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Stories from AFSC's Past

The AFSC has a rich and varied past that comes to life through the experiences of those helping others and those receiving assistance. These stories from AFSC's archives provide a vivid picture of the committee's mission, vision, and accomplishments.

War and Reconstruction

• The Roots of the AFSC were planted in the soil of conscientious objection to WWI.

• Drawings by children after World War I tell the story of the AFSC feeding program in Europe.

• Nineteen Quakers start a feeding program in war-torn Germany that saves thousands.

• Quakers help stop the spread of typhus in Poland after WWI.

• Quakers meet with the Gestapo to talk about helping Jews attacked during Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass, November 9, 1938.

• Conscientious objectors serve as human "guinea pigs" in WWII.

• Quakers help operate Civilian Public Service camps during WWII to give conscientious objectors jobs in mental hospitals, on farms, and in national forests.

• AFSC staff members serve an impromptu meal to 20 hungry Spanish refugees in Toulouse, France, in 1941.

• WWII workers helped children survive the Nazi Holocaust.

• AFSC staff workers still remember the faces and stories of the Palestinian refugees in the Gaza Strip in 1949.

• Dr. Marge Nelson and a friend spend nearly two months in captivity in North Vietnam.

Social Justice

• When the Prince Edward County, Virginia schools were closed to a defy the Brown v. Board of Education desegregation decision, AFSC helped African American students from the county continue their education, by placing them with host families across the country. Read more about AFSC's commitment to public education>

• Quakers help the pacifist Doukhobors in Russia and Canada.

• Quakers identify racism as a leading cause of injustice in the United States almost a half century before the civil rights movement begins.

• Crystal Bird Fauset worked for AFSC in the 1920s. She was the first Black woman elected to a U.S. state legislature.

• The great poet and philosopher Rabindranath Tagore tours the United States in the 1930s at AFSC's invitation to speak about Indian independence.

• The AFSC reacts to Japanese-American internment during World War II by placing young people in colleges and universities and helping adults find work and lodging nearby.

• The AFSC had many connections with Martin Luther King, Jr., in the 1950s and '60s, and its social action during that time was interwoven with the civil rights movement. These connections led the AFSC to nominate him in 1964 for the Nobel Peace Prize.

• AFSC daisies help avert violent confrontation in Berkeley's People's Park in 1969.

• The AFSC supports the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender communities on groundbreaking legal, political, spiritual, and social fronts.

Economic Development

• Relief to North Carolina striking textile workers in 1929 also worked for reconciliation.

• The first AFSC work camp takes place in Norvelt, Pennsylvania, in 1934.

• Quakers help West Virginia miners make and market furniture during the Depression.

• A lifetime of service started with AFSC Mexico workcamps.

Inside Stories

• What was Eleanor Roosevelt's connection with the AFSC?

• Where did the eight-point Quaker star come from and what does it mean?

• Two myths surround the AFSC's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize.

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