Action Scrapbook Qune 1960); Julius Jacobs, "My Reasons for Committing Civil Disobedience," Polaris Action Bulletin 10 (23 Aug. 1960), author's collection. 26. Deming, ''The Peacemakers," 31; Marj Swann, "Some Suggestions for a Long-Range Campaign of Non-Violent Protest and Non-Violent Alternatives Centered in New London-Groton," 28 Apr. 1960, CNVA, Box 34; "Pacifists Get Aboard Sub at Launching," New York Herald Tribune, 23 Nov. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23; Brad Lyttle, "Feminism and Me: Male Thoughts Stimulated by a Women's Movement," manuscript, 19 Dec. 1973, 38, Deming, Box 20; Dave Dellinger, "The Cookie Crumbles," Liberation 5 Qune 1960): 4; Sanders, interview; Gene Keyes and Ed Guerard, "Crisis and the Individual," Polaris Action leaflet, n.d. (May 1961), Polaris Action Bulletin 22 (6 May 1961), author's collection. 27. Phillip Shandler, "Sheriff Puzzled: Pacifists Like Jail," New York Post, 27 Nov. 1960, 2; Victor Richman quoted in Pete Hamill, "No Regrets over A-Sub Protest, Says Pacifist, 20, Mter Release," New York Post, 29 Nov. 1960, both in Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23. 28. Ed Sanders, ''The Van Job," in Tales of Beatnik Glory, 331; "Statement ofVictor Richman, Participant in Polaris Action," Polaris Action Bulletin 12 (3 Sept. 1960), author's collection; Ed Sanders, "Concerning Civil Disobedience at the Commissioning of the Ethan Allen," 8 Aug. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23; Allan Brick, "The Ideal Peace Corps," Liberation 6 (Feb. 1962): 14. On the music that activists listened to before embarking on civil disobedience protests, see Sanders, interview. For prevailing stereotypes of Beat masculinity, see Ehrenreich, The Hearts of Men, 58; Breines, Young, ~ite and Miserable, 146. 29. Lyttle, interview; "From: Brad Lyttle, To: CNVA members," 6 Jan. 1962, CNVA, Box3. 30. Max Lerner, "Anything Goes," New York Post, 7 Feb. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Feb.-Dec. 1961), CNVA, Box 24. On CNVA's interest in Britain's

Notes to Pages 117-119

221

direct action movement, see Minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 12 Feb. 1960, 19 Mar. 1960, CNVA, Box 1; Sanders, interview; Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 187-90. The Direct Action Committee's most daring action was its attempted blockade of incoming Polaris submarines. The "siege" of Holy Loch involved hundreds of protesters and a formidable flotilla of canoes, rowboats and motor launches. According to Lawrence Wittner's study of the international disarmament movements, in the years between 1958 and 1963, public opinion in the United States was considerably more pronuclear than in other nations. See Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 261. 31. On the civil defense protests, see Dee Garrison, "'Our Skirts Gave Them Courage': The Civil Defense Protest Movement in New York City, 1955-1961," in Not june Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994) and Polaris Action Bulletin 22, 6 May 1961, author's collection. On the Student Peace Union, see CNVA Bulletin, 16 Mar. 1962, author's collection. On the appeal of unilateralism in Britain's disarmament campaigns, see Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 185-96. 32. Lawrence Scott to Lawrence Apsey, Edward Behre, et al., 26 Nov. 1962, Deming, Box 29; Max Lerner, "Anything Goes," New Ymk Post, 7 Feb. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Feb.-Dec. 1961), CNVA, Box 24; David McReynolds, "Does a Constituency Exist ... ," typescript, Feb. 1961, CNVA, Box 3. For more on the debates over the direction of the radical pacifist movement, see Ted Olson, "The Direction and Tone of Direct Action," typescript, 9 Jan. 1962, CNVA, Box 7; Cecil Hinshaw, "What Has Been Accomplished Through Nonviolent Action from Nevada to the Present?" typescript, Feb. 1961, CNVA, Box 39. 33. Nathan Glazer quoted in Katz, Ban the Bomb, 46. On the red-baiting of SANE and SANE's response see Kleidman, Organizing for Peace, 109-13; Katz, Ban the Bomb, chap 3; A.J. Muste, "The Crisis in SANE," Liberation 5 Quly-Aug. 1960): 10-13; Barbara Deming, "The Ordeal of SANE," in Revolution and Equilibrium, 38-50, originally published in Nation ( 11 Mar. 1961). 34. David McReynolds, "Does a Constituency Exist ... ," typescript, Feb. 1961, CNVA, Box 3; A.J. Muste, "They Made It to Moscow," Liberation 6 (Nov. 1961): 9. 35. Breines, Young, "White and Miserable, 136-37; "Statement by Margaret Windus," Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Bulletin 10 (23 Aug. 1960), author's collection; "Statement by Laura McKinley," 8 Aug. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960-Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23; Barbara Deming to Federal Judge Robert P. Anderson, 28 May 1961, Deming, Box 38. Polaris Action's publications and statements universally reflected a shared quest for brotherhood. Its Discipline of Nonviolence typically maintained that "we are interested in generating maximum nonviolent power for brotherhood and international peace." See Polaris Action Discipline of Nonviolence, 5 June 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook Qune 1960), CNVA, Box 23. 36. Ed Sanders, "It's Like Living with a Mongol," in Tales of Beatnik Glory, 320-21. For references to the open sexual activity of young women at Polaris Action, see Art Harvey to Ernest Bromley, 16June 1961, Bromley, Carton 4, "Corresp, etc.-1961 (1)"; Sanders, interview. See also Dorothy Kenyon to Barbara Deming, 9 Feb. 1961, Deming, Box 38; Ed Sanders, 'Wild Women of East Tenth," in Tales of Beatnik Glory, 364; and John Wicklein, "100 Pacifists March at Groton to Protest Polaris Submarines," New York Times, 17 Sept. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Feb.-Dec. 1961), CNVA, Box 24. While these women's pacifism may have distinguished them from their other rebellious female contemporaries, their distaste for stereotypical postwar femininity did not. See Ruth

222

Notes to Pages 120-122

Rosen, ''The Female Generation Gap: Daughters of the Fifties and the Origins of Contemporary American Feminism," in U.S. History as Womens History, ed. Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995), 313-34. 37. "Act for Peace-Polaris Action Walk," leaflet, Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (June 1960), CNVA, Box 23; "Mass Protest Demonstration," Polaris Action flier, 7 Sept. 1961, Deming, Box 24 (the words come from the song "H-Bomb's Thunder," which CNVA learned from its overseas cohorts in Britain's Direct Action Campaign); "Polaris Action" information brochure, spring 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (June 1960), CNVA, Box 23; "An Introduction to Nonviolent Action for Peace," CNVA publication, n.d. (1960?), Muste, Reel11. 38. On the Swanns' participation in the Polaris Action campaign see Minutes of Polaris Action Advisory Committee, 23 July 1960, Champney, Box 2; New England CNVA, Minutes of Inaugural Meeting, 25 Sept. 1960, CNVA, Box 33; "Summer Program," Polaris Action Bulletin 23 (25 May 1961); Bob Swann, "Summer Program," Polaris Action Bulletin 24 (19 June 1961), author's collection. 39. Beverly Kanegson, text ofletter to Judge Anderson on the occasion of Bill Henry's sentencing, Polaris Action Bulletin 20 (Mar. 1961), author's collection; female activist quoted in Barbara Deming, "San Francisco to Moscow: Why They Walk," in Revolution and Equili!Jrium, 57, originally published in Nation (15 July 1961). On the shared work responsibilities of men and women in Polaris Action, see Polaris Action, Hilary Harris Films; Polaris Action Bulletin 4, 13 July 1960, author's collection; and Sanders, interview. For specific examples of women's activism, see E. F. Porter, Jr., "Advocates of Nonviolence to Continue Mission Here," Portland (Maine) Press Herald, 1 Aug. 1960, Polaris Action Scrapbook (May-Nov. 1960), CNVA, Box 23; Minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 19 Aug. 1960, Muste, Reel 11; Polaris Action Bulletin 9B, 16 Aug. 1960, author's collection. Beat men, in fact, were infamous for their sexism and, despite their opposition to the status quo, replicated much of the gendered division of labor in their personal lives. See Breines, Young, White and Miserable, 13~7; Sanders, "It's like Living with a Mongol," 320--30. The emphasis on shared male and female participation was not unique to CNVA but was present in other Quaker peace groups, including the Syracuse Peace Council and the American Friends Service Committee. See R. Allen Smith, "Converting America: Three Community Efforts to End the Cold War, 1956-1973" (Ph.D. diss, American University, 1995), 67-69; Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 108-10. On expectations for female behavior in the early 1960s, see Breines, Young, White and Miserable; and Ruth Rosen, ''The Female Generation Gap." 40. "News Release from Polaris Action," 9 Aug. 1961, CNVA, Box 13;]. Binkley, "Hearing for the (2nd) 8 Ethan Allen Defendants," Polaris Action Bulletin 25 (14 Aug. 1961), author's collection; Roger Franklin, "Eight Polaris Actionists Released from Jail," Polaris Action Bulletin 26 (30 Aug. 1961), author's collection; Ed Sanders, 'Jail," Polaris Action Bulletin 26 (30 Aug. 1961), author's collection. 41. Caption under photograph of June 1960 Pioneer Polaris Peace Walk, Polaris Action Bulletin 4 (13 July 1960), author's collection. 42. "Statement by Laura McKinley," 8 Aug. 1961, Polaris Action Scrapbook (Oct. 1960--Jan. 1961), CNVA, Box 23. 43. Polaris Action Bulletin 9B (16 Aug. 1960), author's collection. 44. Examples of the phenomenon of "disappearing women" abound. See Charles Payne, I've Got the Light ofFreedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Missis-

Notes to Pages 122-127

223

sippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 236-83; Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women's Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets, 184-217; Wini Breines, ''Whose New Left?" Journal of American History 75 (Sept. 1988): 528-45. 45. Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike far Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 15. For more on WSP, see Swerdlow, Women Strike far Peace, 15-26; Wittner, Resisting the Bomb, 250-58. According to Swerdlow, students at the University of Wisconsin dubbed WSP "the 'bourgeois mothers' underground," a comment that may have been made partly in derision in light of the generational tensions that persisted between WSP and younger female activists throughout the decade. See Swerdlow, Women Strike far Peace, 119, 13 7. 46. David Dellinger, "Polaris Action," editorial, Liberation 5 Uuly-Aug. 1960): 4. 47. Lyttle, interview. 48.JuliusJacobs, "My Reasons for Committing Civil Disobedience," Polaris Action Bulletin 10 (23 Aug. 1960), author's collection. 49. On the slogans painted on Polaris Action signs, see "Introduction to Polaris Action's Vigil at Groton," n.d. Uune 1960), CNVA, Box 13. On the involvement of white CNVA members with the civil rights movement of the early 1960s, see Barbara Deming, "In the Birmingham Jail," in Revolution and Equilibrium, 147-50; Eric Weinberger, interview by author, tape recording, Brighton, Mass., 22 May 2001. Chapter 5. Reversing the Traditional Pattern 1. The Editors, "Fundamentals of Strategy for the Struggle for Integration," Liberation 5 (May 1960): 6. 2. David Dellinger, "are pacifists willing to be negroes?" Liberation 4 (Sept. 1959): 3. 3. A.]. Muste, ''Nonviolence-A World Movement," Liberation 6 (Feb. 1962): 10. 4. On the rise of civil disobedience protests in the southern civil rights movement, see Taylor Branch, Parting the Waters: America in the King Year.s, 1954-1963 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1988); Aldon Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement: Black Communities Organizing for Change (New York: Free Press, 1994); Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981); Cynthia Griggs Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry: The Liberation of Ruby Doris Smith Robinson (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998). 5. Minutes of the War Resisters League evaluation conference, 16 Dec. 1961, Papers of the War Resisters League, Series B, Box 1, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as WRL); Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 139. On the connections that pacifists made between their work for peace and contemporary struggles for justice, see Charles Chatfield, Far Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914-1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1971) ;John D'Emilio, Lost Prophet: The Lift and Times of Bayard Rustin (New York: Free Press, 2003); Harriet Alonso, Peace as a Women s Issue: A History of the U.S. Movement for World Peace and Women's Rights (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1993); James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism From the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996). On pacifists singing freedom songs, see "News release from Polaris Action," 9 Aug. 1961, Papers of

224

Notes to Pages 128-129

the Committee for Nonviolent Action, Box 13, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as CNVA). On Bayard Rustin's involvement with the civil rights movement of the 1950s and his influence on King, see D'Emilio, Lost Prophet, 223-48; Branch, Parting the Waters, 196--99. Rustin was not the only militant pacifist to head south during this time, although his influence with King, which dated back to the early months of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, was profound. Glenn Smiley of the Fellowship of Reconciliation also visited Montgomery in 1956 to advise King in the strategy and tactics of nonviolent action. Other activists headed south to participate in actions and campaigns, most notably the Freedom Rides and the Birmingham protests, but also less publicized efforts in rural Mississippi and Tennessee. See note in Table of Contents, Liberation 6 (Aug. 1961): 2; Barbara Deming to Michael Freedman, 21 May 1963, Papers of Barbara Deming, Box 39, Schlesinger Library on the History of Women, Radcliffe College (hereafter cited as Deming); Dennis Weeks, "Go South, Young Man!," Liberation 8 (Sept. 1963): 18. 6. Barbara Deming, "Southern Peace Walk: Two Issues or One?" in Revolution and Equililnium (New York: Grossman, 1971), originally published in Liberation Guly-Aug. 1962); Barbara Deming to Neil Haworth and Brad Lyttle, 16 May 1962, CNVA, Box 5; Clarence Glenn quoted in Carleton Mabee, "Sit-Ins and Marches," Nation 195 (6 Oct. 1962). Carl Braden told Deming that "the integration movement in the south will form the basis for the [southern] peace movement." See Carl Braden to Barbara Deming, 29 Apr. 1962, Deming, Box 38. On the Nashville-to-Washington Walk, see ''This Is the Nashville, Tenn. to Washington, D.C. Walk for Peace," flier, Apr. 1962, Papers of the New England Committee for Nonviolent Action Papers, Carton 1C, private collection (hereafter cited as NE/CNVA); Carleton Mabee, "Sit-Ins and Marches"; "An Interview with Three Peace-Walkers," Horizons 57 (12 Oct. 1962); Deming, "Southern Peace Walk," 103-15. 7. Brad Lyttle to A.J. Muste, 7 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; Bob Gore, "The Walk in the South," CNVA Bulletin, 23 Sept. 1963, Bradford Lyttle Papers, Box 7, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Lyttle). On the radical pacifist response to the "Cuba Crisis," see minutes of Executive Committee emergency meeting, 23 Oct. 1962 and 28 Oct. 1962, CNVA, Box 1; minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 7 Nov. 1962, CNVA, Box 1; Ed Sanders, "Raked Sand," in Tales of Beatnik Glory (1975; New York: Citadel Press, 1990), 263-78. 8. "We Invite You to Join the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace," flier, spring 1963, CNVA, Box 18. On the nature of activism on CNVA's peace walks, see Polaris Action Bulletin 9B (16 Aug. 1960), author's collection; Ed Sanders, "Peace Walk," in Tales of Beatnik Glory, 248-49, 261; Ed Sanders, telephone interview by author, tape recording, 13 Aug. 1998; "We Invite You to Join the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace," flier, spring 1963, CNVA, Box 18; Brad Lyttle, interview by author, tape recording, Chicago, 25-26 April 1997. On debates within CNVA on the efficacy of peace walks as a political tactic, see "From: Theodore Olson, To: CNVA Committee Members, Re: Who walks and who cares?" 25 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 3; minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 28 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 1. 9. On Lyttle's early work on the walk, see Brad Lyttle to A. J. Muste, 7 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; Brad Lyttle to Barbara Deming, 2 Feb. 1963, Deming, Box 20; Lyttle, interview. On publicity for the walk, see 'We Invite You to Join the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace," spring 1963, CNVA, Box 18; Liberation 8 (May 1963) .

