Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom Formed
The Women’s International Peace and Freedom (WILPF) was organized on this day.
The group, which is still active today, was involved in a number of pacifist issues and civil liberties controversies.
On April 12, 1923, the WILPF exposed the fact that the U.S. Army had produced and was circulating what became infamous as the “Spiderweb Chart,” purporting to show the relationships between various pacifists, socialists, communists, feminist, civil libertarians, and just plain liberals, and arguing that they were all threats to national security. WILPF demanded that the army cease its connection with the chart.
In later years, the Spiderweb Chart became popular among right-wing groups and activists as evidence of the “threat” to national security.
On July 12, 1929, Dorothy Detzer, Executive Director of the WILPF was denied a passport because of her pacifist views. At issue was her refusal to take the oath to defend the United States, which she interpreted as potentially supporting participation in military action. She was finally granted a passport on this day, and traveled to Europe for an international pacifist conference.
From the 1920s through the early 1960s, the denial of passports and visas to alleged radicals was a major civil liberties issue as a restriction on the right to travel. The administration of President Ronald Reagan (1981-1989), meanwhile, denied visas to foreigners whose political views it did not like.
Learn more about PeaceWomen, a program of the U.S. branch of WILPF here
Visit the WILPF web site here
Read about the WILPF: Carrie A. Foster, The Women and the Warriors: The U.S. Section of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, 1915-1946 (1995)