Fair Lawn Committee for Peace in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia Collected Records

Fifteen concerned members of the Fair Lawn community (New Jersey) founded the Committee for Peace in Vietnam on March 1, 1967. Their initial intent was to participate in a major anti-war protest in New York in April of the same year. This grew into the larger mission of building local support for alternative solutions to the conflict in Vietnam and working until all military activity in the area ceased. The organization's membership grew to 200+ families in the six years that followed, despite substantial opposition from more conservative community members. The Fair Lawn protesters were unique in terms of the demographic they represented. While most anti-war activists in the United States were young and in college, members of the Fair Lawn community were typically middle-aged suburbanites.

In its inaugural year, the committee's activities included door to door informational campaigns for community awareness and mobilization, as well as participation in protest gatherings at regional and national levels. From 1968 onward, the group lobbied its borough government for an official condemnation of the war, wrote letters to congressional candidates and incumbents to encourage a dialogue for peace, and invited a variety of interesting and controversial speakers to its public meetings. Notable guests included Dr. Benjamin Spock (1968), GI Tom Chase, and actors Ossie Davis (1968), Alan Alda (1970), and Betsy Palmer (1970). The 1968 visit of Benjamin Spock caused some controversy over whether the group should be required to purchase additional insurance to cover the event, even though no other group had been charged in such a way; this resulted in a lawsuit which the Committee eventually won.

Four years after the group's initial establishment, co-founder and former member, Evelyn Hochman, created a scroll to commemorate the Fair Lawn community's participation in the anti-war movement. The 125-foot-long work contained newspaper clippings, letters, documents, and memorabilia that she had saved over the course of the war. The Fair Lawn Committee for Peace in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia (this expanded name was adopted in 1970) did not end its efforts until the United States' complete cessation of bombing and military mobilization in Southeast Asia. On October 26,1973, the group announced its plans to finally disband, which occurred within the month that followed. Some of its members went on to create the Fair Lawn Committee for a Sane World, a local branch(?) of SANE.