Notes to Pages 130-132

225

10. For accounts of the northern leg of the walk, see CNVA Bulletin, 21 June 1963; CNVA Bulletin, 23 Sept. 1963; Bradford Lyttle, "QW-G Walk Report," July 1963, CNVA, Box 19; Bradford Lyttle, "Walk Log, excerpts for Nov. CNVA Bulletin," Aug.-Oct. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; 'Walk Log," Sept.-Oct. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; Lyttle, interview. 11. "Signs for the Peace Walk to Cuba," 7 May 1963, CNVA, Box 19; 'We're Walking to Cuba," Q-W-G leaflet, n.d. (Spring/Summer 1963), CNVA, Box 2. For examples of early proposals and appeals, see Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo: Invitation to Walk, n.d. (winter 1963), CNVA, Box 18; Brad Lyttle, "The Canada to Guantanamo March: Policy Proposals and Questions," 9 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; Brad Lyttle to A. J. Muste, George Willoughby, Marj Swann, Neil Haworth, Dave Dellinger, Barbara Deming, Harry, Scott Herrick, 2 Mar. 1963, Deming, Box 20. 12. CNVA Bulletin, 23 Sept. 1963, Lyttle, Box 7. On Ray Robinson's entry into the walk team, see Bob Swann to Executive Committee of CNVA, "Memo: On QWG Walk Team," n.d. (Sept. 1963), Muste, Reel12; CNVA Executive Committee Minutes, 8-9 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 1. On the changing orientation of the walk in the South, see information packet regarding "Proposed visit to Cuba," 25 Apr. 1964, CNVA, Box 18; Q-W-G Walk Log, June-Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; Eric Weinberger, interview by author, tape recording, Brighton, Mass., 22 May 2001. 13. Neil Haworth, Memo To: CNVA National Committee members, 1 Sept. 1963, Muste, Reel 12. On organizers' recognition of the hazards of the South, see Brad Lyttle to A. J. Muste, 7 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; and Q-W-G Walk Schedule Notes, spring 1963, cover page, CNVA, Box 19. On the Washington, D.C. training sessions, see CNVA Bulletin, 23 Sept. 1963, Lyttle, Box 7. On the whittling down of the walk team, see minutes of Executive Committee meeting, 8-9 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 1. The new walk team of 24 members included 18 men and 6 women. While the men made up an interracial group, all of the women were white, reflecting CNVA's ongoing lack of success in recruiting black women for the project. The decision about the cuts was particularly contentious and reflected the desire of certain CNVA Executive Committee members to weed out dangerous libertines once and for all. Many of the disaffected walkers called it a "purge," and many of those who remained felt bitter toward the EC. See John Stephens Jail Log, 30 Jan. 1964, sheets 23-24, Lyttle, Box 6; Brad Lyttle to CNVA, 26 Sept. 1963, Deming, Box 9. Despite their shared last name, Reginald Robinson and Ray Robinson were not related. 14. Q-W-G Walk Log, 25 Sept. 1963, Sept.-Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 20. On the walkers' experiences after entering the South, see CNVA Walk Log, 12 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; Super-8 film footage, Q-WG Walk in Georgia, Reel1, Bradford Lyttle private collection; Q-W-G Walk Log, Sept.-Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; "Griffin, Georgia, November 9, 1963: Nonviolence and Police Brutality," CNVA, Box 19. The first entry noting the packing of jail kits appeared on 30 Sept. 1963 as the group was preparing to enter Danville, Virginia; similar entries are repeated frequently afterward. Contact information for each walker can be found in a stack of notification cards, Albany, GA, Dec. 1963, CNVA, Box 20. 15. "Are you Peace Walkers or Freedom Walkers?" leaflet, Oct. 1963, CNVA, Box 18; 'We Invite You to Join the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace," spring 1963, CNVA, Box 18; minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 7 July 1963, CNVA, Box 1; Brad Lyttle to A.]. Muste, Neil Haworth, Bob and Marj Swann, et al., 20 Apr. 1963, Muste, Reel12. On discussions of the

226

Notes to Pages 132-134

participation of Q-W-G walk team members in civil rights demonstrations, see minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 7 July 1963, CNVA, Box 1. 16. "Report of the Committee on General Directions," 25 Sept. 1962, CNVA, Box 1; Bob Gore, "The Walk in the South," CNVA Bulletin, 23 Sept. 1963, Lyttle, Box 7; unnamed walker quoted in Dave Dellinger, "An Integrated Peace Walk Through the South," 1964, reprinted in David Dellinger, Revolutionary Nonviolence (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), 229. Until the walk entered the South in September 1963, all of CNVA's internal discussions, as well as the project's publicity and literature, stressed the goal of nuclear disarmament above all else, to the total exclusion of the goal of civil rights. For a sample of internal discussions, see Brad Lyttle, "The Canada to Guantanamo March: Policy Proposals and Questions," 9 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; A.]. Muste to Bertha Faust, 27 Feb. 1963, Muste, Reel 11; Brad Lyttle to A.]. Muste, George Willoughby, Marj Swann, Neil Haworth, Dave Dellinger, Barbara Deming, et al., 2 Mar. 1963, Deming, Box 20; CNVA Executive Committee meeting minutes, 9 Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 1. For a typical early leaflet from the Walk, see 'We're Walking to Cuba," n.d. (spring/summer 1963), CNVA, Box 2. See also "Group Discipline-Principles of Conduct-Or What Have You: For QWG Walk for Peace-Section III. The Walk in the South," 1963, CNVA, Box 19. 17. Q-WG Walk Bulletin, 22 Dec. 1963, Lyttle, Box 5. 18. A. ]. Muste, "A Strategy for the Peace Movement," Liberation 7 Oune 1962): 6; Barbara Deming, Notes for Talk-New England CNVA, 28 Sept. 1963, Deming, Box 39; Brad Lyttle to Larry Scott, 1 Jan. 1963, CNVA, Box 8. 19. Ralph DiGia, "Experiences in Albany City Jail," typed manuscript, Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; Edith Snyder, "Review of Albany Project-June to October 1964," 30 Oct. 1964, 1, Deming, Box 6. For reflections on the ambiguous position ofwhite peace activists in the South, see "Statement of Barbara Deming," 5 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Barbara Deming, "Notes After Birmingham," in Revolution and Equilibrium, 153, originally published in Liberation (Summer 1963). On the mistrust that black Albany activists felt toward the peace walkers, see CNVA Walk Log, 16 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; Barbara Deming, Prison Notes (New York: Grossman, 1966), 99-103; "Albany Log," 7 July 1964, Muste, Reel12. 20. Minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 8-9 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 1;Jim Bristol, Report on Visit to Albany, Georgia, 24 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Dennis Weeks to "Individuals and groups interested in a 3-branched walk for peace," 2Jan. 1962, Muste, Reel11; Ted Olson to CNVA Committee members, "Who Walks and Who Cares?" 25 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 3. On the bohemianism of the peace walkers, see Jerry Lehman to "Friends atCNVA," 12 May 1962, CNVA, Box 2; Irwin Hogenauer, "Memorandum: Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace and Team Membership," 29 Aug. 1963, Muste, Reel 12; Ted Olson, "The Direction and Tone of Direct Action," 6 Jan. 1962, CNVA, Box 7; Roy Kepler, Letter to the Editor, Liberation 8 (Oct. 1963): 29. On fears that the beatnik factor would undermine CNVA's efforts, see Ted Olson to CNVA Committee members, 25 Feb. 1963, CNVA, Box 3. 21. On the "politics of respectability" and its implications for black activism, see Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women s Movement in the Black Baptist Church, 1880-1920 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993); Kevin Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996); Paula Giddings, When and Where I Enter: The Impact of Black Women on Race and Sex in America (New York: Bantam Books, 1984), 85-117; Deborah Gray White, Too

Notes to Pages 134-137

227

Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (New York: Norton, 1999). 22. CNVA Executive Committee minutes, 16 Apr. 1962, CNVA, Box 1; Jerry Lehman to "Friends at CNVA," 12 May 1962, CNVA, Box 2; "Group DisciplinePrinciples of Conduct-Or What Have You," n.d. (1963), CNVA, Box 19; Brad Lyttle to CNVA, 26 Sept. 1963, Deming, Box 9. For debates and descriptions of the behavior of the young peace walkers, see minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 7 July 1963, CNVA, Box 1; minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 4 Aug. 1963, CNVA, Box 1; Sanders, interview; Sanders, "Peace Walk"; Art Harvey, "Visiting the Marchers-III," typescript, n.d. (May 1962), Deming, Box 39. 23. "Marching Through Georgia," typescript, 1, n.d. (Dec. 1963?), CNVA, Box 20; Eric Robinson to Mark, 11 Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 35A. For descriptions of the walk team's experiences in Georgia, see Walk Log excerpts compiled for Nov. CNVA Bulletin, entry for 25 Oct. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; "Griffin, Georgia, November 9, 1963: Nonviolence and Police Brutality," 1, CNVA, Box 19 (hereafter cited as Griffin Report); "Boil-down of Walk-Log," Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; "QW-G Walk for Peace and Freedom/Southwest Georgia," Nov. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; "Marching Through Georgia," typescript, n.d. (Dec. 1963?), CNVA, Box 20; Brad Lyttle to "Dear friend," 7 Dec. 1963, Lyttle, Box 5. 24. Carson, In Struggle, 57. The Albany Movement, dubbed "an organization of organizations" by sociologist Aldon Morris, linked local church and ministerial organizations, black women's clubs, the Negro Voters' League, the NAACP, and SNCC under an umbrella of coordinated efforts. See Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 241. 25. Police Chief Pritchett astutely avoided the use of provocative nonviolence, knowing that it would only galvanize the movement and turn public opinion against him. Instead, he arrested people quickly and with little if any overt violence. When protesters quickly filled the city jails, he farmed them out to neighboring counties, so as to avoid charges of prisoner mistreatment. On the events and ramifications of the Albany campaigns of 1961 and 1962, see Carson, In Struggle, 5tHJ5; Morris, The Origins of the Civil Rights Movement, 239-50; and Branch, Parting the Waters, 524-61. 26. A. J. Muste, "Albany-An Inevitable Encounter," CNVA Bulletin, 20 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6. 27. Edie Snyder, quoted in minutes of Evaluation of Albany Experience, 7 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7. For descriptions of what the walkers encountered in Albany, see Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace Bulletin, "Christmas Georgia 1963," 22 Dec. 1963, CNVA, Box 20; and ''The PeaceWalkers' Struggle in Albany, Georgia," 22Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 28. Deming, Prison Notes, 97;James Bristol, AFSC, "Report on Visit to Albany, Georgia," 24 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. For more on the tepid response of Albany Movement activists to the walk, see Brad Lyttle, "A Victory for Truth," CNVA Bulletin, 20 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6; Deming, Prison Notes, 97-98, 114. 29. "The Negro Vote," editorial, Liberation 5 (Oct. 1960): 4. White members of CNVA understood the hazards that southern blacks faced as well as the fact the civil rights activists encountered dangers that far outweighed those embraced by the group's pacifist recruits. See Brad Lyttle to Erica Enzer and Ralph DiGia, 1 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; A.J. Muste to Robert F. Kennedy, telegram, 17 Feb. 1964, Muste, Reel12; David McReynolds, "Urgent and Top Priority," 20 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6. Abundant evidence exists to demonstrate how freely public officials

