Women Strike for Peace against Nuclear Testing in the Cold War

It felt like the leaders were sitting there with their fingers poised above their big red buttons ready to go MAD. MAD stands for Mutually Assured Destruction. Basically, if you push your nuclear button, then we will press ours and we will all go down together. If you would like to hear more about the testing of nuclear weapons, I have an episode from season one called Nuclear Testing in Maralinga Australia that you can listen to. In the United States between 1951 and 1958, around 100 nuclear weapons tests were conducted in the atmosphere at the Nevada Test Site, but they also tested nuclear weapons in Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico and Mississippi and in the Pacific Ocean.

Because of this looming threat, the members of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created something called the Doomsday Clock in 1947. The time in 1947 was set to 7 minutes to midnight. This was a metaphor to represent how close the world was to global catastrophe.  Sometimes the hand moves closer to midnight and sometimes it moves further away. On the 20^th of January they announced that it the Doomsday clock currently sits at 100 seconds to midnight.

I realise that is a lot of context, but it is important to set the scene for the role that Women Strike for Peace played.

The Women Strike for Peace movement, started with 6 women meeting in their living room in September 1961 and three months later it resulted in more than 50 000 women marching in 60 cities across the United States with the rallying slogans, “End the Arms Race—Not the Human Race” and “Pure Milk, Not Poison.” These women were united by their concern for the safety of their children from the dangers of nuclear fall-out from the testing being done in the states. Newsweek reported on the protests of the day and said, “They were perfectly ordinary looking women.”

These days you might think that drumming up that kind of support for a cause is easy with our access to social media, but social media did not exist back then, so these women spread the word the old-fashioned way, chain letters. One leader would send a letter to someone she knew who would then organise a meeting in her local area and send more letters out. But sending letters costs money for the paper, envelopes and postage, and these groups had no funding, so often bowls would be placed on the tables and the women who attended the meetings would donate what they could, whether it be money they were given for their birthday, or maybe they went without for a week so they could donate.

One of the women who was responsible for starting Women Strike for Peace was Dagmar Wilson.  In the book “We Made a Difference”, fellow protestor writes that Dagmar Wilson was not previously an activist and had only every been on the Parent Teacher’s Association in her community. But when she heard from scientists about the dire threat that nuclear testing posed to their children, she was compelled into action. She was inspired by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell who had been arrested and put in jail for anti-nuclear civil disobedience.

Some of the protest activities included, picketing places like the White House, the Pentagon and the United Nations, but they also wrote letters to legislators and had smaller local protests. One group put on masks and white overalls and dumped bags of simulated nuclear waste in front of the Department of Energy in Washington DC. Another time, a group hired a fallout shelter and took it to a shopping centre to hand out leaflets about how these shelters were ineffectual.

So, all of this anti-nuclear activity got the attention in the FBI and they began surveillance of many of the women. They also drew the attention of the HUAC, or House of Un-American Activities Committee. This committee was created in 1938 to investigate people who they thought had ties to communism and were partaking in rebellious activities and being disloyal to America.

These women were deemed such a threat that the House of Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 14 women who were involved in the Women Strike for Peace, including Dagmar Wilson. The only problem was that 3 of the women called up, were not even in Women Strike for Peace and were a part of different peace organisations. Now this hearing was meant to determine the amount of communist infiltration that there was in the women’s organisation. These subpoenas were meant to strike fear in the hearts of these women, but that is not how it went down. Firstly, they rallied around the 3 women who were not even a part of their group and gave them their full support. The women insisted that they had nothing to hide and 100 of the women wired the commissioner volunteering to give their testimony at the hearing. The committee refused this offer implying that they were not interested in finding out information and more interested in smearing their reputation.  There were also reports of between 300 to 500 women turning up to the hearings and when the first woman, a retired schoolteacher, stood to give evidence, they all stood with her in solidarity. 

She testified, “I don’t know, sir, why I am here, but I do know why you are here, I think…because you don’t quite understand the nature of this movement. This movement was inspired and motivated by mothers’ love for children. When they were putting their breakfast on the table, they saw not only the Wheaties and milk, but they also saw strontium 90 and iodine 131.”

All of the women testified with honesty and wit, and the headlines read “It’s Ladies Day at the Capitol: Hoots, Howls and Charm.” And “Peace March Gals Make Red Hunters Look Silly.” When Dagmar Wilson was on the stand, she protested that was not the leader and there was no hierarchy in the organisation. Additionally, she said that the organisation was open to anyone of any political persuasion. The prosecutor asked her, “Would you knowingly permit or welcome Nazis or Fascists?” and her reply was, “If we could only get them on our side.”

This hearing had the opposite effect of what the House of Un-American Activities Committee intended. It brought even more media attention to Women Strike for Peace and other women saw these pictures of ordinary women with their children in tow peacefully stating their case and the organisation continued to grow.  These women could not be deterred and Women Strike for Peace continued until the 1990s where they spoke out against US intervention in Latin America.