A. J. Muste
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Abraham Johannes Muste (January 8, 1885 – February 11, 1967) was a socialist active in the pacifist movement, labor movement and the US civil rights movement. He was born in Zierikzee, the Netherlands, and became a naturalized United States citizen in 1896.
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[edit] Biography
He attended Hope College, where he was class valedictorian and captain of the basketball team, continuing a tradition of leadership and excellence in his beloved Fraternal Society (OKE). He earned a Bachelor's degree (A. B.) in 1905 and a Master's degree (M. A.) in 1909 from the Theological Seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church (now the New Brunswick Theological Seminary). He earned a doctorate (B. D.) from Union Theological Seminary in 1913. He also attended New York University, and Columbia University. Muste was the author of Non-violence in an Aggressive World (1940).
Muste taught Latin and Greek at Northwestern Classical Academy (now Northwestern College (of Iowa)) from 1905 to 1906. He was ordained a minister of the Reformed Church in America in 1909. In 1917, he resigned his ministry when his pacifism led to conflicts with his parishioners.
Muste volunteered for the American Civil Liberties Union and was enrolled as a minister of the Religious Society of Friends in 1918. Active in labor affairs from 1919, he was general secretary of the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America from 1920 to 1921. He also taught at Brookwood Labor College from 1921 to 1933. From 1940 to 1953, he was the executive director of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, during which time he became an advisor to Martin Luther King Jr.
After leaving Brookwood Labor College, he founded a socialist movement which, through a fusion with the Trotskyist organisation, became the Workers' Party of the United States. Later he renounced Marxism and again became a Christian pacifist; throughout his life he remained an active participant in the activities of the Fellowship of Reconciliation. He supported the presidential candidacies of Eugene V. Debs and Robert M. La Follette, Sr., and also had close friendships with John Dewey and Norman Thomas. In 1957, Muste headed a delegation of pacifist and democratic observers to the 16th National Convention of the Communist Party. He was also on the national committee of the War Resisters League (WRL) and received their Peace Award in 1958. Always a creative activist, he led public opposition with Dorothy Day to civil defense activities in New York city during the 1950s and 1960s.
At the end of his life, Muste took a leadership role in the movement against the Vietnam War. In 1966, he traveled, with members of the Committee for Non-Violent Action, to Saigon and Hanoi. He was arrested and deported from South Vietnam, but received a warm welcome in North Vietnam from Ho Chi Minh.
[edit] Quotes
- "The problem after a war is the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence will pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?" (1941)
- "There is no way to peace — peace is the way."
[edit] Further reading
- Abraham Went Out, by JoAnn Robinson
- Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J Muste, by Nat Hentoff
- The Essays of A.J. Muste, (1967), Nat Hentoff ed.
- "Revolutionary Pacifism of A.J. Muste", by Noam Chomsky, in American Power and the New Mandarins (1969)
- Chernus, Ira. American Nonviolence: The History of an Idea, chapter 9. ISBN 1-57075-547-7
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Biography at Muste Foundation
- Brief biography
- Publications of Abraham John Muste, 1885-1967
- Noam Chomsky, "On the backgrounds of the Pacific War", Liberation, September-October 1967. Chomsky wrote this article "for a memorial number of Liberation which, as the editor expressed it, 'gathered together a series of articles that deal with some of the problems with which A. J. struggled.'"
