Alice Franklin Bryant

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Overview

Alice Franklin Bryant born Fredericktown, MO May 1, 1899 (d. 1977). Lifelong peace activist; human rights advocate; critic of Cold War; early public opponent of Vietnam War; ran against Senator Scoop Jackson’s militarist policies 1958, 1964 on slogan "Military strength will not win world peace."; teacher in Philippines 1927 imprisoned by Japanese 2½ years 1941; forgave Japan 1946; WILPF, Fellowship of Reconciliation, Friends Service Committee; children’s writer.

Quotations

"Wild horses couldn't stop me working for peace." (Tributes to Peacemakers of Seattle First Baptist Church)

Roberta Buchanan

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Overview

Roberta Buchanan born Uitenhage, Eastern Cape, South Africa May 18, 1937. Canadian poet and professor of English and Women’s Studies.

Quotations

EARTH AIR FIRE WATER
Essential elements, natural sources, re-sources:
Extract, extort, exploit, rape, destroy, kill
Or reverence, worship, conserve the sacred grounds of being?

(St. John’s University Women’s Peace Conference, May 20, 1985)

Christine Buchholz

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Overview

Christine Buchholz (née Bruchköbel) born Hamburg, Germany April 2, 1971. German peace activist. Co-founder of antiwar Left party; Leftist Member of Parliament, 2009. Opposed German arms exports and deployment of troops abroad.

Quotations

“NATO must be dissolved. Security cannot be created with the military but through social and global justice. War hurts hatred and nationalism. That is why the fight against war is closely linked to the fight against racism. Islamic hostility is the new racism and accompanying music of the so-called war on terror.” (christinebuchholz.de)

Pearl S. Buck

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Overview

Pearl S. Buck born Hillsboro, WV June 26, 1892 (d. 1973). Humanitarian; author; critic of US Cold War militarism. Founded adoption agency for Asian children, 1949. Awarded Nobel Prize in Literature, 1938.

Quotations

"[T]he test of a civilization is the way that it cares for its helpless members." (My Several Worlds, 1954)

"Unless women realize their responsibility for the kind of world we must have. . . we shall simply go on having these devastating, heart-breaking, ruinous wars." (New York Times, April 8, 1943; photo Nobel Prize)

Carmel Budiardjo

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Overview

Carmel Budiardjo born London, England June 18, 1925. Human rights activist; founded TAPOL (Political Prisoner), 1973. Imprisoned Indonesia, 1968-71, exiled; recipient Right Livelihood Award, 1995; opposed wars in E. Timor and Aceh, Papua.

Quotations

"I just felt that I had to do something about the people whom I had left behind. I had a very strong sense of a kind of obligation." (Peace News, April 14, 2011; photo Right Livelihood)

Anna Bugge

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Overview

Anna Bugge-Wicksell born Egersund, Norway September 17, 1862 (d. 1928). Norwegian feminist and suffrage leader. Sweden's first woman diplomat; secretary of Swedish Peace Society. Traveled throughout Norway to promote women's suffrage, 1888. Advocated for international arbitration and reconciliation, 1890. Attended League of Nations inaugural session as alternate member, Geneva, 1920; became first woman to join its Permanent Mandates Commission, 1921.

Quotations

“I believe that position of women and children in the mandatory areas to be particularly helpless, and that the presence upon the Committee of one member, who can feel as a woman for other women as well as for children and who will make it her special business to care for and speak for that part of the native population, can be of great value.” (March 22, 1921 to Sec. Drummond, Carol Miller, Lobbying the League, p. 155; photo Wikipedia)

Betty Bumpers

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Overview

Betty Bumpers (née Elizabeth Flanagan) born Grand Prairie, AK January 11, 1925. First Lady of Arkansas; child immunization leader; founded Peace Links as women’s network for peace and to avoid nuclear war, 1982.

Quotations

“Why should we go to all the trouble of protecting the health of our children if we are going to incinerate them?” (Colleen Kelley, Women Who Speak for Peace, p. 131; photo littlerocksoiree.com)

Meredith Burgmann

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Overview

Meredith Burgmann born Beecroft, Sydney, Australia July 26, 1947. Professor; UN development consultant. Australian Labor Party politician; 15-year member of New South Wales Senate; Senate President, 1999-2007. Arrested 21 times, including for running on field of Sydney Cricket Ground during the South African rugby team's Australian tour to protest apartheid, 1971; later sentenced to two months in prison. Opposed Vietnam War and nuclear weapons; publicly opposed Iraq War.

Quotations

"Australia, it seems, has learnt nothing from the Vietnam experience. . . The polls clearly show that this is a war that the majority of Australians do not want. . . They are hesitant about unilateral US action. The Federal Government should not push Australia into an unnecessary war." (The Sun-Herald, Sept. 29, 2002; photo smsa.org)

Verity Burgmann

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Overview

Verity Burgmann born Sydney, Australia September 17, 1952. Professor of Political Science; socialist. Along with her sister Meredith Burgmann, arrested for running on field of Sydney Cricket Ground during the South African rugby team's Australian tour to protest apartheid, 1971. Opposed nuclear weapons; supported aboriginal rights.

