A. J. Muste Papers on Microfilm

A.J. Muste (1885-1967), born Abraham Johannes Muste in the province of Zeeland, the Netherlands, came to the United States in 1891 when the Muste family settled in Grand Rapids, Michigan. In 1909, Muste was ordained a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, but eight years later he became a member of the Society of Friends. During World War I, Muste's refusal to abandon his pacifist position led to his forced resignation from the Central Congregational Church in Newtonville, Massachusetts.



Muste's involvement as a labor organizer began in 1919 when he led strikes in the textile mills of Lawrence, Massachusetts. He became the director of the Brookwood Labor College in Katonah, New York, remaining there until 1931. Muste served as national chairman of the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), 1926-1929. He was one of the founders of the Conference for Progressive Labor Action (CPLA) in 1929 and in 1934 facilitated the merger of the CPLA with the Trotskyists to form the short-lived Workers Party of America. Muste was director of the Presbyterian Labor Temple from 1937 to 1940. In 1940 he became executive director of the FOR, a position he held until his retirement in 1953, when he was made director emeritus. From 1948 to 1953 he served as secretary of the Ohio Peacemakers, a radical pacifist group. He was also a member of the executive committee of the War Resisters League, one of the international chairmen of the World Peace Brigade, and helped organize the Committee for Nonviolent Action (CNVA), on which he later served as chairman. For several years he was an editor of Liberation magazine.



Throughout his "retirement," Muste devoted his considerable energies to the civil rights and peace movements. In the early 1960s he had given much of his attention to the development of a radical, politically relevant, nonviolent movement. During the escalation of the Vietnam War in 1964 and 1965, Muste played a major role in organizing rallies, vigils, and marches to protest the expanding involvement of US military forces in Vietnam. In 1966, Muste went to Saigon with five other pacifists; one year later he traveled to Hanoi to meet with North Vietnamese leaders to find ways to end the war. At the time of his death in February 1967, he was the founding chairmen of the Spring Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam.