"Will become the basic book in American women's peace history."—Dee Garrison, Rutgers University
"A major achievement."—Lawrence S. Wittner, author of Rebels Against War
Description
Peace as a Women’s Issue is ta comprehensive history of the feminist peace movement in the United Stares during the last two centuries. This absorbing history traces the development of the women’s campaign for peace from its roots in nineteenth-century abolitionist and suffrage movements to its expression during the recent war in the Middle East.
The development of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) takes center stage, but many other groups, ranging from the Women’s Peace Union of the 1920s to later movements such as Women Strike for Peace, Women for Racial and Economic Equality, and the peace encampments of the 1980s arc all examined. Herc too one will read about the many prominent figures who have had major roles in this history: Jane Addams and Carrie Chapman Catt of the Woman’s Peace Party; Fanny Garrison Villard, daughter of abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison; Nobel Peace Prize winner Emily Greene Balch; Dorothy Detzer of the WILPF; and Mary Church Terrell, the first president of the National Association of Colored Women.
This much-needed history of the feminist peace movement in the United States makes possible a fuller, better nuanced, and more balanced treatment of the history of the entire U.S peace movement.
Table of Contents
1. Coming to Terms
2. Developing a Feminist-Pacifist Consciousness, 1820-1914
3. Suffragist-Pacifists versus the Great War, 1914-1919
4. Former Suffragists for Peace during the lnterwar Years, 1919-1935
5. Dilemmas, Quandaries, and Tensions during War, 1935-1945
6. The Effects of McCarthyism on Feminist-Pacifists, 1945-1960
7. From Civil Rights to the Second Wave of the Feminist Movement, 1960-1975
8. Feminist Peace Activism and the United Nations’ Decade for Women, 1975-1985
9. Conclusion
Appendixes:
A. A Chronological Listing of U.S. Women’s Rights Peace Organizations and Committees
B. A Partial Chronology of the Metropolitan New York Branch of WILPF
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Harriet Hyman Alonso was professor of history at Fitchburg State College in Massachusetts. She is the
author of The Woman's Peace Union and the Outlawry of War, 1921-1942.
March 1993