228

Notes to Pages 138-140

linked the peace walkers to Communist subversion. See, as a small sampling, Barbara Deming, "Albany CityJail-25," 6 Feb. 1964, Deming, Box 70; Brad Lyttle to "all suffering in jail," 2 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; "Albany, Georgia-A Chronology," typescript, 8 Jan. 1964, CNVA, Box 20; "Seven Arrested at Air Base," Q-W-G Walk Bulletin, 5 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; and Brad Lyttle's Albany Jail Log, 30 Dec. 1963, Lyttle, Box 7. 30. James Bristol, AFSC, "Report on Visit to Albany, Georgia," 24 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Brad Lyttle's Albany Jail Log, 6 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7. See also Erica Enzer to "Dear People," n.d. (jail note, Jan.-Feb. 1964), Lyttle, Box 6; Brad Lyttle to Jim Bristol, 1 May 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 31. For feminist studies of the relationship between military duty and citizenship rights, see Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship (New York: Hill and Wang, 1998), 236-302; and Ilene Rose Feinman, Citizenship Rites: Feminist Soldiers and Feminist Antimilitarists (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 87-94. On the historically positive view that Mrican Americans have held about military service, particularly during World War II and immediately after, see John Egerton, Speak Now Against the Day: The Generation Before the Civil Rights Movement in the South (New York: Knopf, 1994). See also Herbert Garfinkel, When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement in the Organizational Politics for the FEPC (Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press, 1959; Paula Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990); and Harvard Sitkoff, "Racial Militancy and Interracial Violence in the Second World War," journal of American History 58 (1971) . 32. Ray Robinson, quoted in "Discussion on Evaluating the Albany, GA experience," 7 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7. On black opposition to the Vietnam War later in the decade, see Carson, In Struggle, 183--89; David Garrow, Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (New York: Morrow, 1986) , 543-74; John Lewis, Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1998), 355-62; and Michael Eric Dyson, I May Not Get There with You: The True Martin Luther King, Jr. (New York: Free Press, 2000) 51-77. On the pacifists' insistence on using conscientious objection to war as a litmus test for one's commitment to nonviolence, see Barbara Deming, ''The Peacemakers," in Revolution and Equilibrium, 36, originally published in Nation (17 Dec 1960); Q-W-G Walk Log, CNVA, Box 27. 33. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 5, 112. See also Timothy Tyson, Radio Free Dixie: Robert F. Williams and the Roots of Black Power (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). 34.Jules Feiffer comic strip, Liberation 8 Qune 1963): 27; quote in Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 158. On claims of black emasculation, see Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 114; Tyson, Radio Free Dixie, 141. 35. Linda McMurry Edwards, To Keep the Waters Troubled: The Life of Ida B. WelM (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998); Patricia Ann Schechter, Ida B. WelMBarnett and American Reform (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001); Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent; Ula \Vette Taylor, The Veiled Garvey: The Life and Times ofAmy jacques Garvey (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002); White, Too Heavy a Load. On women's various roles within the southem freedom struggle, see Mary King, Freedom Song: A Personal Story of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement (New York: Morrow, 1987); Vicki Crawford, Jacqueline Anne Rouse, and Barbara Woods, eds., Women in the Civil Rights Movement: Trailblazers and Torchbearers, 1941-1965 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

Notes to Pages 140-144

229

1993); Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The &ots of the Women s Liberation Movement in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Vintage Books, 1979); Barbara Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003); Charles Payne, I've Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Fleming, Soon We Will Not Cry. 36. Payne, I've Got the Light ofFreedom, 264. 37. "Report of the Committee on General Directions," 25 Sept. 1962, CNVA, Box 1. CNVA's organizational structure included regional and National Committees (NC) headed by an Executive Committee (EC). CNVA-sponsored projects, while nominally autonomous, were subject to decisions and policies made by both the NC and the EC. CNVA letterhead from October 1963 lists three women out of a total of twenty-three members on the EC and seven out of a total of thirty-four members on the NC. See Dave Dellinger, CNVA, to Dear friend, 29 Oct. 1963, CNVA, Box 2; minutes of Executive Committee meetings, 1962-1964, CNVA, Box 1. These minutes show women such as Marj Swann and Erica Enzer as having significant influence and being quite vocal in their opinions. And despite Barbara Deming's more soft-spoken nature, her opinions were highly regarded and her written requests and ideas were often read at meetings that she could not attend. 38. Sanders, interview; Marv Davidov, interview by author, tape recording, 6 May 1997, Minneapolis; Lyttle, interview; Maij Swann to Eric Weinberger, Brad Lyttle, and Walkers, 5 Sept. 1963, CNVA, Box 19; Barbara Deming to James T. McCain, CORE, 9 May 1964, Deming, Box 19. For general descriptions of CNVA's peace walks, see Polaris Action Bulletin 9B, 16 Aug. 1960, author's collection; Sanders, "Peace Walk," 248-49, 261. For evidence of female tenacity and courage on the Q-W-G Walk, see Super-S film footage of women leafleting, Q-WG Walk in Georgia, Reel1, Bradford Lyttle private collection; photograph offemale peace walker, Liberation 8 (Feb. 1964): 7. 39. ''The PeaceWalkers' Struggle in Albany, Georgia," 22 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box5. 40. "Albany's Laws Unconstitutional?" 26Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 41. This attitude of hope starkly contrasts with what Padraig O'Malley describes as "the political economy of helplessness" of the hunger strikes conducted by political prisoners in Northern Ireland in the 1980s. See Padraig O'Malley, Biting at the Grave: The Irish Hunger Strikes and the Politics of Despair (Boston: Beacon Press, 1990), 8. 42. During the first jailing, six out offourteen men refused to cooperate, compared to five out of six women. The second jailing showed a similar split between men's and women's involvement in the noncooperation aspect of their protest. Although descriptions suggest that the women seemed to suffer more from the physical deprivation of the fast, they endured longer than the men. See ''The PeaceWalkers' Struggle in Albany, Georgia," 22Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 43. Deming, Prison Notes, 140-41; Peter Gregonis to \Vonne Klein and Edith Snyder, n.d., second jailing, prison note on toilet paper, Lyttle, Box 7; Ralph DiGia to "dear ladies," 14 Feb. 1964, quoted in Deming, Prison Notes, 141. 44. Edith Snyder, "hello dear men", Monday (jail note), first jailing 1964, Lyttle, Box 6; Deming, Prison Notes, 81. See also Brad Lyttle's Albany Jail Log, Dec. 1963-Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; John Stephens Jail Log, Jan.-Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6; miscellaneous prison correspondence between jailed peace walkers, Dec. 1963-Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6; Deming, Prison Notes, 124-27; Rodd, Goddard,

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Notes to Pages 144-147

Mapp, Swann, Hollis, Kirby, and Weinberger to YVonne Klein, telegram, 11 Jan. 1963, author's collection. It should be noted that women are better suited physiologically than men to withstand prolonged fasts and malnutrition. The prison protesters seemed unaware of this fact. Interestingly, the female inmates also seemed unaware of the parallels between their force-feeding experiences and those endured by imprisoned suffragists during World War I. 45. "Statement of Joe Tuchinsky," Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; John Stephens Jail Log, 12 Feb. 1964, sheets 128-129, Lyttle, Box 6; Tony Brown to the women, n.d., "Note 2-SecondJailing," Lyttle, Box 6. 46. "Statement by Ray Robinson, Jr.," 4 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 6. See also "Threats of Violence-Other Coercive Devices," Q-WG Walk Bulletin, 5 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Ray Robinson jail correspondence, 8 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7. 47. Reference to jail note from Peter Gregonis in Deming, Prison Notes, 140; Brad Lyttle's Albany Jail Log, 12 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; Deming, Prison Notes, 139-40. On improving relationships between the fasting protesters and members of the Albany Movement, see Albany Log, 4Aug. 1964, Muste, Reel12. 48.Jim Bristol to Brad Lyttle, 14 Apr. 1964, Muste, Reel37. See also recap of discussion with Slater King, leader of the Albany Movement, in QW-G Walk Log, 20Jan. 1964, CNVA, Box 27. 49. "Albany, Ga., Frees 27 in Peace March," AP wire, unidentified newspaper clipping, 25 Feb. 1964, Muste, Reel 37; "Schedule for Mon., Feb. 24," handwritten note, 24 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; ''Walkers Freed from Albany City Jail," Q-WG Walk Bulletin, Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. For more on the release of the peace walkers and the "Freedom Day" protest, see A. J. Muste, "Albany-An Inevitable Encounter," CNVA Bulletin, 20 Mar. 1964, 4, author's collection; James Bristol, "Report on Visit to Albany, Georgia," 24 Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 50. Memo from Kit Havice and Edith Snyder regarding Albany Project, 4 Aug. 1964, Muste, Reel11. On the Albany community's apparent lack of memory of the CNVA peace walkers, see author's conversation with Rutha Harris, Blacksburg, Va., Mar. 2003. Miss Harris, one of the original SNCC Freedom Singers from Albany, Georgia, asserted that the Albany Civil Rights History Museum had no information about the Q-W-G Walk, nor could she remember it even having occurred. On the long-lasting impact of the walk on its participants, see Deming, Prison Notes; Lyttle, interview; Davidov, interview. On the growing understanding of racism among white activists, see Ralph DiGia, "Experiences in Albany City Jail," Feb. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; A.]. Muste, "Evaluation of Albany Experience," 7 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; Carl Arnold, "Evaluation of Albany Experience," 7 Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7; Brad Lyttle to A. J. Muste, Barbara Deming, David Dellinger, Neil Haworth, Marv Davidov, 7 July 1964, Deming, Box 20; Albany Student Movement Statement, 27 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 51. Marv Davidov to Barbara Deming, 25 Mar. 1964, Deming, Box 10; Edith Snyder, Albany Log, 1 July 1964, Muste, Reel 12. 52. Edie Snyder to Barbara Deming, "saturday," n.d. (summer 1964), Deming, Box 6. On Robinson's complaints, see Deming, Prison Notes, 110; Ray Robinson to Barbara Deming, Sept. 1964, Deming, Box 27. Snyder traveled back to Albany with Kit Havice, another member of the walk team. They were later joined by former team member Mary Suzuki. For more on the Albany Project, see correspondence between A. ]. Muste and Barbara Deming, 1964, Deming, Box 24; A.]. Muste to Mary Suzuki, 9 Mar. 1965, CNVA, Box 20; C.B. King to A.]. Muste, 8 Apr. 1965, CNVA, Box 10. SNCC started their unsuccessful experiment in

Notes to Pages 147-152

231

white community organizing in the summer of 1964 to gain support for the civil rights movement among southern whites. See Carson, In Struggle, 118-19. 53. Brad Lyttle, Report regarding entrance of Q-W-G Walk into Miami, 2 June 1964, Muste, Reel 37; "Report of Entrance of Q-W-G Walk for Peace into Miami," 10June 1964, CNVA, Box 19. 54. Brad Lyttle to A.J. Muste, Dave Dellinger, Chris??, Barbara Deming, et al., "Should the Walk be continued or ended?" 30 Oct. 1964, Lyttle, Box 7. It should be noted that women had visibly led a smaller CNVA project in Miami just a year before. See Jerry Lehmann, "CVNA Cuba Project," reprint from Catholic Worker, Apr. 1963, CNVA, Box 20. The crew members of The spirit ofFreedom were Peter Gregonis and Marv Davidov, both of whom had participated in the Albany action; Brad Lyttle, the leader of the Q-W-G Walk; Bob Clapp, who joined the walk in Florida; and Erica Enzer, member of the CNVA-EC and also a participant in the Albany action. See ''The Spirit of Freedom," Oct. 1964, CNVA, Box 2. The federal court case to determine the fate of the seized boat was aptly labeled The United States v. The Spirit of Freedom. See ''The Spirit of Freedom," Oct. 1964, CNVA, Box 2; "Release the Spirit of Freedom," 27 Oct. 1964, CNVA, Box 18. 55. Brad Lyttle to Barbara Deming, 26 Apr. 1965, Deming, Box 20. 56. Acting on principle often trumped the concept of acting strategically and left the radical pacifist movement open to critique, even from within its own ranks. See, for example, Ted Olson to the Editors, Liberation 8 (Sept. 1963): 30. 57. Kit Havice to Art, 16 Feb. 1964, reprinted in Q-WG Walk Bulletin, Mar. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. On direct assistance from Slater King and the Albany Movement, see Brad Lyttle to A. J. Muste, Barbara Deming, Dave Dellinger, Neil Haworth, Marv Davidov, 7 July 1964, Deming, Box 20; Recorder's Court transcript, Albany, Ga., 8 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Brad Lyttle, "A Victory for Truth," typed manuscript, n.d. (1964), 3, Lyttle, Box 6; Albany Movement handbill for mass meeting, 30 Dec. 1963, Deming, Box 39; Slater King quoted in CNVA ress release, 10 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5; Statement by the Albany Movement, 27 Jan. 1964, Lyttle, Box 5. 58. Brad Lyttle to CNVA members, memo, 17 Sept. 1963, Muste, Reel 12; ''Vietnam, Poverty, and Easter," CNVA Bulletin, 20 Mar. 1964, author's collection. On Keyes' draft card protest, see "Flaming Draft Card Lights Peace Candle," Peacemaker 17 (4Jan. 1964): 1. On Liberation magazine's coverage of Vietnam, see Robert S. Browne, "The Civil War in Vietnam," Liberation 9 (Sept. 1964): 7-13; A. J. Muste, ''Vietnam: The Political Reality," Liberation 9 (Oct. 1964): 20-28; Sidney Lens, "Report from Vietnam," Liberation 9 (Nov. 1964): 20-23. On Peacemaker's coverage of draft resistance, see Peacemaker 17 (4 Jan.-12 Dec. 1964), but especially 17.6-1/2 (4 May 1964), "Special Issue on: Saying 'No' to Conscription."

