Our WILPF Mother’s Day tribute identified some mothers who inspired their daughters to activism, the way that Ann Reeves Jarvis inspired her daughter to create Mother’s Day celebrations. Passion for peace and justice turns out to be a value whispered (and sometimes spoken into a megaphone) from heart to heart, woman to woman, mother to daughter.

Ann Reeves Harvis was a peace activist who cared for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. She and Julia Ward Howe created a holiday during which mothers would ask that their husbands and sons no longer be killed in wars.

I haven’t yet persuaded my daughter, Riley Elizabeth, to join WILPF. Starting at 10 years old, she’s stood with me at protests and demonstrations, did middle school homework amid the sound of our Des Moines WILPF branch meetings, and in high school promoted Move To Amend in a bright red one-piece bathing suit, heels, and a sash that said “I Miss Democracy.” (She continues to be embarrassed that this photo still exists somewhere on the internet.) Riley is very committed to working on local political, equity, and LGBTQX issues but does not want to join WILPF—yet. But other mothers have been more successful, like Detroit’s Hope Kelley Smith Dewey. Her daughter, Laura Dewey, leads the Detroit branch.

Hope Kelley Smith Dewey and Laura Dewey

Hope became involved in WILPF during the 1980s after being recruited by Fay Krasner. She had already started a successful neighborhood organization called East Side Women for Peace. This group demonstrated and lobbied against the Vietnam War. Twice married, with two sets of seven children (seven in all), Hope was the older member of that young mothers’ group. It must have been compelling, in an age of the draft and daily body counts, to look at your sons and conclude you would do anything to keep them safe and prevent them from fighting an unjust war.  

Hope’s activism began long before Vietnam. She had been a member of the Communist Party from the 1950s through the 1990s.   

An accomplished musician, Hope played the cello in college and later the piano professionally. But for political events and protests, she would play the accordion. She and her first husband even performed music for an event honoring the Communist labor leader Bill McKie. She used to play for the annual “Buck Dinner,” a big fundraiser held by Detroit lawyers. The lawyers had a large hunt event in the fall and then served the deer for community members. This dinner is still a staple in Detroit. They distribute the funds raised to local nonprofits.  

In 1950, Hope was involved with the Stockholm Appeal, a major international petition campaign against nuclear weapons. Hope told her daughter Laura it was easy to get signatures until the day Senator Joseph McCarthy started his multi-year rant about Communists hidden among America’s politically aware citizens. This is when people stopped signing her petition.

Hope’s household was a very busy one. Whenever she had company or meetings at her house—labor union meetings, peace organizing—she would always have cheese and crackers and beer on hand. Hope supported the Farmworkers and Grape boycott. Reflecting on her childhood, Laura said, “I didn’t eat grapes or even see grapes till I visited a friend’s house.” Hope hosted several peace and justice luminaries, including Cesar Chavez and Tawfiq Zayyad, the mayor of Nazareth.

Hope’s activism did not go unnoticed. At one point, the FBI had agents parked outside the house, monitoring activities. They would also intimidate her at restaurants where she was playing music.

Eventually, Fay Krasner recruited her daughter Laura to WILPF, but it was an easy sell. As a child, Laura was often on picket lines or at grocery store grape boycott protests with her parents. Her dad was also an active activist, as he was part of a caucus that fought against concessions the autoworkers union was too often making to corporate executives. Laura remembers making signs, posters, and leaflets using rub-off letters. She brought her activism to college at Wayne State University, where she joined the CARD (Committee Against Registration and the Draft) campaign.

Most of Laura’s six living siblings are active progressives, and three have stayed politically active. When her babies were young, Laura got active at WILPF, attending meetings and getting involved (while her babies were “portable”). Her first assignment in the branch was to take over the newsletter, but she didn’t mind a bit.

“I learned a lot!” she said, laughing. “At WILPF, activists learn how to run meetings, create agendas, do word-processing and newsletter design and sign making. You learn how to talk to people and be persuasive and outgoing. Those are life skills that are transferable in the professional world.”

The next generation of Deweys is also passionate about peace and justice. Laura’s older daughter is active but, like my daughter, keeps a low profile. Laura is obviously proud of her, though. They spent a year together in Guatemala as a “human rights accompanier,” defending rural environmental activists. They were later active in a US-based group supporting injured workers at a Colombian GM plant.

Sarah Kurzman and Vicki Ryder 

Sarah Kurzman was an active WILPF member during her life. She died in 1997 at age 90.

