First Peacetime Draft in American History Enacted
President Franklin D. Roosevelt on this day signed The Selective Service and Training Act, which was passed by Congress two days earlier. It was the first peacetime draft in American history.
Although the law provided a more generous provision for conscientious objectors than the World War I draft law, a large number of conscientious objectors refused to cooperate with the draft during World War II and were convicted and sentenced to prison. The majority were Jehovah’s Witnesses.
While prisoners, some COs staged hunger strikes protesting racial segregation in the federal prison in Danbury, Connecticut (see August 11, 1943) and censorship in the federal prison at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania (see September 29, 1943).
The law also included a section prohibiting racial discrimination. Civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph confronted President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House, on September 27, 1940, over his refusal to fully implement that aspect of the law. A racially segregated draft operated during World War II. It was unsuccessfully challenged by Winfred Lynn (February 3, 1944) and never enforced. Several of the COs who engaged in the hunger strikes in the 1960s became noted civil rights activists and leaders of the anti-Vietnam War movement. President Harry Truman finally desegregated the U.S. armed forces by executive order on July 26, 1948.
Read about one pacifist’s prion protest: David Dellinger, From Yale to Jail: The Life Story of a Moral Dissenter (1993)
Learn more about the history of COs: Felicity Goodall, We Will Not Go to War: Conscientious Objection During the World Wars (2011)
Learn about the history of pacifism: Charles Chatfield, The American Peace Movement: Ideals and Activism (1992)