Chapter 6. No Bars to Manhood 1. Barry Bassin, Russ Goddard, and Gene Keyes, "the pact ... " leaflet, 18 May 1964, Committee for Nonviolent Action Papers, Box 2, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as CNVA). For more details about Goddard's prosecution and Bassin's and Keyes' courtroom protest, see "Russ Goddard Gets Five Years; Keyes & Bassin Six Mos. Mter Sit-In," Peacemaker 17 (11 July 1964): 1; "Pacifist Here Gets Five-Year Sentence," St. Louis Globe-Democrat, 7 July 1964, CNVA

232

Notes to Pages 152-154

reprint, July 1964, CNVA, Box 2. According to information from the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, at the time, very few post-World War II draft resisters had been given the maximum five-year sentence, and most men had received sentences of two years or less. See "Draft Resister Sentenced to Five Years," CNVA reprint, July 1964, CNVA, Box 2. On Gene Keyes' 1963 draft card burning, see "Flaming Draft Card Lights Peace Candle," Peacemaker 17 (4 Jan. 1964): 1. 2. Memorandum, To: CNVA & Associates, From: Gene Keyes, Russ Goddard, Barry Bassin, Re: Draft as Issue for Radical Direct Action Project, 10 Apr. 1964, CNVA, Box 3. On the rise of the draft resistance movement, see Michael Ferber and Staughton Lynd, The Resistance (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971); Michael Foley, Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War Era (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003). 3. Dan Berrigan, "In Peaceable Conflict," Catholic Worker 31 (Mar. 1965): 1. For descriptions of the men's courthouse protest, see "2 Begin Sit-In Mter Sentencing of Draft Evader, Are Ejected," St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 6 July 1964, CNVA reprint, n.d. Uuly 1964), CNVA, Box 2; Joanne Collier, "Draft Objector Gets Five-Year Sentence," Liberation 9 (Aug. 1964): 7-8; photo of Joan Goddard outside of the Whitehall Induction Center, CNVA Bulletin 5 (27 Aug. 1965): 3. 4. Front page headline, CNVA Bulletin 5 (13 Dec. 1965). On the rise of the anti-Vietnam War protest movement in 1965, see George C. Herring, America's Longest War: The Unites States and Vietnam, 1950-1975, 2nd ed. (New York: Knopf, 1986), 127-43; Terry Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties: Protest in America from Greensboro to Wounded Knee (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 124; Lawrence Wittner, Rebels Against War: The American Peace Movement, 1933-1983 (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984), 282; Nancy Zaroulis and Gerald Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? American Protest Against the War in Vietnam, 1963-1975 (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1984), 33-56; Todd Gitlin, The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage (New York: Bantam Books, 1987), 177-92;James Tracy, Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 133-35; Kenneth J. Heineman, Campus Wars: The Peace Movement at American State Universities in the Vietnam Era (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 129-81; Charles DeBenedetti and Charles Chatfield, An American Ordeal: The Antiwar Movement in the Vietnam Era (Syracuse, N .Y: Syracuse University Press, 1990), 103-38. 5. Tom Cornell quoted in Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? 58; Tom Cornell, "Life and Death on the Streets of New York," Catholic Worker32 (Nov. 1965): 1. For more on Kearn's protest and response, see Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 21; Tom Cornell, "Not the Smallest Grain oflncense," in We Won't Go: Personal Accounts of War Objectors, ed. Alice Lynd (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 35-37. The intense reaction that draft card burnings generated in the mid-1960s is probably analogous to the level of hype and hysteria that flag burning still generates today. Zaroulis and Sullivan argue that the burnings of draft cards ''were shocking at the time." See Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? 62. 6. "Draft Protester Is Seized by F.B.I. for Burning Card," New Yom Times, 19 Oct. 1965, 4; Catherine Swann, "Burning a Draft Card," Catholic Worker32 (Nov. 1969): 1; Tom Cornell, "Life and Death on the Streets of New York," Catholic Worker32 (Nov. 1969): 1. The New Yom Times, the New York Post, and the New York Herald Tribune all prominently covered David Miller's draft-card burning and his arrest in New Hampshire three days later. In addition to the articles cited above, see Sue Reinert and Howard Sigmand, "Anti-Viet Rallies Across U.S.; Draft Card Burned in Protest," New York Herald Tribune, 16 Oct. 1965, clipping in Catholic

Notes to Pages 154-157

233

Peace Fellowship Papers, Box 21/04, Archives of the University of Notre Dame (hereafter cited as CCPF); Pete Hamill, "The Man Who Burned the Draft Card," New York Post, 19 Oct. 1965, CNVA reprint, CNVA, Box 3; Edith Evans Asbury, "David Miller and the Catholic Workers: A Study in Pacifism," New York Times, 24 Oct. 1965, clipping in CCPF, Box 37/07; Zaroulis and Sullivan, "Who Spoke Up? 56. See also "Pacifist Peace Action," CNVA Bulletin 5 ( 13 Dec. 1965) : 4. 7. "Draft Protester Is Seized by F.B.I. for Burning Card;" Jim Forest, "Dan Berrigan: The Poet and Prophet as Priest," typescript, 15, n.d. (ca. 1970), CCPF, Box 36/07; Tom Cornell, "Life and Death on the Streets of New York," Catholic Worker32 (Nov. 1965): 1. 8.Jack Cook, "Miller and Kelly Jailed," Catholic Worker34 (July-Aug. 1968): 3; David Miller quoted in "Draft Protester Is Seized by F.B.I. for Burning Card," New York Times, 19 Oct. 1965, 4; Daniel Berrigan quoted in Nicholas Horrock, "Dissent Democratic, Protest Priest Says," Baltimore Evening Sun, 27 Oct. 1965, CCPF, Box 36/01. On the link draft resisters made between protest and good citizenship, see Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 13-14, 24-32, 40-47. 9. Ken Knudson to Door County Local Board 16,Jan. 1964, reprinted in Peacemaker16 (4 May 1964): 2; A.J. Muste and Neil Haworth, CNVA, to Dear Friends, 23 Oct. 1965, CNVA, Box 2; Douglas Robinson, "5 Draft Card Burners Doused at Rally," New York Times, 7 Nov. 1965, 1. According to research done for the Ford Foundation by Lawrence Baskir and William Strauss, winding up in jail as a draft resister required a high level of either intentionality or ignorance. The vast majority of draft-age men easily found ways to "beat the draft" and avoid both military service and federal imprisonment. In this light, the public draft resistance of radical pacifist men was a deliberate effort to court risk and refuse the easy way out, a personal act of conscience that carried a very high price. See Lawrence Baskir and William Strauss, Chance and Circumstance: The Draft, the War, and the Vietnam Generation (New York: Random House, 1978). 10. "Call to Public Vigil and Witness," n.d. (Nov. 1965), CNVA, Box 2; A. J. Muste quoted in minutes of CNVA Executive Committee meeting, 6-7 Nov. 1965, CNVA, Box 1. For descriptions of the New York City protest, see "4 Planning to Burn Draft Cards Here Tomorrow," New York Times, 5 Nov. 1965, CCPF, Box 19/01; "Memo-Concerning a Proposed Draft Card Burning," n.d. (Oct. 1965), CCPF, Box 19; Zaroulis and Sullivan, "Who Spoke Up? 59; Douglas Robinson, "5 Draft Card Burners Doused at Rally;" For a description of the Boston protest, see Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 20-21. 11. Terry Sullivan quoted in "Destroying Draft Cards," MN2 (15 Apr. 1966): 5; "Statement of Support for Those Burning Their Draft Cards," 6 Nov. 1965, CNVA, Box 3; "Burn Draft Cards-Not People," leaflet, Oct. 1965, CNVA, Box 2 (my emphasis); cover photograph, Scott Bennett, &dical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963 (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 2003). This shift of roles seems to have marked areversion to what Jean Bethke Elshtain identifies as a traditional image of women as supporting and nurturing "Beautiful Souls." See Jean Bethke Elshtain, Women and War (New York: Basic Books, 1987). 12. Staughton Lynd quoted in DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 128; Melvin Small, Covering Dissent: The Media and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1994), 47; "Victims and Executioners," CNVA/WRL flier, n.d. (Dec. 1965), CNVA, Box 2. On the many facets of CNVA's organizing efforts during this time, see A.]. Muste, "IntensifY Action," CNVA Bulletin 5 (13 Dec. 1965): 2; "Vietnam-The Continuing Campaign,"

234

Notes to Pages 157-159

CNVA Bulletin 5 (25 Jan. 1965): 2; A.J. Muste and Neil Haworth, CNVA, to Dear Friend, 23 Oct. 1965, CNVA, Box 2. On the intense publicity generated by draft resistance efforts, see Small, Covering Dissent, 47-51; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 128-30; Anderson, The Movement and the Sixties, 137-51, 164-68, 178-80. 13. Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 47; "Draft Resistance," program proposal, n.d. (1966-67), Daniel and Philip Berrigan Collection, Box 248, Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library (hereafter cited as Berrigan) . See also Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 108. 14. Wittner, Rebels Against War, 283-85; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 125-26, 171, 175-76, 141-202; Heineman, Campus Wars, 129-81; Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 178-86. 15. Tom Cornell, "Farewell," CatholicPeaceFellowshipBulletin,June 1968, PCPF, Box 1/10. On the Central Park draft card protest, see Ferber and Lynd, TheResistance, 68-77; Zaroulis and Sullivan, Who Spoke Up? 112-14. For more general information regarding the nature and spread of the draft resistance campaigns, see Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 78-115; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 183-86, 195-96, 203-37; David Harris, Dreams Die Hard: Three Men's journeys Through the Sixties (1982; San Francisco: Mercury House, 1993), 176-224; Foley, Confronting the War Machine. 16. William Van Deburg, New Day in Babylon: The Black Power Movement and American Culture, 1965-1975 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 281, 52. The Black Panthers, with their black berets and rifles, in many ways epitomized the masculinization of the black freedom struggle of the late 1960s. White radicals, who faced a significantly smaller threat of police and political repression, were more playful but no less masculine in their evolving activism against the war. The antics of the Diggers and the Yippies certainly exemplified this trend, but so did the actions of the more serious activists in SDS and the student antiwar movement. On the masculine nature of the black power movement, see also Charles Payne, I've Got the Light ofFreedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 363-90; and Clayborne Carson, In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), 215-86. On the changing nature of radicalism in the student protests, see James Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets: From Port Huron to the Siege of Chicago (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1987), 240-59; Gitlin, The Sixties, 188-92, 226-29; Wini Breines, Community and Organization in the New Left, 1962-1968: The Great Refusal (1982; New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 83-90; and Doug Rossinow's study of student radicalism in Austin, Texas, ''The New Left in the Counterculture: Hypotheses and Evidence," Radical History Review 67 (Winter 1997): 79-120. For an interesting memoir of East Coast radical activism, see Raymond Mungo, Famous Long Ago: My Life and Hard Times with Liberation News Service (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970). On the masculinity of military culture, see Elshtain, Women and War; Christian Appy, Working-Class War: American Combat Soldiers and Vietnam (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); and Cynthia Enloe, Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives (Boston: South End Press, 1983). 17. Harris, Dreams Die Hard, 85, 8; Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 108; Rev. George R. Bach, Jr., quoted in Susan Campbell, "Doing Time for the Cause," Hartford Courant, 22 May 2001, D 1. On the rising culture of machismo in the draft resistance movement, see also Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 83, 127, 183.

Notes to Pages 159-161

235

18. Tom Cornell, "Biographical Data," typescript, n.d. (spring 1966), CCPF, Box 19/01; Tom Cornell, ''Why I am Burning My Draft Card," typescript, 26 Oct. 1965, CCPF, Box 9/07; Richard Schweld, "Non-Cooperators Confront Draft," Catholic Worker 33 (Jan. 1967): 2; Marion Brown, 'Wives of Imprisoned Objectors," in Lynd, We Won't Go, 54; Jayne Switzer, 'Wives oflmprisoned Objectors," in Lynd, We Won't Go, 55. See also Judy Galt, 'Wives oflmprisoned Resisters," in Lynd, We Won't Go, 60-65. 19. "Handcuffs Herself to Her Husband," Peacemaker 20 (3 June 1967): 6; john-i-thin Stephens Taken," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 79 (19 June 1967): 1-2, author's collection; Candy Stephens, "My husband is in jail ... ," typescript statement, n.d. (Aug. 1967), Barbara Deming Manuscript Collection, Box 31, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe College (hereafter cited as Deming). 20. "Eastern Conference on Noncooperation with Conscription," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 72 (20 Sept. 1966), author's collection; Alice Echols, "'Woman Power' and Women's Liberation: Exploring the Relationship Between the Antiwar Movement and the Women's Liberation Movement," in Give Peace a Chance: Exploring the Vietnam Antiwar Movement, ed. Melvin Small and William D. Hoover (Syracuse, N.Y: Syracuse University Press, 1992), 173; Ferber and Lynd, The Resistance, 159; Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 183; "Resistance," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 88 (18 Apr. 1968): 6, author's collection. On women's behind-the-scenes work in the draft resistance movement, see Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 180-91. On the objectification of women in the draft resistance efforts of the New Left, see Sara Evans, Personal Politics: The Roots of Women :S Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left (New York: Random House, 1979), 156-211. For discussions of popular perceptions of women as passive, and sometimes sexualized, supporters of manly heroes and soldiers, see Elshtain, Women and War; Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacot, eds., Gendering War Talk (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1993), especially the following essays: Miriam Cooke and Angela Woollacot, "Introduction," Miriam Cooke, 'WO-man, Retelling the War Myth," and Sara Ruddick, "Towards a Feminist Peace Politics"; Lois Ann Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin, eds., The Women and War Reader (New York: New York University Press, 1998), especially the following essays: Cynthia Enloe, "All the Men Are in the Militias, All the Women Are Victims: The Politics of Masculinity and Femininity in Nationalist Wars," Jennifer Turpin, "Many Faces: Women Confronting War," and Malathi de Alwis, "Moral Mothers and Stalwart Sons: Reading Binaries in Time of War." 21. For male-dominated accounts of 1960s activism, see Gitlin, The Sixties; Tracy, Direct Action; and Miller, Democracy Is in the Streets. Sociologist Wini Breines presents a compelling critique of this perspective in her review article, ''Whose New Left?" Journal ofAmerican History 75, 2 (Sept. 1988): 528-45. Curiously, feminist accounts of women's activism during this era similarly overlook young women's antiwar activism in favor of discussing the emergence of the women's liberation movement. See Evans, Personal Politics, and Alice Echols, Daring to Be Bad: Radical Feminism in America, 1967-1975 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989). Amy Swerdlow's study of Women Strike for Peace highlights older women's antiwar efforts during the 1960s but gives little indication of the activism engaged in by female members of the counterculture generation. See Amy Swerdlow, Women Strike for Peace: Traditional Motherhood and Radical Politics in the 1960s (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 125-42. For specific articles that highlight women's participation in radical pacifist direct action demonstrations see, as examples, Direct Action for a Nonviolent World

