Title: Women Strike for Peace Records
Inclusive Dates: 1958-1969

Creator:

• Women Strike for Peace

Call Number: Mss 433

Quantity: 0.8 c.f. (2 archives boxes)

Repository:

Wisconsin Historical Society, Division of Library, Archives, and Museum Collections

Archival Locations:

COLLECTION MAY BE STORED OFF-SITE: see catalog entry to request materials and for additional information.

Wisconsin Historical Society (Map)

Abstract:

Records of the Washington, D.C., chapter of a women's peace organization founded in 1961, and of its founder, Dagmar Wilson. Chapter records include correspondence, committee and activity files, clippings, and printed and near-print material relating to WSP opposition to the arms race, nuclear weapons proliferation, and later, to the Vietnam War. Twice during the early 1960's WSP was investigated by the House Committee on Un-American Activities; a major portion of the records relate to these confrontations. Wilson's papers include correspondence, speech notes and biographical data. A few records of other chapters of WSP are also present.

Language: English

URL to cite for this finding aid: http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/wiarchives.uw-whs-mss00433

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Women Strike for Peace was organized in September of 1961 by a handful of Washington housewives in reaction to the Berlin Wall Crisis and the threat of impending nuclear war. The aim of the movement was to achieve complete and general world wide disarmament. Its platform to “recall humanity from self-destruction” called for women around the world to urge their governments to:

ban all atomic weapons testing, negotiate in good faith to put all atomic weapons under control of an international agency, take concrete steps toward world-wide disarmament, devote as much of the national budgets to preparation for peace as is now-being spent in preparation for war, use the United Nations, the press and all mass media for facts, not name-calling nor propaganda, develop the ability of the United Nations to keep peace and promote world law.

At its peak, the movement reached an estimated national membership of 500,000. Membership was strictly participatory; there was never a national membership list and there were no dues.

Women Strike for Peace (WSP) grew to consist of a network of loosely organized, independent locals in over one hundred cities throughout the nation. Although the main headquarters was located in Washington, D.C., there was little direction on the national level; each local was autonomous and free to set its own priorities. The main issues dealt with during the years that the records cover include radiation contamination, nuclear fallout shelters, admission of the People's Republic of China to the United Nations, unilateral disarmament, racial suppression in South Africa, and the war in Vietnam.

Women Strike for Peace attempted to call attention to the dangers of the arms race by staging events that would attract the news media. Under the leadership of Dagmar Wilson, founder of the movement, WSP received a good deal of news coverage, and became a subject of controversy. In one of its first actions, a nationwide women's strike was called on November 1, 1961, and as husbands supposedly filled in at home and on the job, their wives took to the city streets in protest of nuclear bomb testing. It was at this point that journalists first recast the “Lysistrata” theme by comparing the new women's peace movement with Aristophanes's female truce-makers. The comparison would be an enduring one.

In December of 1962 a House Un-American Activities Subcommittee called a number of WSP members, including Dagmar Wilson, to the stand in an attempt, as Sydney Harris put it, “to sniff out any possible Communist influence or direction within the group.” Ten women were subpoenaed, but over sixty volunteered to testify and hundreds came, some with their small children, to the Washington investigations, giving the meeting rooms a nursery-like atmosphere. When asked if they were Communists, the majority of the women took the Fifth Amendment. When Dagmar Wilson was questioned about the possibility of Communist participation in the movement, she declared she had no desire to control those who wished to join and that she would not prevent Communists from assuming positions of leadership. The movement received criticism for this stance, with many journalists writing that the women were “naive Communist dupes.”

Another confrontation occurred in late 1964, when the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) subpoenaed Mrs. Wilson and two others in an investigation of their attempt to secure a visitor's visa for a Japanese professor who was a suspected Communist. When the three refused to testify in a closed session of the committee, they were found in contempt of Congress. As a consequence a new branch of Women Strike for Peace, the Defenders of Three Against HUAC, was formed to solicit funds for, and to publicize the plight of, the accused. A major portion of the records of WSP, the correspondence, ephemera, and newspaper clippings, relate to these two confrontations, and a great deal of the time and effort expended by the movement from late 1962 to early 1965 was concerned with the HUAC investigations.

Other activities documented in the records of WSP include a letter writing campaign to Mmes. Khrushchev and Kennedy in late 1962 that urged the two women to work for peace through influencing their husbands, and a journey made by fifty women led by Dagmar Wilson and including Mrs. Martin Luther King, Jr. to the Geneva Disarmament Talks in April of 1962. There they met with representatives of the United States and Soviet delegations and presented petitions for peace. In 1963 the group began lobbying efforts against the Fallout Shelter Bill H.R. 2000, and giving support to McGovern's bill for conversion to a civilian economy. In May of 1964 representatives of Women Strike for Peace traveled to The Hague, joining European women in protest of the NATO plan to arm a fleet with nuclear missiles, and in July of the following year, WSP members traveled to Jakarta, Indonesia to have a “peaceful confrontation” with women from North Vietnam.

Women Strike for Peace focused its attention on Vietnam during the war years. It was one of the first organizations to establish a Vietnam Committee, which was actively involved in organizing demonstrations and educating the public about war atrocities such as use of napalm.

After the war in Vietnam, WSP resumed its anti-nuclear weapons campaign, but with less vigor than before due to factionalism and the splitting off of the more radical elements during the early 1970's. The movement is still active in many major cities such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Seattle, and Washington, D.C. Each city publishes its own newsletter and sends representatives to the national meeting held each year.

