Building a Just and Secure World: Popular Front Women's Struggle for Peace and Justice in Chicago During the 1960s

Prologue 1. Women for Peace and the Revitalization of Citizen Activism: 1960 - 1962 2. One Thing Leads to Another: From the Test Ban Treaty to Multi-Issue Peace Politics: 1963-1964 3. Activism against the Vietnam War and the Dangers of Cold War Anticommunism, 1963 - 1965 4. The YWCA and Older Women's Activism: Women Mobilized for Change and Racial Justice in Chicago, 1965 - 1967 5. Modeling a New Social Vision: A Response to Law and Order, 1967-1968 6. Conclusion: Coming into Their Own: The Anti-war Movement from 1969 - 1972

Amy C. Schneidhorst, Ph.D. has worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Eastern Illinois University and Alma College, USA. She is the author of the article, "'Little Old Ladies and Dangerous Women': Women's Peace and Social Justice Activism in Chicago, 1961-1973," in Peace and Change: A Journal of Peace Research (July 2001) and an active community activist.

"By recovering the decades spanning peace and civil rights activism of Popular Front women, Amy Schneidhorst pounds another nail into the coffin of generational conflict as the defining motif of the 1960s. The label, "just a housewife," will never be the same after this thoroughly researched and fascinating local history of Women for Peace and Women Mobilized for Change and racial justice and the ways that black and white working-class women defied the Daley machine, talked with their Vietnamese counterparts, and protested political repression at home and war abroad." - Eileen Boris, Hull Professor and Chair, Department of Feminist Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara "In Building a Just and Secure World, Amy Schneidhorst has written an exciting book on Chicago women's peace and justice activism in the 1960s. Skillfully using archival sources and oral histories, Schneidhorst shows how women in four women's organizations led local campaigns to advance civil rights and oppose nuclear weapons, the Vietnam War, and political repression by the Daley machine. By demonstrating how middle-aged Popular Front women activists, who came of age during the World War II era, influenced a new generation of 1960s women activists and the women's grassroots peace and justice movements that they led, Schneidhorst reveals important links between the Old Left and New Left. This impressive, well-written, and highly recommended book makes significant contributions to the literature on the 1960s, women's studies, social movements, peace history, and Chicago history." - Scott H. Bennett, Professor of History, Georgian Court University, Former President, Peace History Society Amy C. Schneidhorst's important study provides a new and insightful perspective on female activism during one of the most tumultuous eras in American history...As with any intriguing study that covers a broad topical and chronological span, the reader ofBuilding a Just and Secure Worldis inevitably left