236

Notes to Pages 161-163

61 (4 Sept. 1965), 62 (4 Oct. 1965), 63 (17 Dec. 1965), 72 (20 Sept. 1966), 78 (20 May 1967), 79 (19 June 1967), author's collection; "Oakland Army Terminal Peace Action Escalates," and "Sikorsky Sit-Down," CNVA Bulletin 5 (28 May 1965): 1-2; Peacemaker 18 (2Jan. 1965)-20 (30 Dec. 1967), but especially Peter Kiger, ''Twenty-nine Arrested in Sit-Down at Armed Forces Day Parade in N.Y," 18 (29 May 1965); "She Joined the Parade," 18 (24July 1965); ''War Protests Fill Aug. 6," 18 (14 Aug. 1965); "Girl and Boy Burn One Draft Card," 19 (12 Mar. 1966); "Suzanne Williams Released From Jail," 19 (8 Oct. 1966); "Report on the 'Pentagon Pacifists,'" 20 (3June 1967); "Women Arrested at Induction Center," 20 (16 Sept. 1967); "Noncooperators in D.C. Jails," 20 (18 Nov. 1967). Regarding Suzi Williams's militant activism, see Xenia (Suzi) Williams, interview by author, tape recording, Barre, Vt., 20 May 2001; Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 57 (12 Apr. 1965), 68 (15 Apr. 1966), 72 (20 Sept. 1966), 74 (14Jan. 1967), 78 (20 May 1967), 79 (19 June 1967), 90 Qune-July 1968), author's collection. Women played critical roles in other local pacifist efforts as well. See, for example, Allen Smith's discussion of women's involvement in the Syracuse Peace Council, in "Converting America: Three Community Efforts to End the Cold War, 1956-1973" (Ph.D. diss., American University, 1995), 12, 57-91, 176-211,308-11. 22. Citti Alsup, "Sisters Say Yes,'' Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 90 (June-July 1968): 1, author's collection; Mary Suzuki Lyttle, "I Burn This Draft Card Because ... " in "Special Notice, Special Notice, Special Notice," 6 June 1968, mimeographed handout, CCPF, Box 20/06; Citti Alsup, "Sisters Say Yes. On women's work as draft counselors, see Marion Brown, "A Man's Life," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 122 (12 Jan. 1972): 2, author's collection; Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 72-75. On Nan Stone's involvement in New England Resistance, see Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 82, 108, 120, 180-91. For more on the women's Supreme Court action, see "Special Notice, Special Notice, Special Notice," 6 June 1968, CCPF, Box 20/06. For another example of women burning draft cards, see Dave Reed, "Non-Cooperation with the War Machine," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 67 (18 Mar. 1966), author's collection. 23. On the rise of second-wave feminism, see Evans, Personal Politics, 156-211; Ruth Rosen, The World Split open: How the Modern Women s Movement Changed America (New York: Viking, 2000); Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women (New York: Ballantine, 2002); Echols, Daring to Be Bad.

24. There is no evidence of any debate over radical pacifism's decision to focus on draft resistance as the means to protest the war in any of the movement's newsletters or archival holdings. This absence is in stark contrast to the long position papers that organizers wrote to justify CNVA's projects in the 1950s and early 1960s. 25. A.]. Muste, "Of Holy Disobedience," 1952, reprinted in The Essays of A. J Muste, ed. Nat Hentoff (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), 355, 358; Daniel Berrigan quoted in Rasa Gustaitis, "The Arrest by the FBI for Burning Draft Card," New York Herald Tribune, 19 Oct. 1965, clipping in Berrigan, Box 234. On the spiritual aspects of Gandhian nonviolence, Quaker resistance, and American radical pacifism, see David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (New York: Pantheon Books, 1993), 9-98;Jo Ann Ooiman Robinson, Abraham Went Out: A Biography of A. J Muste (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1981); Wittner, Rebels Against War, 240-75. See also Richard Gregg, The Power of

Notes to Pages 163-166

237

Nonviolence (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1934); and Mohandas Gandhi, Non-Violent Resistance (1951; New York: Schocken Books, 1961). 26. Patricia McNeal, "Harder Than War: Roman-Catholic Peacemaking in Twentieth-Century America," in Proclaim Peace: Christian Pacifism from Unexpected QJ.tarters, ed. Theron Schlabach and RichardT. Hughes (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1997) 231-45. 27. "Priests Join Disavowal of U.S. War in Vietnam," National Catholic Reporter, 17 Feb. 1965, Catholic Peace Fellowship reprint, CCPF, Box 35/01; Phil Berrigan, quoted in "Dissent Democratic, Protest Priest Says," Baltimore Evening Sun, 27 Oct. 1965, C30; Pete Hamill, "The Man Who Burned the Card," New York Post, 19 Oct. 1965, CNVA reprint, CNVA, Box 3. On the attention that the press gave to Miller's Catholic upbringing, see Rasa Gustaitis, ''The Arrest by the FBI for Burning Draft Card; Edith Evans Asbury, "David Miller and the Catholic Workers: A Study in Pacifism," New York Times, 24 Oct. 1965; "Dissent Democratic, Protest Priest Says." 28. James Farrell, The spirit of the Sixties: The Making of Postwar Radicalism (New York: Routledge, 1997), 23. For more information on the Catholic Worker and its dual focus on works of mercy and acts of protest, see Mel Piehl, Breaking Bread: The Catholic Worker and the Origins of Catholic Radicalism in America (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1982); Nancy Roberts, Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker (Albany, N.Y: State University of New York Press, 1984); Farrell, The spirit of the Sixties, 21-39; Tom Cornell, Robert Ellsberg, and Jim Forest, eds., A Penny a Copy: Readings from the Catholic Worker (Maryknoll, N.Y: Orbis Books, 1995); Rosemary Riegle Troester, ed., Voices from the Catholic Worker (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993); Patricia McNeal, Harder Than War: Catholic Peacemaking in Twentieth-Century America (New Brunswick, NJ.: Rutgers University Press, 1992), 29-48, 71-104; Dee Garrison, "'Our Skirts Gave Them Courage': The Civil Defense Protest Movement in New York City, 1955-1961," in Not june Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960, ed. Joanne Meyerowitz (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 201-26; Wittner, Rebels Against War, 225-27, 265. 29. McNeal, Harder Than War, 105-33. 30. James Carroll, An American Requiem (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 74, 111. See also McNeal, Harder Than War, 131-32. 31. Dan Berrigan, CPF, to Dear Friend, n.d. Quly 1965), Berrigan, Box 90;Jim Forest, draft of initial CPF brochure, 26 Feb. 1964, Berrigan, Box 125. On the founding and early leadership of the CPF, see Jim Forest, ''The Catholic Peace Fellowship: Reflection on the Future," spring 1967, typescript, 2, CCPF, Box 9/02; CPF letterhead, Mar. 1965, Deming, Box 15. For accounts of early CPF priorities and activities, see Jim Forest, draft of initial CPF brochure, 26 Feb. 1964, Berrigan, Box 125; "A Memorandum (Not for circulation)," Oct. 1964, CCPF, Box 9; CPF press release, n.d. (1965?), CCPF, Box 9. Regarding close ties and financial dependence between FOR and CPF, see Jim Forest, CPF, to Phil Berrigan, 12 Oct. 1965, Berrigan, Box 125. For the first few years of CPF's existence, both Berrigan brothers funneled much of their honoraria and speaking money there in order to keep the fledgling organization afloat. For general background on the founding ofCPF, see McNeal, Harder Than War, 140-41; Penelope Moon, "'Peace on Earth-Peace in Vietnam': The Catholic Peace Fellowship and Antiwar Witness, 1964-1976, "Journal of Social History 36, 4 (2003): 1033-57. 32.Jim Forest quoted in "All Isn't Peaceful These Days for Catholic Peace Fellowship," unidentified newspaper clipping, n.d. (1966?), CCPF, Box 9/09; Jim

238

Notes to Pages 166-167

Forest, "The Catholic Peace Fellowship: Reflection on the Future," spring 1967, typescript, 7, CCPF, Box 9/02.Jim Forest had worked in CNVA's New York City office and had helped organize the 1962 Nashville-to-Washington Walk. Tom Cornell's relationship with CNVA began with his involvement in the Polaris Action campaign and continued over the years. By 1965, Cornell was a committee member of both New England CNVA and the CNVA National Committee. Regarding Jim Forest's radical pacifist history, see Jim Forest to Phil Berrigan, n.d. (ca. Dec. 1966), Berrigan, Box 125; "CPF Staff," biographical sketch ofJim Forest, n.d., CCPF, Box 9/12. For information about Tom Cornell and CNVA, see Polaris Action Bulletin 9B (16 Aug. 1960), author's collection; "Resume: Tom Cornell," n.d. (1965), CCPF, Box 9/08; "CPF Staff," biographical sketch of Tom Cornell, n.d., CCPF, Box 9/08; minutes ofCNVA Executive Committee meeting, 25 Feb. 1965, CNVA, Box 1. During the mid-1960s, many radical pacifist and antiwar groups located their headquarters at 5 Beekman Street, in lower Manhattan. See Jim Forest, "Dan Berrigan: The Poet and Prophet as Priest," n.d. (ca. 1970), typescript, 10, CCPF, Box 36/07; "The Talk of the Town," New Yorker, 24 Dec. 1966. 33. Tom Cornell, "A Smallest Pinch of Incense," in Lynd, We Won't Go, 39; Editorial, Commonweal (19 Nov. 1965): 203. For full details on the follow-up demonstration to Miller's draft card burning, see Tom Cornell, "Why I am Burning My Draft Card," 26 Oct. 1965, CCPF, Box 9/07; Douglas Robinson, "4 Planning to Bum Draft Cards Here Tomorrow," New York Times, 5 Nov. 1965, CCPF, Box 19/01; "Memo-Concerning a Proposed Draft Card Burning," n.d. (Oct. 1965), CCPF, Box 19/01; "Call to Public Vigil and Witness," n.d. (Nov. 1965), CNVA, Box 2; Tom Cornell to Thomas Merton, 8 Mar. 1967, CCPF, Box 21/03. 34. Brad Lyttle, "Responses to Drifts Toward Violence in the Anti-War Movement," 28 Nov. 1967, Deming, Box 20. For more on the growing frustration within the antiwar movement and the radical pacifist response, see Maurice Isserman, If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old Left and the Birth of the New Left (1987; Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 127-69; Tracy, Direct Action, 124-53; DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 161-202; Brad Lyttle to Barbara Deming, 16 Nov. 1967, Deming, Box 20. The 1967 volume of Peacemaker also showed a growing concern with the broader antiwar movement's "trend against nonviolence." 35. DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 81-202; Isserman and Kazin, America Divided, 127-220; Doug Rossinow, The Politics of Authenticity: Liberalism, Christianity, and the New Left in America (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 159-246;John McMillian and Paul Buhle, eds., The New Left Revisited (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003). 36. Gordon Christianson, "Coalition-Arrgh!" lVIN3 (26 May 1967): 11; Marj Swann, "Mter October 21 ... ,"Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 83 (1 Nov. 1967): 2, author's collection. Dave Dellinger popularized the phrase "revolutionary nonviolence" and elaborated on it at length, especially in his collection of essays published as Revolutionary Nonviolence (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970). New England CNVA's 1967 annual meeting similarly focused on these questions: "Can Nonviolence Be Revolutionary? Can Revolutions Be Nonviolent?" See Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 82 (15 Oct. 1967) author's collection. See also Barbara Deming, Revolution and Equilibrium (New York: Grossman, 1971); DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American Ordea~ 168-202; Gitlin, The Sixties, 261-82; Heineman, Campus Wars, 129-81.

Notes to Pages 168-170

239

37. South Vietnamese leaders had recently outlawed peace demonstrations and had both prescribed and carried out summary executions of those who dared defy the edict. See Brad Lyttle, "Peace Action in Saigon," CNVA report, Apr. 1966, 2, CNVA, Box 21. On the fear of death, see Barbara Deming, "Vietnam Notes," 27 Apr. 1966, Deming, Box 70. On overviews and evaluations of the action, see also Bill Wingell, "U.S. Pacifists in Saigon," Peace News (London), 6 May 1966, Papers of AJ. Muste, microform, Reel24, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Muste); Liberation 10 (May:June 1966); Gordon Christianson, "The Southeast Asia Project: An Impressionist Report," Apr./May 1966, CNVA, Box 21; A.J. Muste quoted in Pete Hamill, "Muste, Unbowed, Back From Saigon," New York Post, 25 Apr. 1966. For documentation of the breadth and variety of radical pacifist nonviolent protests, see Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 65-84 (20 Jan. 1966-1 Dec. 1967), author's collection; and Peacemaker 19-20 (8Jan. 1966-30 Dec. 1967). 38. Neil Haworth, "Memorandum-Not for Publication," to CNVA National and Executive Committee members, 11 Sept. 1967, CNVA, Box 3. See also Maris Cakars, "Pacifists Unite," WIN 4 (15 Feb. 1968); Neil H. Katz, Radical Pacifism and the Contemporary American Peace Movement: The Committee for Nonviolent Action, 1957-1967," (Ph.D. diss., University of Maryland, 1974), 220; Bennett, Radical Pacifism, 235-36. 39. Murray Polner and Jim O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous: The Radical Lives and Times of Daniel and Philip Berrigan (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 170; Phil Berrigan to A. J. Muste, n.d. (1967), Muste, Reel 27. For more on Berrigan's political activities, see Polner and O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 114-22, 145-48. 40. Philip Berrigan quoted in Richard Byrne, Jr., "Revolution 9," City Paper (Baltimore) 17, 29 Jan. 1993, 14; Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, 20 Apr. 1968, Berrigan, Box 102. 41. Tom Cornell, "Nonviolent Napalm in Catonsville," Catholic Worker34 (June 1968): 1-2, 8. See also Polner and O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 195-98; McNeal, Harder Than War, 173; Charles Meconis, With Clumsy Grace: The American Catholic Left, 1961-1975 (New York: Seabury Press, 1979), 24-25. The members of the Catonsville Nine were Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, David Darst, John Hogan, Tom Lewis, Marjorie Melville, Thomas Melville, George Mische, and Mary Moylan. 42. Daniel Berrigan, "a meditation," reprinted in The Catonsville Nine: an act of conscience, pamphlet, summer 1968, Bill Davidon Papers, Box 18, Swarthmore College Peace Collection (hereafter cited as Davidon). 43. Tom Cornell, "Nonviolent Napalm in Catonsville," Catholic Worker34 (June 1968): 2; Dan Berrigan, text of recorded underground speech, 31 May 1970, Davidon, Box 18; Allan Brick, "Report on the Catonsville Nine: What Is Nonviolence Today?" Nov. 1968, typescript, 5, Davidon, Box 18. 44. Paul Velde, "Guerrilla Christianity," Commonweal (13 Dec. 1968): 371. See also ''The Bloody Draft," WIN3 (15 Nov. 1967): 13; Marj Swann, "Catonsville and Milwaukee," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 92 (15 Oct. 1968): 1, author's collection; "The Maryknollers," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 97 (26 Apr. 1969): 2, author's collection; "underground and action," WIN 6. (1 June 1970): 14; "Dan Berrigan is Captured," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 110 (12 Sept. 1970): 4, author's collection;Jim Peck, ''The Emperor's Clothes," WIN5 (1 Sept. 1969): 8; Bradford Lyttle, "Ends-Means," WIN5 (1 Sept. 1969): 6; Dorothy Day, ''The Berrigans and Property Rights," Fellowship (May 1971): 25; Eileen Egan,