Vicki Ryder of the Triangle Branch also inherited WILPF from her mother, Sarah Kurzman (nee Segal). Sarah was born in 1907 to an immigrant Russian family who had fled the pogroms of the Ukrainian Cossacks one year earlier. The eldest of four, she was determined to have a college education at a time when women were only admitted to women-only colleges. She graduated from New Jersey College for Women (now Douglass College) in 1928. By then, her father had a flourishing business as a shop owner until he lost everything in the 1929 Depression. 

Without other opportunities, the family of six emigrated to what was Palestine at the time. During her time there, Sarah met a young school teacher visiting Palestine for his summer break. The two fell in love, but he returned to the US to resume his teaching position while she remained in Palestine and worked as a social worker for the British occupiers. After two years of long-distance correspondence, Sarah returned to the US and married.

The post-depression years opened their eyes to the intrinsic shortcomings of capitalism. Like so many other forward-thinking folks of the time, they began the work of fighting against oppression, racism, and militarism. Sarah’s husband joined the New York Teachers Union and the Communist Party, while Sarah found her place in WILPF. She threw herself into becoming an outspoken advocate for peace and justice and spent endless hours passing out WILPF literature whenever she had the chance. She made sure that her children would follow that path, too. Sarah named her daughter Vicki for a quick victory over fascism. When Vicki entered college in 1959, Sarah made sure she had a WILPF membership card in her purse. “I’ve been a member ever since, carrying on the work she still would be doing if she were still here,” said Vicki. Sarah died in 1997 at the age of 90.

Jean Linde Wagner and Lucy Wagner Lewis

Lucy Wagner Lewis with her mom Jean Linde Wagner. Jean was the Southern Regional Vice President of WILPF.

Anti-racism in the South in the 1960s and 1970s was dangerous work for another mother-daughter duo in North Carolina: Jean Linde Wagner and her daughter Lucy Wagner Lewis. Lucy helps lead the Triangle Branch. Both got involved in WILPF around the late 1960s through a weekly WILPF vigil in Chapel Hill to oppose the Vietnam War. Jean had not been politically active before joining the vigils, which lasted from 1968 to 1973, as she was busy raising six children with her husband.

By the 1960s, Jean became an active WILPF member and eventually became the Southern Regional Vice President of WILPF.

Lucy remembers her mother traveled a lot for WILPF—to quarterly board meetings around the country, with a WILPF delegation to Northern Ireland during The Troubles, and to Triennial Congresses. “The issue mom was most involved with was political prisoners,” Lucy recalled. “She was part of the WILPF demonstration for Leonard Peltier’s release at the FBI headquarters in Minnesota. She was also very involved in efforts to free the ‘Wilmington Ten.‘” Jean recruited Ann Shepherd, one of the “ten,” to join WILPF after her release from prison.

In the 1970s, Lucy worked on Charles Evers’ (Medgar Evers’ older brother) campaign for Mississippi Governor. 

In the summer of 1979, the KKK was actively recruiting in Greensboro, NC. The Communist Workers Party, which had been organizing in North Carolina textile mills, organized an educational conference focused on how racism was being used to divide Black and white workers. During the rally, a caravan of cars with KKK members and American Nazi Party (ANP) members drove through the housing project where the rally was taking place, shooting into the crowds of protesters and leaving five dead, ten wounded. Jean and Lucy were just two blocks away, organizing at a second site.

 In the 1980s, Jean worked with the Greensboro Justice Fund to draw national attention to the Greensboro Massacre murders. During this time, state, federal, and civil trials ultimately found the KKK, Nazis, and Greensboro police jointly responsible for one of the murders.  

“Mom was drawn to WILPF because it was the one organization that addressed root causes of conflict (poverty, racism, militarism, etc.),” said Lucy. “She found WILPF to be an important political home.”

At the end of her life, Jean gathered WILPF members at her home and insisted they consider gifting memberships to their children. “The best thing you can do for your children and for WILPF is to give them a membership,” she said. Lucy has remained a WILPF member for 35 years and is very active with the Triangle Branch.

Celebrating WILPF Through the Generations

We celebrate these stories, those of women like Detroit’s Joyce Johnson and her mentor Lucy Haessler, and the many other WILPF mother-daughter pairs, including Robin Lloyd and Marii Hasegawa. These women found in WILPF a supportive “faith community” and activist home, where sisters in solidarity became lifelong friends. At WILPF, they felt safe to take risks knowing their WILPF sisters had their backs.

Like WILPF, Mother’s Day has always been about peace. Thank you to those who shared their intergenerational stories to honor their mother’s legacy.