Step by Step, Rust in Peace: The Quiet Peacemakers of Wilmington College, 1940–1976 (review)

The Friends testimony of peacemaking has long captured the attention of scholars and peace activists alike, so it is not surprising that a University of Cincinnati graduate student examining grassroots activism would turn her attention to nearby Wilmington College. Sharon Drees’ slim volume pays homage to the faculty, students, administrators and alumni of Wilmington who engaged in “quiet peacemaking” between 1940 and 1976. Drees’ work is essentially a case study that considers the varied ways in which Wilmington College fostered a deep commitment to peace on campus and beyond (xiii).

Drees explores three periods of peace activity on campus: World War II, the postwar period, and the volatile Vietnam era. She finds that the peace testimony on campus was fairly muted during World War II—alumni and student soldiers, rather than the school’s conscientious objectors, were acknowledged in the school newspaper and yearbook. Instead, she focuses on three young Friends who were not Wilmington students during the war, but were later appointed to administrative or teaching positions; Robert McCoy, T. Canby Jones, and Larry Gara. Each adopted different paths by which they expressed their peace convictions. These three were key hires in the postwar era, when Presidents Samuel Marble and James Read purposively nudged the traditionally Gurneyite institution toward a more Hicksite commitment to social action (25). Read, in particular, actively cultivated peacemaking on campus and employed World War II conscientious objectors and war resisters as faculty. By the 1960s, Wilmington’s growing reputation as a “haven for pacifists and peace activists” was attracting students from across the United States (28).

Peacemaking was less “quiet” during the Vietnam era when peace activists were joined by antiwar protestors, whose own activism did not necessarily cohere with a pacifist tradition. In 1970, a controversial, yearbook and its antiwar editor created some discomfort on campus and heightened “town and gown” tensions with the decidedly more conservative residents of Wilmington.. However, this era should perhaps be most remembered for the peace walks in which Wilmington College folks participated in 1972 and 1976 and, especially, the opening of the college’s Peace Resource Center in 1975. These represent, Drees argues, “a fundamental return to the Quaker Peace Testimony in which peace must be a way of life” (50).

Drees acknowledges that her work is not an exhaustive study of peacemaking at Wilmington College (56). Areas for further research might include exploring the strains between the community of Wilmington and the college, the impact of the peace testimony among non-activists, and the reason for the college’s subsequent shift from an increasingly national to a more regional campus (51). Even so, this serves as an insightful introduction to distinctively Friends examples of peacemaking in higher education.