Ethel Tobach

Overview

Ethel Tobach born Miaskovka, Ukraine, USSR November 7, 1921 (d. 2015). American peace psychology professor. President, American Psychological Association committee on Peace, Conflict and Violence. Founder, Psychologists for Social Action, 1968. Active in peace movement, 1936-37; early opponent of Vietnam War.

Quotations

“During the Vietnam War, I did become sufficiently active. . . because I was concerned about psychologists not doing enough about the war.” (A. Rutherford interview, Nov. 13, 2006 p. 11; photo feministvoices.com)

Marcia Ann Timmel

Overview

Marcia Ann Timmel born Raleigh, NC August 7, 1952. Catholic nuclear protester. Communications professor, West Florida University, who quit to join Dorothy Day, Catholic Worker House, Washington DC. Founded Olive Branch Community. Poured blood on Pentagon portico, jailed 30 days, 1981; damaged Trident missile New London, CT, imprisoned for 22 weeks, 1982; poured blood on Trident display at DC arms bazaar, 1988.

Quotations

“This is the most deadly weapon in the world. More than 2000 Hiroshimas are under my feet, I feel weak, powerless. What can I do? With my sisters and my brothers I, an ordinary woman, can hammer this nuclear sword into a Biblical plowshare.” (Kristen Tobey, Plowshares)

Delaney Tarr

Overview

Delaney Tarr born Florida July 19, 2000. Anti-gun violence activist; Parkland massacre survivor. Organizer of Women’s March, 2018.

Quotations

“We are no longer just high school students, that much is true. We are now the future, we are a movement, we are the change.” (Teen Vogue, Feb. 19, 2018; photo zimbio)

“Ultimately that is our goal, to make the world safer, to make our country safer.” (People, Feb. 27, 2018)

Julia Vadala Taft

Overview

Julia Vadala Taft born Governors Island, New York July 24, 1942 (d. 2008). International humanitarian crisis manager; headed US settlement of Vietnam refugees; Assistant Secretary of State for Population & Migration 1997-2001; UN Director of Crisis Prevention 2001-04; President InterAction. to eliminate extreme poverty, uphold human rights, safeguard a sustainable planet and ensure human dignity 1994-97.

Quotations

"We must reach out to the most vulnerable whose lives and resources are at stake."

"NGOs embody the internationalist/moralist approach, with a strong commitment to empowerment, peace, prosperity, and economic and social justice." ("NGOs and Conflict Management." US Institution For Peace, Feb. 1996; photo savetibet.org)

Willa Taggart

Overview

Wilhelmina "Willa" Taggart born OR October 2, 1906 (d. 2000). Maintained 40-year-long weekly vigil against Titan missiles, Chico, CA, 1960-2000; arrested for chaining self to IRS office in protest of Central America war, 1984; lifelong member of FOR. (photo http://bit.ly/yVd1S8)

Mary Burnett Talbert

Overview

Mary Morris Burnett Talbert born Oberlin, OH September 17, 1866 (d. 1923). Prominent African-American social reformer. Suffragist; orator; peace activist; WILPF pioneer. Co-organized Niagara Movement against segregation. Served as Red Cross nurse in France WWI.

Quotations

"[A]ll know that no permanent peace will triumph until all are ready to do justice and give justice to all." ("The Negro’s Right to World Citizenship", The World’s Moral Problems, Nov. 1919, p. 270; photo blackhistory-101.com)

Meredith Tax

Overview

Meredith Tax born Milwaukee, WI September 18, 1942. Feminist; antiwar activist; author and essayist. Published writings opposing the Israeli occupation of Gaza, nuclear weapons, and wars in Vietnam, the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan.

Quotations

“Take war, for instance: the division of labor on most occasions has been that men decided how to fight and women took care of the orphans. A nuclear war won't have orphans; a new job description is needed.” (“Jewish Identity”, March 6, 1983)

“[T]he leadership of women is essential in a peace movement because pacifist men and conscientious objectors are always accused of cowardice and thus discredited.  Such leadership also asserts the intelligence, capability and humanity of women in a war climate that usually turns women from individual people into symbols of the motherland, booty for the conqueror nation, and pieces of meat.” (“Women, Ethnic War”, March 9, 1998)

Elinore Dannenberg Taylor

Overview

Elinore Dannenberg Taylor born Huntington, WV November 26, 1929 (d. 2014). Playwright; English professor; Co-Chair Tri-State Peace Fellowship. Opposed Vietnam War, Contra aid; promoted Nuclear Freeze; arrested at Capitol for Contra protest.

Quotations

"So it goes. You oppose one bandwagon, and suddenly it's 40 years later!" (War Resisters League Peace Calendar 1991, December 2; photo klingel.tributes.com)

Valerie Taylor

Overview

Valerie Taylor (née Velma Nacella Young) born Aurora, IL September 7, 1913 (d. 1997). Lesbian poet and novelist; Socialist; Quaker pacifist; active in WILPF; early protests against Vietnam War.

Quotations

How shall I not be a revolutionary?
How shall I not see
my sister in every woman,
my brother in any man,
my child to cherish in every child?
("Eight Kinds of Strength" 1979; photo Wikipedia)

Sara Teasdale

Overview

Sara Teasdale born St. Louis, MO August 8, 1884 (d. 1933). American lyric poet; pacifist; critic of arms manufacturers.

Quotations

They are making ammunition. . .
They are shaping brass and bullets
That will kill their fellow men. . .
And the murdereres go scatheless
Though they do the work of hell.

