Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven

by James Tracy

Direct Action tells the story of how a small group of "radical pacifists"—nonviolent activists such as David Dellinger, Staughton Lynd, A.J. Muste, and Bayard Rustin—played a major role in the rebirth of American radicalism and social protest in the 1950s and 1960s. Coming together in the camps and prisons where conscientious objectors were placed during World War II, radical pacifists developed an experimental protest style that emphasized media-savvy, symbolic confrontation with institutions deemed oppressive. Due to their tactical commitment to nonviolent direct action, they became the principal interpreters of Gandhism on the American Left, and indelibly stamped postwar America with their methods and ethos. Genealogies of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and antinuclear movements in this period are incomplete without understanding the history of radical pacifism.

Taking us through the Vietnam war protests, this detailed treatment of radical pacifism reveals the strengths and limitations of American individualism in the modern era.

Genres: Nonfiction

212 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 1996

Reviews

[Larry Bassett · Rating 4 out of 5]

Direct Action: Radical Pacifism from the Union Eight to the Chicago Seven by James Tracy covers the history of radical pacifism and its practice of non-violent direct action from 1940 to 1970. The book tracks this history by telling the stories of a dozen or more major players in the movement as well as the social protest movements during that period.

In the 1940s, a small but dauntless movement, whose adherents termed themselves “radical pacifists,” emerged out of the conscientious objector population of World War II. Between 1940 and 1970, these radical pacifists became the principal interpreters of Gandhism on the American Left. Despite its small size, their movement made an enormous impact on postwar American dissent. Groups such as the Congress of Racial Equality, the War Resisters League, the Fellowship of Reconciliation, and the Committee for Nonviolent Action played key roles in determining the tactics, structure, and culture of the postwar Left. These groups would stamp postwar American dissent with certain characteristics: a tactical commitment to direct action; an agenda that posited race and militarism (instead of labor) as the central social issues of the United States; an experimental protest style that emphasized media-savvy, symbolic confrontation with institutions deemed oppressive; an ethos that privileged action over analysis and extolled nonviolent individual resistance, especially when it involved “putting one’s body on the line”; and an organizational structure that was nonhierarchical, decentralized, and oriented toward consensus decision making. Genealogies of the Civil Rights, antiwar, and antinuclear movements in this period are incomplete without understanding the history of radical pacifism.

For me this book is an adventure with many organizations and individuals and events familiar to me. That made it a nostalgic read for me but with many new insights. For that I give it four stars.

[David Gross · Rating 4 out of 5]

A small, dedicated core of activists in the United States broke from the Marxist “old left” in the 1940s to explore a brand of activism influenced by Christian anti-war traditions, the non-violent confrontation techniques of Gandhi, and American contrarian individualist thinking along the lines of Thoreau.

This group of activists was forged in the camps for conscientious objectors that were run by America’s traditional peace churches as part of a compromise during World War II, they survived the McCarthyist 1950s in part due to their principled distancing from authoritarian communism, and they came to play decisive roles in shaping the form of the civil rights movement and the movements against the Vietnam War and the nuclear arms race.