Hughan, Jessie Wallace

HUGHAN, JESSIE WALLACE (1875–1955). A pacifist proponent of nonviolent noncooperation, a socialist, and a feminist, Jessie Wallace Hughan was born in Brooklyn, New York, of nonconformist parents who were devoted to the single-tax and suffrage movements. Hughan attended Northfield Seminary in Northfield, Massachusetts, the school founded by Dwight L. Moody and famous as one of the first girls’ boarding schools in the country. She received her B.A. from Barnard College in 1898 and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. at Columbia University.

While researching her dissertation on American socialism (published in 1911 as American Socialism of the Present Day), Hughan became a socialist herself. Because of her socialist activism before and during World War I, Hughan was barred from university teaching and became instead a New York public school teacher and administrator. Hughan was an absolute pacifist by 1914. Acting upon her principles, she became a charter member of the Christian pacifist Fellowship of Reconciliation, served on the executive committee of the New York City branch of the Woman’s Peace Party, and organized the Anti-Enlistment League (1915–1917) to enroll men and women who opposed enlistment in or support of any international war. During this period, Hughan also worked for woman suffrage under the aegis of the Woman Suffrage Party and ran on the Socialist ticket for the offices of lieutenant governor, member of Congress, and US senator (New York State).

After the war, with the cooperation of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Women’s Peace Society (in which she was active), and the Women’s Peace Union, she founded the War Resisters League, which had as its object the enrollment of men and women “who for any reason whatsoever are uncompromisingly opposed to all war” and “have determined to give no support to any war.” In the 1920s Hughan, as executive secretary, worked hard to build up the League, and in the 1930s it participated effectively in activities cosponsored by the Emergency Peace Campaign, the National Peace Conference, and the Keep America Out of War Congress. The League played an important part in the formation of the Communist-front American League against War and Fascism. During World War II, Hughan and the League helped to ensure that conscientious objectors serving in Civilian Public Service Camps were permitted to choose between service in private, church-administered camps or government camps. Two years before the war’s conclusion, Hughan spoke out vociferously for an early armistice to prevent the further destruction of Europe’s Jewish population.

Hughan wrote extensively on pacifism, socialism, and world government, both as a scholar and theorist and as a poet. In addition to her published Ph.D. dissertation, her books and pamphlets include: The Facts of Socialism (1913), A Study of International Government (1923), The Challenge of Mars and Other Verse (1932), The Beginnings of War Resistance (1935), and Pacifism and Invasion (1941). Her writings on organized war resistance and nonviolent national defense constitute important contributions to pacifist theory.

Bennett, Scott H. Radical Pacifism: The War Resisters League and Gandhian Nonviolence in America, 1915-1963. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2003.

Chattfield, Charles. For Peace and Justice: Pacifism in America, 1914–1941. Boston: Beacon Press, 1973.

Early, Frances H. “Revolutionary Pacifism and War Resistance: Jessie Wallace Hughan’s ‘War against War.’” Peace and Change 20 (July 1995).

Hughan, Jessie Wallace. Papers 1870-1998. Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pa.

War Resisters League. Records 1923-1994. Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, Pa.

Wittner, Lawrence S. Rebels against War: The American Peace Movement, 1941–1960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985.