Grinnell Students for Peace
One year before the Cuban Missile Crisis, Grinnell College students picketed in front of the White House.
Earlier that fall, the USSR had resumed testing nuclear bombs, and as one protest participant put it:
“Everyone felt that it could all be over at any moment.”
The students fasted for three days in November 1961, after driving to Washington, DC from their college campus in Iowa.
Telling their story
I am researching these students known to some as the Grinnell 14. Only a year or two into their college studies, they demonstrated against nuclear testing at the White House in November 1961.
While their story is remarkable, very little has been written about these Grinnellians. So, I am using my skills as a writer, illustrator, and researcher to find and capture their story in a nonfiction graphic novel.
What we know so far
One of their signs read “Iowa Students Fasting for Peace,” and the other read “We’re Behind Kennedy’s Peace Race,” referencing a speech he gave at the UN in September.
To get to the capital, they’d had to fundraise with their fellow students and their professors to get the $500 they needed to buy two very used cars—that would be $5,300 today. And as they prepared and then drove, they collaborated to craft a statement that they could each support completely. It began:
“We are a group of college students convinced of the danger of the nuclear arms race. The imminence of this danger has been reflected very graphically in the number of bomb shelters which have been constructed recently throughout the United States. We are making this trip to Washington to fast for three days to demonstrate our concern and show our willingness to work for peace.”
Indeed, they departed for their trip just three weeks after the Grinnell College administration announced their initial plans to convert a campus basement into a fallout shelter, and two weeks after the student government began discussing a resolution that they “oppose a resumption of atmospheric nuclear testing by the United States.”
Although President Kennedy was traveling outside DC when he read about the Grinnell students’ fast and picketing outside the White House, he had them invited into the West Wing to meet with special assistant for national security affairs, George Bundy.
Students opposed to the Grinnell Students for Peace noticed, too. On the third day of their fast, counterprotesters walked in their own circle next to the fasting Grinnellians, and ate fried chicken.
Back on campus, other students were organizing support for the protestors, including a sympathy fast and calling contacts at other colleges to invite more students to support the protest.
Even before the Grinnell students left Washington, students from Bluffton College and Carleton College had arrived to replace them. They were the beginning of over 100 schools to continue the peace fast across the following months. And in February 1962, thousands of students picketed the White House and then walked to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Arlington, VA.
The Grinnell students may be the earliest participants in the student peace movement of the 1960s.
Why I’m researching these students and their time
My interest in these student protestors was sparked by a panel with four of the participants in the summer of 2014 at the annual Grinnell College Alumni Reunion. They spoke about their experiences and motivations, and their lives after the protest.
I was inspired to learn more, and started looking into them.
What I discovered was disappointing: While there are a thousand contemporary newspaper articles about their actions, I have found very few secondary sources about the Grinnell Students for Peace and their colleagues. Any mentions I’ve found so far are in books about Grinnell as a whole, with only a few paragraphs or pages describing the Grinnellians’ work.
The history and study of student protests focuses on the mid or late 1960s, especially around responses to the Vietnam War. These college students, however, were activists years before that. This lacuna in US history feels important to fill.
To complete their barely told story, I am not only digging into existing primary sources and broader secondary sources, but also gathering oral histories from the participants, who are now in their early 80s.
I will shape this research into a nonfiction graphic novel, which I will write and illustrate. I hope that many of us will be able to learn from their incredible story, their influences, and their movement’s impact.
How you can help
You can support this project by subscribing to my newsletter, Finding Out; telling me about a source or an expert whose work you think might be relevant; or even by helping with the research. Right now, I have interviews to transcribe, articles to track down, and student protestors’ contact information to find.
If you’re up for (or just want to learn more about) taking on a task or two, reply to one of my newsletters, and I’ll get you set up with the info.
