Albon Man Collected Papers

Albon Platt Man Jr., from Hollis (New York), was born on May 30, 1919. He was the valedictorian of his high school class in 1936, and went on to graduate from Columbia University in 1941. He then worked in the budget office of the Bureau of Old-Age and Survivors Insurance of the Social Security Board from July 1941 to Feb. 1943. He was called up for the draft during World War II, but failed to register because of his conscientious objection to war, and was sentenced to three years in prison in March 1943. At the time, he was a member of the Socialist Party, but had also been influenced by his pacifist mother, Estelle Man. Albon's younger brother, Alexander, was 21 when he was also arraigned as a draft dodger, on April 22, 1943. Albon Man was sent to the Federal Correctional Institution at Danbury (Connecticut) to serve his term, where he was held from March 1943 to June 1944, after which he was sent to Lewisburg (Pennsylvania) Penitentiary, where he was held until July 1945. He took part in several prison strikes with other C.O.s: a work strike at Danbury in Aug. 1943 to protest racial segregation in the prison, and two hunger strikes at Lewisburg to protest mail censorship as well as a ruling that lengthened the terms of prisoners who staged work strikes. Man died on October 22, 2014.

Man's papers reflect his stance as a conscientious objector and his years in prison, as well as his later involvements with the Committee for Amnesty, the CCCO, and the War Resisters League.