Race and Reconciliation at Mid-Century

Abstract

This concluding chapter covers the work of the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) in the 1950s onward. Even as AFSC officials linked their efforts to the Quaker past and trusted Friendly methods, its staff understood that their approach to race relations had evolved since the Service Committee's earliest forays into the field. Furthermore, AFSC leaders understood the need for additional innovation in the early 1950s, especially as the Cold War intensified. The chapter traces the AFSC's activities during this period, including their attempts at expansion—particularly in the South—via the Washington Project. The Washington Project exhibited an expanding range of interracial techniques that had been evolving since the 1920s, especially an emphasis on education and intercultural exchange and a broader critique of and approach to racial problems in American society. Though the Washington Project would conclude in late 1955, the chapter shows how the AFSC continued their interracial activism still further South.