Stephanie M. Riley

“Pacifism: The Making of a Felon”

Researching and Writing History (Robert McGregor, Fall 2011)

 

I utilized a collection of University of Illinois at Springfield oral histories of World War II conscientious objectors, who attended Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, to narrate and explain how each man’s decision to register or protest the peacetime draft affected the remainder of their lives. I concluded that each man’s unique definition of pacifism and the political discourse and cultural environment during the 1940s influenced each man’s decision. Ultimately, the decision to register or protest the peacetime draft sealed the fact of how each man would spend the rest of his life.