Brian Peterson was an active participant in many of the political and social action movements of the 1960s and early 1970s. A native of Des Moines, Iowa, he studied at Drake University in Des Moines, and received an M.A. (1965) and a Ph.D. (1976) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He spent a freedom summer in McComb, Mississippi, in 1964, as part of the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) volunteer effort. At the University of Wisconsin, Peterson worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of History, and was active in the Teaching Assistants Association (TAA) and in the TAA general strike of 1970. He was also an active member or a supporter of other social action and radical groups, among them the History Students Association, Student Civil Liberties Coordinating Committee (SCLCC), Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), and the W.E.B. DuBois Clubs of America.
