Friends Coordinating Committee on Peace Collected Records

It is unclear from the records in this collection exactly when the Friends Coordinating Committee on Peace was organized. By 1951, it was agreed that the FCCP would be strictly a consultative and coordinating group for the peace efforts of Yearly Meetings and such Quaker entities as the American Friends Service Committee, the Friends Committee on National Legislation, the Friends World Committee for Consultation, the Peace and Social Order Committee of the Friends General Conference, and the Friends Peace Committee of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. The annual meeting of the FCCP gave Quakers an opportunity to spend a day together sharing experiences and making proposals for cooperative projects. The FCCP only got involved in actions that had a groundswell of support from the Friends Yearly Meetings: it held conferences on topics of interest to Friends, and helped the thousand Yearly Meetings in the U.S. to re-examine the Quaker stance on peace during the Vietnam conflict, among others. It had no paid staff, but relied on volunteers such as George Hardin, Lyle Tatum, Bob Rumsey and Bob Oldham. In 1986 it was decided that the role of the FCCP was no longer viable and was being taken over by other agencies, so that it was disbanded.