James Peck (December 19, 1914July 12, 1993) was an American activist who practiced nonviolent resistance during World War II and in the Civil Rights Movement. He is the only person who participated in both the Journey of Reconciliation in 1947 and the first Freedom Ride of 1961, and has been called a white civil rights hero. Peck advocated nonviolent civil disobedience throughout his life, and was arrested more than 60 times between the 1930s and 1980s.
Biography
Overview James Peck (usually called "Jim") was born in Manhattan, the son of Samuel Peck, a wealthy clothing wholesaler, who died when his son was eleven years old. He attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a private boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. Even though Peck and his family had converted from Judaism to the Episcopalian Church, Peck was still considered a social outsider at Choate. Peck preferred the fellowship of scholarly intellectuals, and in their company he developed a reputation as an independent thinker. At the same time, he adopted idealistic political doctrines. He enrolled and studied at Harvard in 1933.
While studying at Harvard, Peck polished his skills as a writer and engaged in radical acts that ended up shocking his classmates and forcing him to become the outsider once again. Peck wrote that his mother "referred to Negroes as 'coons'" and he chose to defy her and his classmates by asking a black girl to be his date at the Freshman dance. He dropped out of school at the end of his freshman year when "his alienation from his family and the American establishment was complete".
Peck was married to the former Paula Zweier for twenty-two years. She was a teacher of cooking and author of The Art of Fine Baking (1961) and Art of Good Cooking (1966).Ephron, Nora, "Critics in the World of the Rising Souffle", New York Magazine, September 30, 1968Bittman, Mark, "THE MINIMALIST; Pudding For Purists, The New York Times, December 8, 2004Peck, Paula. The Art of Fine Baking, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1961.Peck, Paula. Art of Good Cooking, New York : Simon and Schuster, 1966 Paula Peck died in 1972. They had two sons, Charles and Samuel.
Peck was critical of both U.S. political parties throughout his life, leaning toward a radical form of democratic-socialism. He thought a Utopian world was impossible, and that there would always be a battle between what he called the "Upperdogs" and "Underdogs." He considered himself on the side of the underdogs.
Peck was a member of numerous antiwar and civil rights organizations, and spent his life as a radical journalist. He assisted the War Resisters League, and eventually became editor of WRL News until the 1980s. He also edited the Workers' Defense League News Bulletin. In the 1930s he wrote a labor column for a paper published by the WRL, The Conscientious Objector.
Beginning in 1938, he worked at Federated Press and reported on union activism and joined the American Newspaper Guild. Peck worked as editor of CORE-lator, CORE's newsletter, from the 1940s to the 1960s. Beginning in 1967, Peck became news editor of WIN magazine, a youth antiwar magazine. At times he wrote articles in numerous pacifist publications, such as Liberation magazine.
Labor Activism in the 1930s Peck's first protest was in New York City at an anti-Nazi rally in 1934. His second protest was participating in the New York City May Day parade that year.
Peck was hired as a deck boy in 1935, and he joined in a labor strike for better food on the boat during his first voyage. Later in 1935, Peck was on a boat that anchored in Pensacola, Florida, where Peck joined the longshoremen who were on strike. Peck claimed the union hall was fully integrated at the time by the striking longshoremen. Peck remained there for two weeks before police arrested him for distributing rank-and-file literature on a boat, marking his first arrest.
Peck helped to found what later became the National Maritime Union, a radical union for sailors and other maritime workers that split from the more conservative International Seamen's Union in 1937. That union grew out of a strike of workers aboard a ship anchored in New York City led by Joseph Curran in March 1936; Peck picketed with the longshoremen for the first time on March 22, 1936, and again from November 1936 to January 1937. Peck later criticized Joseph Curran's transformation from a rank-and-file champion into an autocrat once in power in the NMU.
On May 11, 1936, Peck was arrested for the second time in his life. Police clashed with striking seamen that day, with Peck being beaten and arrested. This marked Peck's first mass arrest, as one of 221 strikers arrested that day. That night they were arraigned, making it the largest group every arraigned at the same time in that courtroom.James Peck" , Library of America, Reporting Civil Rights.
World War II Draft Resistance During World War II, Peck was a conscientious objector and an anti-war activist, and consequently spent three years in jail at Danbury Correctional Institution in Connecticut (1942–1945). While in prison, he helped start a labor strike that eventually led to the desegregation of the mess hall.
During this time, he participated, as did many other conscientious objectors, in medical experiments, especially a yellow jaundice experiment which permanently damaged his liver. Peck viewed it as volunteering to help discover a cure for the disease, and for humanity.Bennett, Scott H., Radical pacifism : the War Resisters League and Gandhian nonviolence in America, 1915-1963, Syracuse, N.Y. : Syracuse University Press, 2003. . Cf. pp.86, specifically, and various on Jim Peck.
