Sidney Peck was born in 1926 in Annapolis, Maryland, and grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota. He served in the U.S. Navy during World War II then attended the University of Minnesota under the GI Bill and graduated in 1949. He received both his Masters (1951) and Doctoral (1959) degrees in sociology from the University of Wisconsin. His first academic position was a teaching post at Carleton College, 1952-53. He then was an industrial worker in Milwaukee for five years.
Peck was active in the labor movement, in the civil liberties and civil rights movements, as well as anti-Vietnam War, anti-nuclear, and peace activities. He served as co-chair of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (1966-1971); as national coordinator of the People's Coalition to End the War in Vietnam (1970-1973); founding organizer and chair of the National Mobilization for Survival (1977-1980); and international coordinator of U.S. Coalitions in Support of the U.N. Special Sessions on Disarmament (1981-82 and 1987-88). He was a major organizer of the mass anti-war demonstrations at the United Nations (April 1967); at the Pentagon (October 1967); in Chicago (August 1968), and in Washington, D.C. (at the Ellipse in May 1970, on May Day, 1971, at Capitol Hill in April 1972, and at the Nixon Inaugural in January 1973). After the demonstrations in Chicago, he was federally indicted as one of the Chicago Ten, but his case was severed and in an Illinois trial he was acquitted.
Peck's academic positions included a professorship in the Sociology Department of Lawrence University (Appleton, Wisconsin); executive officer and professor at Case Western Reserve University; dean of labor studies at the State University of New York; and professor at Clark University (1973-1987). After retirement from Clark, he became co-director of RECAP-International, a consulting group on social issues and social movements.
Dr. Peck was the author of The Rank and File Leader, a Study of the Social and Political Ideology of the Industrial Union Steward in the U.S. (New Haven: College and University Press, 1963). He wrote numerous articles and papers on social movements and served as associate editor at various times for such journals as Social Theory and Social Practice, Social Praxis, Insurgent Sociologist, and Socialism and Democracy.
(The above information largely was drawn from biographical handouts on Peck which are included in the collection's case file in the Archives.)
