Peacemakers contingent at the Four Days in April protests, 1984
Although the precise origins of UMass Peacemakers are murky, by 1982, the group was an active presence on the UMass Amherst campus organizing opposition to militarism and the nuclear arms race and providing support for the nuclear freeze movement. Organizing vigils, demonstrations, informational workshops, and providing civil disobedience training, the Peacemakers were the most visible pacifist group on the UMass Amherst campus in the 1980s.
The UMass Peacemakers Records focus on the activities of the student group between 1983 and 1990, documenting their role in confronting the aggressive international expansionism of the Reagan administration and its “Star Wars” program, while also engaging at the local and national level by organizing rallies, lectures, poetry readings, and film screenings. At UMass, Peacemakers was part of the larger Progressive Student Network, and worked alongside other student organizations including the Radical Student Union.
Background on UMass Peacemakers
Peacemakers at the Four Days in April protest, Washinton, D.C., April 1985
Although the precise origins of UMass Peacemakers are murky, by 1982, the group was an active presence on the UMass Amherst campus organizing opposition to militarism and providing support for the nuclear freeze movement. Originally called Students Against Militarism, and once affiliated with the United Christian Fellowship, UMass Peacemakers set an agenda of organizing vigils, demonstrations, informational workshops, and providing civil disobedience training, and they maintained resource and reference files for use by the membership.
Responding to the “nuclear crisis” brought on by the acceleration of the arms race under the Reagan administration, UMass Peacemakers were important partners in the student referendum during the Spring 1982 in which the student body voted overwhelmingly in favor of a nuclear weapons freeze. Peacemakers went on to organize a UMass contingent for the World Peace March in 1982 and for the anti-arms race march in Washington in 1984, and its members fed the mid-1980s protests at Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant and protests responding to the Euromissile crisis. Beyond the nuclear crisis, Peacemakers were active in peace and antiwar movements more generally, and in other areas of social justice. As members of the Progressive Student Network, they were active in opposing U.S. intervention in Central America, leading a contingent to the Four Days in April protests of 1986.
Despite the uncertainty of the origins of UMass Peacemakers, it seems likely that they aligned themselves with the pacifist organization Peacemakers, which was founded after the assassination of Mohandas Gandhi in July 1948. Two of the founders of that organization, Juanita and Wally Nelson, settled at Woolman Hill in Deerfield, Mass., and were integral members of the peace community in Western Massachusetts. Dedicated to non-violent resistance to war and the draft, Peacemakers was one of the first non-sectarian groups to advocate for war tax resistance. They built their membership from the grassroots, organizing as local “cells” with no national office or central administration.
The UMass Peacemakers Records focus on the activities of the student group between 1983 and 1990, documenting their role in confronting the aggressive international expansionism of the Reagan administration and its “Star Wars” program, while also engaging at the local and national level by organizing rallies, lectures, poetry readings, and film screenings. At UMass, Peacemakers was part of the larger Progressive Student Network, and worked alongside other student organizations including the Radical Student Union. They were responsible for bringing a number of people of national importance to campus, including Senator Edward Kennedy, Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg, Helen M. Caldicott, Nuclear Freeze advocate Randall Forsberg, and singer-songwriter James Taylor.
The Peacemakers collection offers a glance into the student activism spawned by the international peace movement and through an extensive series of newsletters, press releases, news clippings, on-campus event flyers, memorabilia, and publications released by local known peace activist group such as the Traprock Peace Center, the War Resisters League, and Greenpeace. The group also maintained extensive subject files on nuclear disarmament, militarism, peace, and related topics.
Series 1 contains two sub-series. First, the administrative sub-series contains internal records kept by the Peacemakers to document its activities, including leaflets, advertising group meetings, contact sheets and directories for members and local activist groups, meeting notes and agendas, and documents relating to procedures and lists of office duties. The sub-series also contain newsletters and publications for distribution, publicity for speaker and film events, catalogues, and strategy ideas for mobilizing more members and direct actions.
The Peacemaker’s financial records consist primarily of monthly and yearly reports submitted to the Student Government Association to account for expenditures, budget petitions, and materials used in grant writing.
Series 2 contains a collection of gather resources and published materials the Peacemakers received during their tenure. Included in these files is documentation of events planned by the Peacemakers or those in which they participated in, as well as materials from disparate sources relating to topics of pressing relevancy at the time (e.g. 1984/1988 U.S. Presidential Elections, Contra Aid/Central America, Gulf Oil, etc.).
Series 3 contains a collection of anti-nuclear and peace activist organizations articles and publications about the negative impacts of nuclear arms and advocacy for peace. This series includes newsletters, brochures, flyers, and articles.
Series 4 contains organizational publications on anti-nuclear, anti-war, and peace activist organizations and their newsletters, magazines, journals, and flyers.
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