War Resisters League Records

Although the War Resisters League declares its official birthday year as 1923, its roots go back to 1915 when Jessie Wallace Hughan, Tracy D. Mygatt, and John Haynes Holmes founded the Anti-Enlistment League to solidify protest against U.South participation in World War I. Witnessing the establishment of the War Resisters' International in Europe in 1921, and sensing a need for an organization where war resisters of all persuasions, regardless of gender or religious convictions, could join together, Dr. Hughan formed the Committee for Enrollment Against War under the auspices of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. In 1923, Hughan established the War Resisters League as an independent organization.

The War Resisters League membership pledge, which has remained essentially unchanged since its inception, reads: "The War Resisters League affirms that war is a crime against humanity. We therefore are determined not to support any kind of war, international or civil, and to strive non-violently for the removal of all causes of war."

During World War II, War Resisters League especially supported absolutist conscientious objectors who protested any form of military support, including alternative service. In 1948, it helped found the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors to further aid all Conscientious Objectors. It has continually lent its resources to the causes of war tax protest, draft resistance, and civil rights.

War Resisters League encouraged civil disobedience against civil defense drills in the early 1960s by sponsoring the Civil Defense Protest Committee. It encouraged tax resistance as the Indochinese conflict escalated, and formed War Tax Resistance in 1969 to protest all taxes that benefited the military. In the 1970s, War Resisters League supported Campaign Freedom and the United Campaign for Peace in Indochina, both efforts to help improve conditions and free political prisoners in Vietnam. It helped focus nationwide attention on nuclear protest and civil liberties by organizing the Continental Walk for Disarmament and Social Justice in 1976.

War Resisters League is affiliated with War Resisters' International and the International Peace Bureau. Throughout its existence, it has worked closely with many other peace organizations, including the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the American Friends Service Committee, and the American Civil Liberties Union. In 1958, it helped start the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), which shared its headquarters and finally merged with War Resisters League in 1968.

The League has sought to promote pacifist and nonviolent tactics through various periodicals. In 1956, War Resisters League helped start Liberation, an independent monthly dealing with nuclear testing, civil rights, socialism, and nonviolent direct action. it was discontinued in 1977. WIN, a widely read peace periodical begun by the New York Workshop in Nonviolence, has received War Resisters League support. The League publishes its own bimonthly magazine, War Resisters League News. Its annual Peace Calendar reached annual sales of 20,000 in 1980.

War Resisters League is presently headquartered at 339 Lafayette Street in New York City with one regional office in Norwich, CT. There are or have been three branch offices, located in San Francisco, CA (War Resisters League-West), Austin, TX (War Resisters League South Central), and Chapel Hill, NC (War Resisters League Southeastern), with numerous local War Resisters League groups across the country.

A more complete history of War Resisters League, produced for its 1950th Anniversary, can by found in Series B, Subseries I, History.