240

Notes to Pages 171-173

"Gandhi's Challenge," Catholic Worker 35 (Sept. 1969): 7; Catherine Allsup, "On Searching and Destroying," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 91 (Aug. 1968): 2, author's collection. 45. Barbara Deming to Ann Davidon, 24 Jan. 1971, Deming, Box 10; Maij Swann, "Catonsville and Milwaukee," Direct Action for a Nonviolent World 92 (15 Oct. 1968): 2, author's collection; Williams, interview; Bradford Lyttle, "EndsMeans," WIN 5 (1 Sept. 1969): 6. My numbers are based on data collected in Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 152-67. Guesstimates of how many raids actually occurred vary widely depending on the source. Some suggest that 200 or more such actions took place. Meconis's figures, however, are the most well documented and, in my opinion, the most reliable. The clearest evidence of the impact of the Catonsville raid on the larger antiwar and pacifist movements is Barbara Deming's 1971 collection of essays, Revolution and Equilibrium, which traces the evolution of pacifist direct action from the early 1960s through the draft board raids at the end of the decade. For historical analysis of this point, see Zaroulis and Sullivan, lWw Spoke Up? 229-37; and DeBenedetti and Chatfield, An American OrdeaL See also Williams, interview. In June 1968, Suzi Williams and Frank Femia poured black paint over draft records in a Boston Selective Service office. She ultimately served over a year in federal prison for this act. Mter her release, she and DeCourcey Squire, another young woman from New England CNVA, participated in the Flower City Conspiracy raid in Rochester, N.Y 46. Statement of the Catonsville Nine, reprinted in The Catonsville Nine: an act of conscience, pamphlet, summer 1968, Davidon, Box 18. 47. Byrne, "Revolution 9," 12. According to Charles Meconis, approximately one-third of those ultimately involved in draft board raid actions were women. See Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, Appendix A, Core Membership of the American Catholic Left, 153-66. 48. Tom Lewis quote in Richard Byrne, "Revolution 9," 14; Daniel Berrigan, "a meditation"; "Bum Draft Cards-Not People," leaflet, 28 Oct. 1965, CNVA, Box 2. On the involvement of Cunnane and Harney in earlier draft resistance demonstrations, see Foley, Confronting the War Machine, 94, 101-2. 49. David Radin, "Priests vs. Army," Scimitar (Ithaca, N.Y) 1 (28 Sept. 1968), Berrigan, Box 235. 50. Philip Berrigan, Prison journals of a Priest Revolutionary (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970) 9; Anne Walsh, interview by author, tape recording, Brewster, Mass., 9 Aug. 2001; Brendan Walsh to Daniel Berrigan, n.d. (1968), Berrigan, Box 144; Paul Velde, "Guerrilla Christianity," Commonwea~ 13 Dec. 1968, 373; Brick, "Report on the Catonsville Nine," 2; Dorothy Day, "On Pilgrimage," Catholic Worker34 (Oct. 1968): 3. 51. Philip Berrigan to David Whiting, 29 May 1968, Berrigan, Box 102; Philip Berrigan quoted in Byrne, "Revolution 9," 20. Other scholars have made similar observations about the self-proclaimed apostolic features of the Catholic resistance to the Vietnam War. See Moon, "'Peace on Earth-Peace in Vietnam.' " It should be noted that priests, who acted as intermediaries between lay Catholics and God, were considered the most highly regarded members of the American Catholic community. Such reverence only heightened the moral authority of activists like Daniel and Philip Berrigan, whose acts of political witness reverberated loudly among American Catholics. See Carroll, An American Requiem, 172-74, 200, 223-31. On women's secondary status within the Catholic Church, see Mary Daly, The Church and the Second Sex (New York: Harper and Row, 1968); Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women's Liberation (Boston: Beacon

Notes to Pages 173-176

241

Press, 1973); Elizabeth Clark and Herbert Richardson, Women and Religion: A Feminist Sourcebook of Christian Thought (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), 259-71. 52. Polner and O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 198. Philip was sentenced for the Baltimore action one week after the Catonsville raid. 53. Daniel Berrigan to Dear Friends, n.d. (Oct. 1968), Berrigan, Box 91; Daniel Berrigan, No Bars to Manhood (Garden City, N.Y: Doubleday, 1970). On the role of women in the Catholic Church, see George Tavard, Women in Christian Tradition (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1973); and Rosemary Radford Ruether, ed., Religion and Sexism: Images of Women in the jewish and Christian Traditions (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1974). 54. Walsh, interview; Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, 13 Sept. 1968; Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, 21 Sept. 1968, Berrigan, Box 102. On Mary Moylan's role within the Catonsville Nine, see Tom Cornell, "Nonviolent Napalm in Catonsville," Catholic Worker 34 (June 1968): 2; Brick, "Report on the Catonsville Nine," 2; Byrne, "Revolution 9," 12-21. 55. Judge Northrup quoted in Byrne, "Revolution 9," 14; Williams, interview. On coverage of Suzi Williams' arrests, see Direct Action for a Nonvioknt World 57 (12 Apr. 1965), 68 (15 Apr. 1966), 72 (20 Sept. 1966), 74 (14Jan. 1967), 78 (20 May 1967), 79 (19 June 1967), 90 (June-July 1968), author's collection; *1N 4 (July 1968) 7 and 6 (Oct. 1970) 3; "Flower City Conspiracy-Who and Why,"]ournal (Rochester, N.Y), n.d. (Sept. 1970), Berrigan, Box 237. On the "economies of visibility," see Robyn Wiegman, American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1995). On expectations of Catholic femininity see Daly, The Church and the Second Sex; Loraine Getz, 'Women Struggle for an American Catholic Identity," in Women and Religion in America, vol. 3, 1900-1968, ed. Rosemary Radford Ruether and Rosemary Skinner Keller (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1968), 173-222;James Kenneally, "Eve, Mary, and the Historians: American Catholicism and Women," in Women in American Religion, ed. Janet Wilson James (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1980) 190-206; and Ellen Leonard, "Separation of the Sexes: The Development of Gender Roles in Modern Catholicism," in Equal at the Creation: Sexism, Society, and Christian Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998), 114-28. 56. Joanne Sheehan, interview by author, tape recording, Norwich, Conn., 17 May 2001. 57. McNeal, Harder Than War, 171; Linda Forest to Daniel Berrigan, 21 Nov. 1968, Berrigan, Box 127. Forest was only one of many women involved in the defense/support work that the Catholic Left and draft board raid actions required. A list from the Harrisburg Defense Committee, for example, lists 13 women out of a total of 27 national and regional coordinators. See "Regional Coordinators," typed list, n.d. (1970-72?), Berrigan, Box B-88. Of the 232 names that Meconis lists as participants in the Vietnam-era draft board raids, 73 were women and 159 were men. See Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, Appendix A, Core Membership of the American Catholic Left, 153-66. 58. Joe Pilati, "Five Women vs. The Draft Board," Village Voice 14 (10 July 1969): 1. The members of Women Against Daddy Warbucks were: Jill Boskey, 22, an employee of the New York Resistance; Kathy Czarnik, 19; Maggie Geddes, 23, an active member of CPF and other radical pacifist organizations; Valentine Green, 54, mother of three draft resisters and an employee of the FOR, and Pat Kennedy, 19. Authorities mistakenly arrested two other women with the group at the Rockefeller Center surfacing: Linda Forest, wife of Jim Forest, of CPF and Milwaukee-Fourteen fame; and Barbara Webster, who worked as Dave

242

Notes to Pages 176-180

Dellinger's secretary. See "Statement Left in Manhattan Draft Board," mimeo flier, 2 July 1969, Berrigan, Box 236; Will Lissner, "6 War Protesters Seized on 5th Avenue," New York Times, 4July 1969, 1. For other accounts of the action, see "An Antiwar Group Vandalizes Records at Draft Center Here," New York Times, 3 July 1969, 1; ''Women's Day at the Draft Board," WIN 5 (Aug. 1969); Maggie Geddes, "Draft File Rip Off," WIN 5 (1 Sept. 1969); "Six Women Seized After New York Draft Board Raid," unidentified Reuters newsclipping, 9 July 1969, Berrigan, Box 236; Pilati, "Five Women vs. The Draft Board," 1, 24. For a detailed description of planning for the Women Against Daddy Warbucks action, see Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 34-35, 53-55. The women's sense of humor is evident in the title they gave their group, inspired by the cartoon character Daddy Warbucks, the millionaire stepfather of Little Orphan Annie. 59. "The New York Five," mimeographed leaflet, 3 July 1969, Berrigan, Box 236. 60. Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 55-56; Walsh, interview. On the political isolation of the Women Against Daddy Warbucks participants, see Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, n.d. (July 1969), Berrigan, Box 102; Maggie Geddes to Barbara Deming, 7 Aug. 1969, Deming, Box 41; Linda Forest to Daniel Berrigan, 12 Dec. 1969, Berrigan, Box 127; Maggie Geddes to Barbara Deming, 4Jan. 1970, Deming, Box 16; Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 54-56. 61. Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 53; Walsh, interview. On Philip Berrigan's and the broader hostility toward feminism within the Catholic Left, see Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, n.d. (July 1969), Berrigan, Box 102; Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, 18 Mar. 1972, Berrigan, Box 104;Jim Forest to Philip Berrigan, 16 May 1975, CCPF, Box 36/04; Daniel Berrigan to Philip Berrigan, 8 Sept. 1971, Berrigan, Box 93; Daniel Berrigan to Honey Knopp, 19 Sept. 1971?, Berrigan, Box 93; Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 53-56. 62. Polner and O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 219; Rosemary Radford Ruether, "To Mary Moylan, Another Casualty of War," National Catholic Reporter (10 Nov. 1995): 14; "A Letter From Mary Moylan to Her Sisters," broadside flier, n.d. (Apr.-May 1970), Deming, Box 23. 63. Ruether, ''To Mary Moylan, Another Casualty of War," 14; "A Letter From Mary Moylan to Her Sisters." The sentences of the Catonsville Nine ranged from two years to six. Moylan had received a two-year sentence, Philip Berrigan six. 64. Polner and O'Grady, Disarmed and Dangerous, 218-32; Meconis, With Clumsy Grace, 67-70, 77; McNeal, Harder Than War, 198-202. 65. George Mische quoted in Byrne, "Revolution 9," 18; Ruether, ''To Mary Moylan, Another Casualty of War," 14; Paul Mayer to Daniel and Philip Berrigan, 30 Oct. 1971, Berrigan, Box 136. For anecdotal accounts of meetings with Moylan while underground, see Sheehan, interview; Jane Alpert, Growing Up Underground (1981; New York: Citadel Press, 1990), 330-40. 66. Elshtain, Women and War, inside book flap. See also Cooke and Woollacot, "Introduction," Gendering War Talk, xi-xii; Lorentzen and Turpin, The Women and War Reader; and Elise Boulding, "Feminist Inventions in the Art of Peacemaking," Peace and Change 20, 4 (Oct. 1995): 408-38. 67. George Mische quoted in Byrne, "Revolution 9," 18. On expectations of feminine behavior during wartime, see Jennifer Turpin, "Many Faces: Women Confronting War," in Lorentzen and Turpin, The Women and War Reader, 15; Elshtain, Women and War, 3--13. 68. Maggie Geddes to Barbara Deming, 24 Apr. 1970, Deming, Box 41; George McVey to Daniel Berrigan, 11 Oct. 1973, Berrigan, Box 135; Daniel

Notes to Pages 180-181

243

Berrigan to Honey Knopp, 19 Sept. 1971, Berrigan, Box 93; Philip Berrigan to Daniel Berrigan, 18 Mar. 1972, Berrigan, Box 104; Barbara Deming, untitled typed notes, 11 July 1975, Deming, Box 21. See also Anne Walsh to Daniel Berrigan, 24 Jan. 1975, Berrigan, Box 144; Jim Forest to Philip Berrigan, 16 May 1975, CCPF, Box 36/04. 69. Photograph of Mary Moylan in Daniel Berrigan, The Trial ofthe Catonsville Nine (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 62; "A Letter From Mary Moylan to Her Sisters," broadside flier, n.d. (Apr.-May 1970), Deming, Box 23. 70. Daniel Berrigan paraphrased in Jim Forest, ''The Catholic Peace Fellowship: Reflection on the Future," spring 1967, typescript, 10, CCPF, Box 9/02.