Taken as a whole, the records of Women Strike for Peace reflect the informal organization of the movement. There is a lack of functional records such as annual reports, proceedings, minutes, directories, and rolls, largely because decision-making within the various branches of the movement was done primarily by telephone and correspondence. The records convey the membership's desire that the movement remain a grass-roots and voluntary one, emphasizing total participation for all and guaranteeing that each member could speak her mind freely. The collection is divided into two major subgroups, the first being the Records of the Washington Chapter of Women Strike for Peace, 1958-1969, with the emphasis on the period 1961-1966. Also spanning 1961-1966 is the second subgroup, the Papers of Dagmar Wilson, founder of Women Strike for Peace. The original arrangement of the collection has been closely followed and preserved. The major alteration has been the removal of the many scattered newspaper clippings and their organization into a separate file.

RECORDS OF THE WASHINGTON CHAPTER OF WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE consist of General Correspondence, Committee Files, Activity Files, Newspaper Clippings, and Other Printed Materials. The General Correspondence is arranged chronologically and includes informational letters written between members, outside inquiries, letters of support and correspondence with a variety of other organizations.

The Committee Files are organized alphabetically and contain reference material and samples of ephemera produced for public education and announcement purposes. Included are a variety of flyers, handbills, reprints and pamphlets.

The Activity Records are arranged chronologically and document the major actions organized by Women Strike for Peace during the years 1961-1965. These files consist of a variety of materials, and each is unique in what it contains. Included are memoranda pertaining to the organization of activities and publicity material. Adjunctive to these files are Newspaper Clippings, likewise arranged chronologically according to activity, which corroborate the news media's reactions to the disturbances set off by WSP.

The Other Printed Material consists of serial publications, pamphlets and ephemera. There are incomplete runs of Memo, “National Information Memo,” “News Releases,” and the “Washington WSPer,” publications produced by and for the Washington, D.C. chapter of WSP. No national-level serial publications are included. Thus, it is very difficult to identify variations within the movement itself such as differences of policies and priorities among locals. The Pamphlets include a small number of widely distributed published materials concerning subjects of topical interest. The Ephemera contains a variety of material such as discussion and policy papers, handbills, reprints, and samples of newsletters not substantial enough in quantity to list separately above. Publications, such as the serials mentioned above, were the movements main vehicles of issue discussion and planning.

The PAPERS OF DAGMAR WILSON are comprised largely of Correspondence. Included are letters from other members of WSP; inquiries and letters exchanged with other activist groups; correspondence, telegrams and money orders in support of the positions taken by Mrs. Wilson and WSP, mainly from women in other organizations working for peace in the United States and abroad; and invitations for speaking engagements.

A second category consists of Biographical Data assembled at various points in Wilson's career as an activist. The final category in this subgroup is composed of Speech Notes written by Dagmar Wilson mainly in the period 1964-1966, although many are undated.

Additional material on Women Strike for Peace may be located in the microform collection of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin Library.

Acquisition Information

Presented by Eleanor Garst, Washington, D.C., January 5, 1973. Accession Number: M73-2

Processing Information

Processed by Laura Guy (FGH intern) and Joanne Hohler, October 10, 1978.

	Series: Records of the Washington Chapter of Women Strike for Peace
Box   1 Folder   1-2	General Correspondence, 1958-1968, undated
	Committee Files, 1958-1966
Box   1 Folder   3	Disarmament Research Committee, 1958-1963.
Box   1 Folder   4	Lobby Committee, 1962-1963.
Box   1 Folder   5	October 25 Rally Committee, 1961.
Box   1 Folder   6	Publicity Committee, 1961-1963.
Box   1 Folder   7	Radiation Committee, 1961-1962.
Box   1 Folder   8	Vietnam Committee, 1966-1970, undated
	Activity Files, 1961-1965
Box   1 Folder   9	Letter-Writing Campaign, 1961-1962.
Box   1 Folder   10	HUAC Committee Hearing, 1962.
Box   1 Folder   11	Geneva Disarmament Talks, Conference Delegation, 1962.
	Defenders of Three Against HUAC
Box   1 Folder   12	General, 1964-1965.
Box   1 Folder   13	Correspondence, 1964-1965.
	Newspaper Clippings, 1961-1965
Box   1 Folder   14	General--Women Strike for Peace
Box   1 Folder   15	March, 1961 October 25; and Strike, , 1961 November 1.
Box   1 Folder   16	HUAC Committee Hearing, 1962.
Box   1 Folder   17	Geneva Disarmament Talks
Box   1 Folder   18	Defenders of Three Against HUAC
	Other Printed Material, 1961-1969
	Memo
Box   1 Folder   19	, 1964 October-1966 August.
Box   2 Folder   1	, 1966 September-1969 Fall.
Box   2 Folder   2	“National Information Memo,” 1962 June-1964 July.
Box   2 Folder   3	“News Release,” 1961 October-1965 February.
Box   2 Folder   4	“Washington WSPer,” 1964 June-1966 January.
Box   2 Folder   5	Pamphlets
Box   2 Folder   6	Ephemera
	Series: Papers of Dagmar Wilson	⇧
Box   2 Folder   7-10	Correspondence, 1961-1968, undated
Box   2 Folder   11	Biographical Data
Box   2 Folder   12	Speech Notes, 1964-1965, undated