"Women's Ways in War": The Feminist Pacifism of the New York City Woman's Peace Party

Abstract

Soon after European war exploded in 1914, first feminist peace organization in U.S. history, Woman's Peace Party (WPP) was formed. Headquartered in Chicago, WPP included state and local branches.' In 1915, national WPP advanced a platform that argued that the mother half of humanity should be consulted on issues of war and peace, and that women be given a share in deciding between war and peace in all courts of high debate-within home, school, church, industrial order and state. Although neither President Wilson nor U.S. Congress consulted WPP, many national WPP members came to accept-and in some cases, even support-the U.S. government's decision to intervene in war in April 1917.2 However, York City branch of Woman's Peace Party (NYC-WPP) disagreed. Formulating a feminist pacifist ideology that differed from that of its parent organization, Yorkers explored connected oppressions of gender, class, and race in American society in their journal Four Lights. The NYC-WPP published its bi-weekly magazine from January until October 1917, with a special issue printed in June 1919. Four Lights represented a crucial break among early-twentieth-century female reformers from Victorian matron to modern New Woman.3 Whereas national WPP represented Victorian generation's separate sphere notion of feminist pacifism based on women's special relationship to war-perceived most often in moral and religious terms-the NYC-WPP viewed war as an outgrowth of wider ills of society, including racism, classism, and sexism. Four Lights was confrontational and controversial, both within NYC-WPP, and among national WPP members. Four Lights differed from other progressive pacifist journals, such as social workers' Survey, in its gendered criticisms of war. The women's unique perspective derived from their experiences as disfranchised activists protesting public