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Index

Page numbers in italic indicate illustrations AFSC. See American Friends Service Committee Albany, Georgia: Albany Movement, 135-37, 145; Albany Movement and Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 146, 149; Albany Project, 147, 149; police tactics, 136, 227n 25; Turner Air Force Base, 138 Albany (Georgia) City Jail: hunger strike, 143-45; imprisonment of protestors, 142, 229n 42; masculine identity, 144 alternative community, 49, 55, 57-58. See also Gano Peacemakers Community American culture: influence on peace movement, 182-83, 185, 186; masculine identity, 60, 85; postwar, 56--57; unAmericanism, 48; women's role, 28-29, 92 American Friends Service Committee (AFSC): Albany Movement, 145; Speak Truth to Power, 76 American Left: 1930s, 10; 1940s, 43; 1950s, 75; 1960s, 153; Catholic women in 1960s, 176; men in 1960s, 158; women in 1960s, 122, 152, 175 Anticommunism, 55-57; McCarthyism, 47, 75; radical pacifism and, 48, 65 antiwar movement. See peace movement atomic age: Albert Camus, 61-62, 206n 44; public response, 60 Atomic Energy Commission: Golden Rule voyage, 86; protest (1962), 100; response to protest, 88-89

Bassin, Barry, 151-52 Beat Generation and political protest, 100; Omaha Action, 96; Polaris Action, 110-12, 116, 119, 122; Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 133-34; sexism, 222n 39 Berrigan, Daniel, 152, 163; Catonsville Nine, 169-70, 173; CPF, 165, 237n 31; draft board raids, 173; draft card burnings, 154-55, 166; fugitive status, 177-78; male chauvinism, 177; Omaha Action, 95; priestly authority, 240n 51; prophetic role, 172 Berrigan, Philip, 163, 168; Baltimore Four, 168-69; Catonsville Nine, 169, 173-74; CPF, 165, 237n 31; draft board raids, 173; draft card burning, 164, 169; fugitive status, 178; male chauvinism, 177; masculine identity, 172; new protest tactics, 168; priestly authority, 240n 51 Bigelow, Albert: Golden Rule voyage, 83-86, 99; Polaris Action, criticism of, 112; withdrawal from NVAANW, 90 Bishop, Corbett, 18 black power, 158, 234n 16 Bromley, Ernest, 45, 72, 209n 65; Atomic Energy Commission protest (1958), 88-89; CCHR, 67; community-based resistance, 58, 67, 72; familial protest, 44, 66, 98; FOR, 37;Journey ofReconciliation,35, 97 Bromley, Marion C., 72, 209n 65; CCHR, 67; civil rights protests, 44-45, 69;

246

Index

Bromley, Marion C., (continued) community-based resistance, 58, 67, 70, 72; familial protest, 44, 66, 70; FOR, 45; Peacemakers, 49; women and draft resistance, 54-55 brotherhood: direct action, 115; Discipline of Nonviolence, 221n 35; FOR, 191n 11; gender inequality, 43; Polaris Action, 123; principles, 13; universal, 19-20; war for total, 30; young women, 119-20, 122 "Bum Draft Cards-Not People," 172 Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), 82 Camus, Albert, 61-62, 206n 44 Catholic pacifism, 162-65; Catonsville Nine, 169-71, 177; draft board raids, 173; loss of members, 185; masculine identity, 172; priestly authority, 240n 51; women in secondary roles, 175, 241n 57; women's liberation, 176, 180 Catholic Peace Fellowship (CPF), 165-66, 237n 31 Catholic Worker movement, 163; Fast for Peace, 62 Catholicism: Just War, 163; peace and justice, 165 Catonsville Nine, 169-71, 240n 45; fugitive status, 177-78 Christianson, Gordon, 167 Cincinnati Committee on Human Relations (CCHR), 67-70 civil defense protest, 117 civil rights movement: Freedom Rides, 126; Freedom Summer, 149; masculine identity, 139, 144, 158, 234n 16; Montgomery Bus Boycott 78, 82; peacetime draft resistance, 50; respectability, 134; sit-in movement, 126; Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), 127, 140; World War II, 9, 19, 21; women activists and femininity, 21, 24-25, 140 civil rights movement, relationship with peace movement, 125-27, 224n 5; Albany Movement, 135-37; CORE and FOR, 36-37; influence of dominant culture, 182-83; Liberation magazine, 125, 137; Montgomery Bus Boycott, 78, 21ln 14; Polaris Action, 127; value of military,

138. See also Quebec-Washington-GuantanamoWalk civil rights protests, pacifist-led: Bromley, Marion, 44; Coney Island Amusement Park, 44, 68-70; Danbury Federal Prison, 8, 20-21; FOR, 19; Howard University, 24-25; interstate travel, 32. See also Journey of Reconciliation; Nashville-Washington Walk; QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk Civilian Public Service (CPS), 14-15; upkeep of camps, 192n.15; women supporters, 27 Cold War: American family, 75; beginning, 46;conformity,55;effects, 72, 115;gender roles, 56; nuclear deterrence, 60; political dissent, 53 Committee for Non-Violent Action (CNVA), 90, 118, 214n 41; absence of support, 117; changing role of women, 141, 153, 229n 37; civil rights movement, 140; Cuban Missile Crisis, 128; "Declaration of Conscience Against the War in Vietnam," 163; end, 168; interracial peace walks, 126; loss of members, 185; nonviolent revolution, 167; old versus young, Ill; peace walks, 129; Polaris Action, 107, ll5, ll9-20; Saigon protest, 167-68; strategy disagreement, ll2; young women, ll9; youth participation, 108-10. See also Nashville-Washington Walk; Omaha Action; Quebec-WashingtonGuantanamo Walk; Polaris Action Committee for Non-Violent Revolution (CNVR), 30-31, 43, 197n 53 Committee to Stop H-Bomb Tests. See SANE Communist Party and radical pacifism, 46-48,65 community-based resistance, 94; CNVR, 30; Muste, 55; Peacemakers, 53-33, 57-59; Gano Peacemakers, 66-68, 70-71 Coney Island Amusement Park. See civil rights protests, pacifist-led Congress of Industrial Organizations, 10-11 Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), 22, 23; Gandhian nonviolent protest, 22; gender equality, 23-24, 194n 35; inter-

Index state travel, 32; loss of members, 185; NAACP, 37-39; relationship with FOR, 36--37; Swann, Marjorie, 26 conscientious objectors (CO): CPS, 14; effeminacy charges, 16; imprisonment, 9, 15, 18;Journey of Reconciliation, 33; masculine identity, 17-18; prison reform, 20; total resisters, 15; women's support of, 27-29 Cornell, Tom: draft card burning, 103, 154-55,158-59,166, 172;CP~ 165 Cuban Missile Crisis, 125, 128 Day, Dorothy: Catholic Peace Fellowship, 165; Catholic Worker movement, 164; draft board raids, 170, 172; draft card burning, 164, 166 Dellinger, David: civil rights and pacifism, 125-26; CNVR, 30, 43; communitybased resistance, 58; family responsibilities, 76; Liberation magazine, 76; nonviolent social change, 12; peace walks, 129; Peacemakers, 49, 66; Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 145; relationship to Communist Party, 47; resistance to conscription, World War II, 14, 17-18; student activism, 12, 13, 16; Vietnam War protests, 166 Deming, Barbara: draft board raids, 170, 240n 45; civil rights and pacifism, 127; CNVA, authority in, 141; peace walks, 129; Polaris Action, llO, ll9; South Vietnam protest, 167-68; Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 137, 141-45 DiGia, Ralph: draft resistance, World War II, 15-16, 18, 192n 15; communitybased resistance, 58; Fast for Peace, 64; Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 143 Direct Action Committee (Great Britain), 83, 117, 22ln 30 draft board raids: all-women, 175, 176, 241 n 58; masculine identity, 171-73; women activists, 171, 240n 45 draft card burning, 155, 232n 5, 233n 9; "Burn Draft Cards-Not People," 172; demonstrations, 158, 166; Kearns, Chris, 153; Keyes, Gene, 149; mass destruction, 169, 171-72; Miller, David, 154; New York, 103; women in Washington, 104, 161 draft resistance, peacetime, 49-55

247

draft resistance, World War II, 51, 54; civil rights, 50; community-based, 54; imprisonment, 8; list ofrefusers, 53; masculine identity, 52 draft resistance, Vietnam, 151-52, 156, 162, 236n 24; draft avoidance, 233n 9; focal point of peace movement, 183; imprisonment, 155, 233n 9; masculine identity, 152, 159, 162; nonviolent direct action, 157; sexism, 160; Spring Mobilization, 158; women in primary role, 160-61, 174; women in secondary role, 152, 180 Eichel, Esther, 28 family life: masculine identity, 85; maternal role (1950s), 88, 91,92 family role in protest, 95-96; Atomic Energy Commission (1958), 88-89; Bromley, 44, 98; Coney Island Amusement Park, 44, 66, 70; Golden Rule voyage, 84; Marshall Island H-bomb testing, 87; Nevada Test Site, 73-74, 79; Swann, Marjorie, 91; Willoughby, Lillian, 80 Farmer,James, 19, 23, 36 Fast for Peace, 62-66; goals, 206n 44; participants, 64; Quaker-style meeting, 63 Federal Civil Defense Administration, 75 federal government, persecution of Communists, 46 Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR): Bromley, Marion, 45; brotherhood, 191n 11; civil rights, 19, 37, 78; Fast for Peace, 62; Houser, 31; Muste, 11; secondary role of women, 194n 35 femininity: Beat cultural rebellion, 101, 119; brotherhood, 13, 120-22; Catholic, 174-75; civil rights activism, 140; courageous, 40, 141-44; dominant cultural norms, 40, 56-57, 71, 75-76; feminism, 104, 161-62, 175, 177-78; maternalism, 81, 88-89, 91-95, 100, 105-6; and pacifist egalitarianism, 26--28; self-sacrificing, 29, 41, 93 Finch, Roy, H-bomb response, 61 Forest,Jim, 165 Forest, Linda, 175, 241n 57 Gale, David, 83, 84 Gandhi, Mohandas, American protest of imprisonment, 28, 97

248

Index

Gandhian nonviolence: antinuclear organizations, 77; direct action, 21; imprisonment, 18; influence on radical pacifist movement, 9, 13-14, 20, 22, 163; masculine identity, 52, 85; personal humility and love, 63; role of weakness, 62, 64; satyagraha, 77; selfsacrifice, 93, 114-15; War Without Violence, 22 Gano Peacemakers Community, 67--68, 70, 72; equality experiment, 185 Gara,Larry, 18,20,54-55 gender egalitarianism Beat cultural rebellion, 100, 110, ll9-20, 141; civil rights activism, 23-26, 140, 146; communitybased resistance, 45-46, 53-55, 57-59, 62--64,66,70-71, ll9-20, 173-74; familialism, 79-81, 90-91, 120; peace walks, 101, 102, 141; student radicalism, 1930s, ll, 26; wartime resistance, 25-28, 45, 97,167-68 Goddard,Joan, 152, 159 Goddard, Russ, 151-52 Golden Rule voyage, 82; all-male crew, 83, 994; crew statements, 84; government opposition, 86-87; masculine identity, 85; related protests, 88, 214n 37; role of family, 89; wives of crew, 87-88 Great Britain, antinuclear protest, 82-83, ll7, 22ln 30 Henry, Bill, 106, 109, ll3-14, 121 Houser, George: CORE, 22, 36; Fast for Peace, 64;Journey of Reconciliation, 31-40, 97, 199n 71 Howard University, civil rights protest, 24-25 hunger strikes: Albany City Jail, 143-45; Bromley, Marion, 44 hydrogen bomb (H-bomb). See nuclear deterrence; nuclear testing imprisonment: Albany City Jail, 142-44; code of honor, 18; COs, 9, 15, 20; draft card burning, 149; draft resisters (1943), 8; draft resisters, Vietnam, 155, 233n 9; effect on wives, 159; masculine identity, 16, 21; noncooperation, 229n 42; young men (1960s), ll6

Journey of Reconciliation, 97; all-female proposal, 39-41; civil rights versus peace movement, 36; nonviolent direct action, 34, 42; organizers, 31-32; public response, 35; route, 33; support oflocal women, 42; women excluded, 39, 41 Just War doctrine, Catholicism, 163 Kanegson, Beverly, 121 Kearns, Chris, 153 Keyes, Gene, 149, 151-52 King, Rev. Martin Luther, Jr., 78, 127, 135, 138, 157; assassination, 170 Kricker, Candy, 159-60 Liberation magazine, 76; civil rights move-

ment, 125, 137; Vietnam War, 150 loyalty oath, 46 Lyttle, Brad: draft board raids, 170-71; CNVA coordinator, 112; hunger strike, 145; Omaha Action, 90; Polaris Action, 107, lll-17, 123; Quebec-WashingtonGuantanamo Walk, 128-29, 138-39, 145, 148-49; The Spirit ofFreedom, 102, 148; Vietnam War protests, 149, 166-68; youth participation, ll3 Marshall Island H-bomb testing, 82; Phoenix (yacht), 87. See also Golden Rule voyage Martin, Don, 101, 106, ll4, 121, 123 masculinity: Beat cultural rebellion, 101, 115-16;brotherhood, 12-13,30; Catholic, 172-73, 174; civil rights activism, 23, 139-40; contrast to femininity, 21, 42, 140, 144-45; dominant cultural norms, 56-57, 60, 75; fatherhood, 79, 83-86, 94; heroic, 15-18, 52-53, 60, 84-85, 99, ll3-15, 172; public militancy, 16-18, 30-31, 51-52, 64, 10~ 10~ 103, 106, 154-56, 158-59, 180; respectability, 155; working-class, 16-17, ll4 Mckinley, Laura, 121 Mead Air Force Base, 90, 92 men activists, primary role: CNVR, 30-31; CORE, 22; disarmament activism, 77-78, 83-87, 90, 99, 101, 102, 106-7, 121, 123, 147-49; draft board raids, 168-69, 171-74, 176-78; draft resistance, late 1940s, 50-55; draft resistance,

Index Vietnam War, 103, 151-59, 166; draft resistance, World War II, 14-15;Journey of Reconciliation, 32-35, 39-42, 97; prison protests, World War II, 8, 18-21 men activists, secondary role: civil rights activism, 69-70, 98, 142-45; disarmament activism, 94, 121; draft board raids, 175-76 Merton, Thomas, 164-65 Meyer, Karl, 90 Miller, David, 154-55, 163-64 Montgomery Bus Boycott, 78, 82, 211n 14 Morrow,Juanita. SeeNelson,Juanita M. Moylan, Mary, 171, 174, 177; equality with men, 180; fade into obscurity, 178-79 Murray, Pauli, 25 Muste, A.J, 11, 163; civil rights, 37; CNVA Jack of success, 118; Communist Party, 47; community-based resistance, 55; death, 168; draft card burning, 103, 156, 166; FOR, 11-13; Golden Rule voyage, 86;Journey of Reconciliation, 32; Liberation magazine, 76; Omaha Action, 90; peace walks, 129; Peacemakers, 71; peacetime draft resistance, 50; Polaris Action, 112, 123; Quebec-WashingtonGuantanamo Walk, 136, 145; Randolph, A. Philip, 50; universal brotherhood, 19-20; and Vietnam, 167-68 Mutually Assured Destruction, 59 Naeve, Lowell, 19, 20 Nashville-Washington Walk, 126-28 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), 19; and CORE, 37-38;Journey of Reconciliation, 38; national versus local chapters, 199n 71 National Committee on Conscientious Objectors (NCCO): and Swann, Marjorie, 27,29 Nelson, Juanita M., 72, 209n 65; CCHR, 67-68; community-based resistance, 58, 67, 70; community involvement, 67; Coney Island Amusement Park protests, 44, 68-69; Fast for Peace, 64; Howard University protests, 24-25;Journey of Reconciliation, 39, 41 Nelson, Wally, 72, 209n 65; CCHR, 67-68; collective household, 58; Communist Party, 47; community-based resistance,