“Spring in the Naugatuck Valley”, 1915

There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound. . .
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.

(1920; photo: poetryfoundation.org)

Rini Templeton

Overview

Lucille Corinne Templeton born Buffalo, NY July 1, 1935 (d. 1986). Anti-war artist who supported workers rights and opposed intervention in Central America; opposed Pinochet coup in Chile; opposed Bay of Pigs from Cuba.

Emma Tenayuca

Overview

Emma Tenayuca born San Antonio, TX December 21, 1916 (d. 1999). Chicana labor organizer "La Pasionara de Texas"; Socialist anarchist speaker, often arrested; mobbed, 1939; opposed wars in Korea, Vietnam.

Quotations

"I just have a feeling, a very strong feeling, that if ever this world is civilized that it would be more the work of women." (Jerry Poyo interview, Feb. 21, 1987, Texas Cultures; photo poly usf.edu)

Mary Church Terrell

Overview

Mary Church Terrell born Memphis, TN September 23, 1863 (d. 1954). Black social reformer, spoke in German as only nonwhite woman at WILPF meeting Zürich 1919, and International Congress of Women Berlin 1904.

Quotations

"You may talk about peace till doomsday, but the world will never have it until the dark races are given a square deal." (May 15, 1919 to WILPF Zürich, Autobiography, p. 373, 1940; photo womenshistory)

Peggy Terry

Overview

Peggy Terry born Haileyville, OK October 28, 1921 (d. 2004). Vice-Presidential peace candidate, 1968; community organizer, poor white Southerner civil rights activist in Montgomery bus boycott; member Women for Peace Chicago; CORE protest 1963 led to 6 arrests; SNCC activist, 1966; organizer Jobs or Income Now (JOIN); first Peace & Freedom party’s vice presidential candidate with Eldridge Cleaver, 1968.

Quotations

"It's not only blacks and college kids who want to turn things around. Other working people and young people—we know we're being done the same way. And we don't need any politicians to tell us what we want. We know! We want to run our own lives!" (“All Power to the People”, p. 30; photo bannedlibrarian)

Ellen Thomas

Overview

Ellen Thomas (née Benjamin) born Brooklyn, NY January 24, 1947. American peace activist. Founded Proposition One against nuclear weapons, 1990; maintained Peace Park Antinuclear Vigil at White House 1984-2002. Sentenced to 3 months prison for camping in Lafayette Park, 1984.

Quotations

“Our vigil is dedicated to the elimination of all weapons of mass destruction, as a first step towards peace.” (prop1.org/1601intr.htm#AntiNucVig; photo Proposition One)

Helen Thomas

Overview

Helen Thomas born Winchester, KY August 4, 1920 (d. 2013). American journalist and author; critic of Iraq War and Israeli occupation.

Quotations

"Why does he [the president] want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis?" (Jan. 6, 2003 White House briefing)

"In 2003, the U.S.-Iraqi war, claiming it had weapons of mass destruction and ties to Al Qaida terrorist networks—all lies. The individual invasion has been going on for eight years at a horrendous cost. Thousands of Americans and Iraqis were killed." (World of Progress, April 1, 2011; photo Wikipedia)

M. Carey Thomas

Overview

Martha Carey Thomas born Baltimore, MD January 2, 1857 (d. 1935). Feminist; president of Bryn Mawr College; reviver of Quaker Peace Testimony; co-founder of International Federation of University Women, 1919.

Quotations

"All aggressive warfare. . . is an international crime, greater than any other whatsoever, and that any nation judged guilty of such crime shall be held by us to be an outlaw among nations." (1924 Bok Peace Prize proposal, in Lape, Ways of Peace, p. 151; photo Wikipedia)

Marlo Thomas

Overview

Marlo Thomas born Detroit, MI November 21, 1943. Antiwar actress; co-founder of Ms. Foundation, 1973; awarded Helen Caldicott Award for Nuclear Disarmament.

Quotations

"The fundamental criteria of feminism has been for women to help other women. So it is impossible not to acknowledge—and feel a responsibility for—women around the globe who are living neither free nor safe." (Ms. Fdn. for Women, Mar. 8, 2011; photo by Alan Light, 1989)

Mary Frame Thomas

Overview

Mary Frame Thomas (née Myers) born Montgomery County, Maryland October 28, 1816 (d. 1888). Quaker (later Methodist) doctor. Radical nonresistant abolitionist; prison reformer; suffragist. Founded utopian nonviolent commune, Marlborough, OH, 1841. Editor of women's journal Lily, 1857. President, American Women's Suffrage Association, 1880-85. Raised daughter Julia Irvine, who became president of Wellesley College, 1894-99. (photo spydersden)

Dorothy Thompson

Overview

Dorothy Thompson born Lancaster, NY July 9, 1893 (d. 1961). Internationalist newswoman; founded American Friends of Middle East 1951; founded W.O.M.A.N. (World Organization of Mothers of All Nations), 1946. Opposed nuclear weapons and Cold War. Spoke against Korean War, advocating Quaker peace negotiation.

Quotations

"Gentlemen, we would relieve you of your fears. But first you must lay aside your guns. You cannot talk to the mothers with planes and atomic bombs. . . Then we will show you that the healing power of the world is not where you search for it. . . but in the emotion of the ideal—the unquenchable faith in life, the indestructible power of love." ("A Woman’s Manifesto." Ladies’ Home Journal, Feb. 1947, in Peter Kurth, American Cassandra, p. 407, 1990)

"Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict." (quote and photo Wikipedia)