Quotations

Decried World War I as “the most pointless war of all time.” (“Workers against Warfare”; photo unimelb.edu.au)

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke

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Overview

Yvonne Brathwaite Burke (née Perle Yvonne Watson) born Los Angeles, CA October 5, 1932. Lawyer; three-term Congresswoman, 1973-9; County Commissioner; marched with Martin Luther King, Jr.; opposed Vietnam war.

Quotations

"Today, women are on the march again. Our impact is being felt in all segments of society. I believe this time our participation in government will be permanent." (Wash. Afro-American, July 27, 1976; photo Wikipedia)

Betty Burkes

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Overview

Betty Burkes born Malvern, OH March 24, 1942. Teacher of peace and nonviolence. Peace Corps volunteer teacher in Ethiopia; Chair of American WILPF, 1997-99; Peace Education Program Coordinator at Hague Appeal for Peace, 2002-05.

Quotations

”Love is a great teacher.” (2007)

“If we don't address what's in other people's hearts and minds, if we don't engage each other in a dialogue, then all the declarations on human rights will not matter. . . If we don't address the things that separate us, we will not deliver what we're after. What we're really after is creating communities that sustain life and do not promote war and death.” (Dec. 8, 2001; Robert Shetterly portrait in Americans Who Tell the Truth)

Catherine Burks-Brooks

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Overview

Catherine Burks-Brooks born Birmingham, AL October 8, 1940. One of the first nonviolent Freedom Riders, May, 1961; imprisoned at Parchman Prison, Jackson, MS, 1961.

Quotations

"I didn’t want to die, now, but I didn’t have any fear of doing what I had to do. I knew what was happening was wrong. And I had an opportunity to do something about it." (May 4, 2011, Tennessean; mug shot PBS)

Frances Burney

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Overview

Frances Burney born King's Lynn, Norfolk, England June 13, 1752 (d. 1840). British novelist, playwright and diarist; described horrors of Napoleonic Wars.

Quotations

On seeing Napoleon on parade: "While all the pomp and circumstance of war animated others, it only saddened me." (Diary vol. III, p. 233, 1802; photo todayinliterature.com)

Dorothy Burnham

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Overview

Dorothy Burnham (née Challoner) born Brooklyn, NY March 22, 1915. Civil rights leader with Southern Negro Youth Congress, Birmingham 1940-49; communist; Sisters Against South African Apartheid; WILPF.

Quotations

“[The Secretary of State] cannot expect to lead the world in democracy if there is no democracy in his own country. . . it is about time that he [do] something to stamp out the Ku Klux Klan and the lynchings in the United States.” (Paris, Aug. 1946, World Federation of Democratic Youth, Sara Haviland, James and Esther Cooper Jackson; photo Labor Arts)

Linda Burnham

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Overview

Linda Burnham born Brooklyn, NY January 9, 1948. Second-generation communist peace activist; Dorothy Burnham’s daughter; active in CORE; friendship with Cuba in Venceremos Brigade 1971; opposed nuclear weapons, Vietnam War, Central American wars, Iraq War; sponsored Redesigning Peace fashion show opposing militarization of fashion.

Quotations

“[The U.S. functions in the world that is a more or less permanent feature, is to throw its weight around militarily, and to be a disrupter of peace in the world. And that because of that, we women have a special responsibility in relationship to the issue of peace.” (Loretta Ross interview, March 18, 2005, in Smith College Feminism Oral History, p. 44; photo Linda Burnham blog)

Lucy Burns

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Overview

Lucy Burns born Brooklyn, NY July 28, 1879 (d. 1966). Most arrested suffrage leader, co-leader with Alice Paul; opposed World War I; co-founded Women's Peace Society 1917; organized Washington suffrage parade; held first peace vigil at White House; beaten and force-fed in Occoquan prison.

Quotations

"Help us make this nation really free. Tell our government that it must liberate its people before it can claim free Russia as an ally." (famous Russian banner after Russia gave women the vote, July 20, 1917; photo Wikipedia from Library of Congress)

Vinie Burrows

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Overview

Vinie Burrows born Harlem, NY November 15, 1928. Actress and playwright. Activist promoting peace, justice, and reconciliation through theatre, focused on peace and disarmament, racial discrimination, women's issues, and economic/social development. UN representative of Women's International Democratic Federation (WIDF). Arrested with Granny Peace Brigade in an effort to enlist, Times Square, 2005.

Quotations

“Racism, colonialism and apartheid must be eliminated and the arms race must be ended if women are to advance.” (Black Enterprise, May 1985, p. 20; photo vinieburrrows.com)