249

67, 72, 70; Coney Island Amusement Park protests, 44, 69; CORE, 23; Fast for Peace, 64; gender roles, 70;Journey of Reconciliation, 32 1 39, 97; prison protests, 20, 21 Nevada Test Site, 73, 77; effects of protest, 82; NVA, 74, 78, 80; family in protest, 79; Willoughbys, 80; women's role in protest, 81 noncooperation: Albany City Jail, 142; prison reform, 18-19 Non-Violent Action Against Nuclear Weapons (NVAANW), 74, 77; Atomic Energy Commission protest, 88-90; Golden Rule, 82-87; Nevada Test Site protest, 78-80; reorganization into the Committee for Nonviolent Action, 90 nonviolent direct action, 21, 32, 73-74; Catholic pacifism, 165; civil rights movement, 125, 224n 5; draft resistance, Vietnam, 157; interracial peace walks, 126; Journey of Reconciliation, 34; NAACP, 38 nonviolent social change, 48; CORE, 22-23; and Dellinger 12; prison reform, 18; revolution, 167, 169. See also Discipline of Nonviolence nuclear deterrence, Cold War, 60 nuclear deterrence protest, 62, 64, 214n 37; Strategic Air Command-Omaha, 90 nuclear submarine protest. See Polaris Action protest nuclear testing: ban on atmospheric, 77; Marshall Island H-bomb, 82; protests against, 73,_ 83 Omaha Action, 90; arrests and trial, 92-93; effects, 95; imprisonment, 94-95; and Swann, Maijorie, 91-92 Oxford Pledge, 12

Pacem in Terris, 165 Paternalism, 73-74, 79, 84-85 peace churches, 9; CPS, 27, 192n.15 peace movement: all-female versus mixed groups, 184; collapse of 1930s, 14; Communist Party, 47; draft resistance as focal point, 183; equality of sexes, 222n 39; Gandhi's influence, 13-14; government harassment, 48; growth in support, 10; influence of dominant culture

250

Index

peace movement: (continued) 182-83, 185, 186; masculine identity, 140, 179; postwar, 30; publications (1950s), 76; self-sacrifice, 129-30; student radicals, 12; youth participation, 123 peace movement and civil rights, 126, 138, 182, 224n 5; Albany Movement, 135-37; CORE, 36, 37; Montgomery Bus Boycott, 78, 211n., 14; NashvilleWashington Walk, 127-28; segregation in military, 50-51; women, 140. See also Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk peace movement, Vietnam: gender role dichotomization, 178-79, 181; growth, 157; masculine identity, 179, 234n., 16; militant protest, 167; new protest tactics, 168, 170; Spring Mobilization, 158; World War II resisters, 166 peace walks: 128-29; gender roles, 141; interracial, 126, 127, 138. See also Nashville-Washington Walk; QuebecWashington-Guantanamo Walk Peacemakers, 59; CCHR, 67; change in tactics (1950), 62; civil rights, 78; community-based resistance, 54, 57-59, 94; Coney Island Amusement Park, 68; conscription as threat to liberty, 52; decline, 66, 71; draft resistance, 51; Fast for Peace, 62-66, 206n.44; founding, 49; Gano Peacemakers, 67-68, 72; gender conventions, 70; H-bomb response, 61; list of refusers, 53; role of weakness, 62, 64 Peck, Jim: Communist Party, 47; draft board raids, 170; draft resistance, World War II, 16--17; draft resistance, late 1940s, 52, 58; Fast for Peace, 64-65; Journey of Reconciliation, 33-34, 38, 972; Nevada Test site, 79 Polaris Action, 101,105,106, 120; campaign strategy, 109, 120; Discipline of Nonviolence, 115, 221n 35; effects, 118, 123; goals, 107; masculine nature, 113, 116, 121, 124; Peace Walk, 101; public response, 114; "Suggestions for Conduct," ll1; women, 119-22 prison reform: civil rights protest, 8, 19; nonviolent social change, 18 Pritchet, Police Chief Laurie, 135-36, 227n 25

Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, 102; Albany, Georgia, 136, 142, 148; civil rights, 145, 146; Deep South response, 131, 133; Florida, 147; Georgia violence, 135; goals, 129-33; hunger strike, 143-44; initial planning, 128-29; masculine identity, 149-50; The Spirit of Freedom, 148, 102; strategy, 128; walk team cuts, 225n 13; young people's behavior, 134 racial discrimination. See civil rights protest Randolph, A. Philip: Committee Against Jim Crow in Military Service and Training, 50-51; CORE, 23, 32, 36; March on Washington Movement, 9, 19Reynolds, Earle, 87 Robinson, Judge Richard E., 90; and Swann, Marjorie, 92-93 Robinson, Ray, 130-31, 138, 144, 147Rustin, Bayard: civil rights movement, 224n 5; CORE, 36; Fast for Peace, 62-66; H-bomb protests, 61;Journey of Reconciliation, 32-38, 42, 97, 199n 71; March on Washington (1963), 132; peacetime draft resistance, 50-51; Randolph, A. Philip, 50; World War II prison protests, 20-21, 23 Sanders, Ed, 110,111,115-16,141 SANE (Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), 89; Communist purging, 118; founding, 77; successes, 82, 108 Scott, Lawrence, 73, 77; maternalism, 81; Montgomery Bus Boycott, 78; Polaris Action, criticism of, 112, 117; Willoughbys, 80; withdrawal from NVAANW, 90 Second Vatican Council, 165 Selective Service System, 156; Baltimore, 168-69 Shridharani, Krishnalal, War Without Violence, 21 Smiley, Glenn, civil rights movement, 224n 5 Snyder, Edith, 136, 143, 146--47 Social Gospel, influence on radical pacifists, 10,45,26 South Vietnam: protest, 167-68, 239n 37; Tet Offensive, 169 Speak Truth to Power, 76 The Spirit ofFreedom, 102, 148-49 Stephens,John, 144, 159

Index Strategic Air Command-Omaha. See Mead Air Force Base; Omaha Action Students for a Democratic Society, 153 Student Peace Union, 117 student radicals: 1930s, 11; 1960s, 152, 153; peace movement, 12 Swann, Maijorie: Atomic Energy Commission protest (1958), 88; CNVA, authority in, 141; CORE, 22-33; draft board raids, 170;Journey of Reconciliation, 41; NCCO, 27, 29; Omaha Action, 91-95, 100; Polaris Action, 105-6, 111-13, 120; protest of Gandhi's imprisonment, 28, 97; Vietnam War protests, 167 Swann, Robert: Omaha Action, 94; Polaris Action, 112, 120 Truman Administration: Cold War, 46; Mutually Assured Destruction, 59; segregation in military, 51 Turner Air Force Base, civil rights and peace movements, 138, 148 U.S. Coast Guard, and Golden Rule voyage, 86 U.S.S. Ethan Allen, 101, 106, 113-14, 121 un-Americanism. See American culture Vatican II. See Second Vatican Council Walsh, Anne, 173 War Resisters League, 76; absorption of CNVA, 168; Catholic Peace Fellowship, 165; draft resistance, Vietnam, 166; change in tactics, 61; civil rights, 78; Fast for Peace, 62; Peacemakers, 59 War Without Violence, 21 Williams, Suzi, 160-61, 170-71, 174 Willoughby, George, 79-80; Golden Rule voyage, 83, 99 Willoughby, Lillian, 73, 80; Atomic Energy Commission protest, 88-89; family duties, 88; Golden Rule voyage, 83; Nevada Test Site, 81 women activists: 1940s peace movement, 10; Mrican American, 24-25, 140; and

251

brotherhood, 13, 119-22; civil rights movement, 21, 149; CORE staff equality, 23-24, 194n 35; CPS, 27; draft board raids, 171, 173, 240n 45; draft resistance, Vietnam, 159-62; hunger strike, 144; imprisonment, 94-95;Journey of Reconciliation, 40; maternal role, 91, 93-94; militant pacifism, 26; Nevada Test Site, 81; nonrecognition by men, 181-82; peace organizations, 184; Vietnam peace movement, 160, 235n 21 women activists, primary role: civil rights activism, 22, 24-26, 33, 44, 66, 69-70, 102, 142-45; disarmament activism, 80, 88-89, 91-95, 100, 121-23; draft board raids, 171, 175-76; female COs, 26-28; Vietnam War protests, 104, 160n women activists, secondary role: disarmament activism, 83, 87-88, 106, 121, 147-49; draft board raids, 171-78; draft resistance, Vietnam War, 153-53, 156-57, 159-61; draft resistance, World War II, 28-29, 45;Journey of Reconciliation, 39-42 Women Against Daddy Warbucks, 175, 241 n 58; lack of support, 184; women ostracized, 176-77 women, role in American culture: postwar, 40; World War II, 28-29 Women Strike for Peace (WSP), 122, 223n 45 Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WlLPF), 26 women's liberation, and Catholic pacifism, 180. See also women activists, secondary role World Government movement, 60, 206n 36 World War II: Mrican American women activists, 25; role of women activists, 28-29 young people, 123; Beat Generation, 110; conflicts with older activists, 110-12, 134; men, 106-7, 113-16; Omaha Action, 96; Polaris Action, 108-13; Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk, 133-34; women, 119-22

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Acknowledgments

This book could not have come to be without the help, support, and inspiration of countless people in the many communities to which I am privileged to belong. At its deepest level, Radical Pacifism in Modern America is the product of the many years I spent as an organizer and activist in the nonviolent peace and social justice movements of the 1980s and 1990s. It was in those venues that I first learned about the stories and people chronicled in this book and experienced first-hand the vitality of militant risk taking and "speaking truth to power." My search for a history that would provide critical insight to those working for social change ultimately led me away from the streets and into the halls of academe. Nevertheless, I hope never to forget what I learned in my communities of resistance, particularly from the women to whom I dedicate this book. Since the early 1990s, communities of scholars, writers, and editors have generously guided this project to fruition. Kathy Peiss nourished this project in its early years. So, too, did Kevin Boyle, David Glassberg, Carlin Barton, and Martha Ackelsberg, all of whom gave me valuable feedback and encouragement at an important point in my career. My colleagues in the Department of History at Virginia Tech have wholeheartedly supported me in my ongoing research endeavors, creating a climate of collegiality and scholarly rigor that has aided every step of my work. Peter Agree at the University of Pennsylvania Press patiently waited for my finished manuscript and has graciously shepherded this project through the mysterious maze of the publication process. I am eminently grateful for his longstanding support, his clear guidance, and for referring me to Grey Osterud, who acted as the final midwife to this book. Indeed, without Grey's deft assistance and sharp eye, this book would never have come to be. Grey became my sounding board as well as a critical reader and an editor of great insight. My debt to her goes beyond what words can express.

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Acknowledgments

I would also like to thank the numerous institutions and organizations that provided funding for this project. The Department of History at Virginia Tech regularly granted me research money in addition to time away from teaching to focus on my research, while the Humanities Program at Virginia Tech granted me a generous Summer Stipend. Earlier work on this book received financial support from the University of Massachusetts and the Schlesinger Library on the History of Women at Radcliffe College. Support from all of these sources allowed me to complete this project with greater timeliness and ease than would otherwise have been possible. Numerous archivists provided critical help during my months and years of travel and research. I especially wish to thank Wendy Chmielewski, of the Swarthmore College Peace Collection, who essentially allowed me to take up residence in her library during my repeated and extended stays. I am also grateful for the help of librarians and archivists at the Schlesinger Library, at the Rare and Manuscripts Collection, Carl A. Kroch Library, Cornell University, at the Archives of the University of Notre Dame, and at the Interlibrary Loan offices of Virginia Tech and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Jerry Baber of the Biomedical Media Center at Virginia Tech's College of Veterinary Medicine generously stepped in at the last minute to digitally reproduce several key illustrations. Then there is the extensive community network of activists, friends, and bare acquaintances who shared their homes and memories with me as I traveled across the Northeast and Midwest to conduct my research. I could never have written this book without the hospitality and generosity given to me by Ernest Bromley, Chuck Matthei, and Wally Nelson, all now deceased, and George and Lillian Willoughby, Marj Swann, Larry and Lenna Mae Gara, Bradford Lyttle, Marv Davidov, Juanita Nelson, Patricia McNeal, Ed Sanders, Anne Walsh, Xenia Williams, Joanne Sheehan, Rick Gaumer, Tom and Monica Cornell, Eric Weinberger, Carol Rainey, George Schietinger, Gail Bederman, Abby and Mark Jensen, Rob Young, Bryan and Robin Mollin, Beth Cockerham and Kelly Whalen, the Hartford Catholic Worker, Marie Manning, Martin Holladay, Carlos and Roxanna Rose, and Carl Nightingale. My parents, Ann Sue and David Israel, and Arthur and Sarilyn Mollin, gave me ongoing support and periodic computer upgrades. This project could not have been completed without their assistance. Finally, it is hard to know how to express my gratitude for the strong professional and personal friendships that have sustained me over the very long haul of researching, writing, and completing this book. Colleagues near and far, including Ann-Marie Knoblauch, Sharon Johnson, April Mayes, Helen Schneider, Kathleen Jones, Bernice Hausman, Laura

Acknowledgments

255

Parisi, Fred Roden, Robert Zecker, William Dougherty, Sarah Plaisted, Maggie Lowe, and Joan O'Brien mentored me through the various stages of this process. The "Stitch-n-Bitches" helped me maintain my sanity. Miriam Ford, Pam Brooks, Beth Cockerham, and Jacqueline Allen-Dou~ot stood with me through thick and thin, even when the demands of finishing this book kept me away from them for extended periods of time. Mark Barbour, who graciously joined me as a true partner in the struggle during the last phase of this project, receives my final words of thanks for his patience, devotion, and ongoing efforts to remind me of what is truly important. Thank you.