World War II Amnesty Movement Peck immediately joined protests to grant amnesty to WWII conscientious objectors (COs) after his release from Danbury prison in 1945. Peck worked with the Committee for Amnesty for All Objectors to War and Conscrption in organizing protests and writing press releases. Peck took part in the first amnesty protest at the White House on October 15, 1945. Peck picketed outside Danbury Prison on February 12, 1946, demanding amnesty, while prisoners were on strike inside. On May 11, 1946, Peck joined the largest amnesty protest until then of 100 people at the White House, while CO prisoners carried out hunger strikes."Conscientious Objection Demonstrators Clash With Police Near Freedom Train," New York Times, September 26, 1947.
On December 22, 1946, Peck was one of 15 activists outside the White House, who managed to get press attention because they all wore black-and-white prison outfits to represent WWII COs remaining in prison. In June 1947, Peck attended another theatrical amnesty rally. A small group staged a "mock funeral" in front of the White House. Pallbearers dressed in formal attire and carried a coffin marked "justice." On September 25, 1947, Peck joined 40 amnesty demonstrators, at the NYC station for the "Freedom Train" - a patriotic train filled with U.S. declarations and documents that ran through 48 states in two years beginning in 1947. Demonstrators once again wore prison outfits, which gained the attention of thousands of bystanders and reporters at the station. Police ordered them to move, but 19 activists, including Peck, refused to move and were arrested. Those arrested won in court, and years later the police chief was ordered to issue a public apology.
On Christmas Day, 1947, Peck joined 15 activists outside the White House, two days after President Truman granted amnesty on solely religious grounds to 1,523 COs out of more than 15,000. This meant Peck's sentence was not removed from his record."Pickets Wear Prison Garb In Draft Pardons Protest," Washington Post, Dec. 26, 1947. In January 1948, Peck wrote in a letter to the editor in the New York Times, stating that 16 other countries granted amnesty to all WWII COs, and the refusal to do so by the U.S. "seriously belies our professions of democracy."Jim Peck, New York Times January 26, 1948.
WWII Amnesty protests continued into the 1950s, but without successfully changing any laws. On December 10, 1955, Peck led a picket of 40 people wearing his Uncle Sam outfit, demanding a Christmas amnesty.
Anti-draft Activism in the 1940s Peck and a small handful of WWII COs led the protests against the military draft in the 1940s. On March 25, 1946, Peck was among nine activists arrested for picketing outside a D.C. hotel that hosted a dinner for U.N. Security Council delegates. Peck handed out literature encouraging people not to sign up for military service.
In 1947, President Truman introduced a peacetime draft in Congress, which Peck protested. Peck worked with Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste to organize a nationwide protest against the draft on February 12, 1947. More than 500 demonstrators burnt their draft cards in more than 30 states. Peck led the most popular action that day, when 15 people burned their draft cards at the White House without any arrests.
Peck worked with A. Philip Randolph, a Black union leader, after President Truman proposed the Universal Military Training Act (UMT), which continued segregation in the military. In April 1948, the WRL assigned Peck to head the Committee on Publicity, which was tasked with printing letters of support for Randolph's call of nonviolent resistance to the draft. The peacetime draft passed on June 19, 1948. Continued protests by Randolph and pacifists led to Truman passing Executive Order 9981, which abolished segregation in the military. This brought an end to Peck working with Randolph.
On June 5, 1948, Peck joined 75 demonstrators in a creative picket outside the White House against UMT. Peck and seven other demonstrators wore red, white and blue Uncle Sam outfits, as they goose-stepped in circles. After the passage of UMT, Peck took on an individual protest at the White House on June 22, 1948. Peck entered the White House in a public tour and quickly chained himself to a banister, and then removed his jacket to reveal a shirt with the hand-painted slogan: "Veto the Draft." This became one of his most famous protests at the time, and it garnered the attention of most news stations. He was interrogated and accused of being a Communist after being removed from the White House, but was let go without charges.
Protests broke out in several cities on August 30, 1948, the first day to register for the peacetime draft. Peck joined Bayard Rustin at a rally in New York City without arrests. Peck and Rustin were arrested on September 3, 1948, at an anti-draft picket in New York City. Both Peck and Rustin received 15 days in Rikers Island, after the judge yelled racial slurs at Rustin. Peck protested outside a New York City courthouse on October 15, 1948, in support of Stuart Perkoff, who was the first person in New York City to defy the Selective Service Act. Two weeks later Perkoff changed his mind, fearing a long sentence.
Peck supported the World Citizens Movement headed by Garry Davis, who objected to conscription and war. WWII COs supported Davis when he was in court in France in October 1949. October 4 was announced as an international pacifist day of solidarity, and Peck was one of a dozen activists arrested for protesting at the French embassy in D.C.
On April 29, 1950, Peck was assaulted by two American Legion members at the third annual Loyalty Day Parade in New York City, for passing out pacifist literature. He did not press charges.