Synopsis
One Woman's Passion for Peace and Freedom recreates the public and private life of a tireless worker for peace. Mildred Scott Olmsted (1890-1990) traveled the world, drawing women into the struggle for peace with her hopeful vision and great energy. A protege of Jane Addams, she devoted her life to building the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), the first and most influential international peace group for women. She was an active participant in the great peace coalitions of both the 1930s and the 1960s, and she also played a major role in the ongoing struggle for civil liberties and civil rights. Her colleagues in this work included such figures as Roger Baldwin, Norman Thomas, Dorothy Day, Clarence Pickett, A. J. Muste, Emily Greene Balch, Martin Luther King, Jr., Coretta Scott King, and Eleanore Smeal. Bacon is the first to consider every aspect of the life of Mildred Olmsted, from her birth in 1890 to her death almost 100 years later. She draws on extensive and detailed conversations with her subject as well as primary sources from the WILPF archives and Olmsted's personal letters. The result is a sensitive account of a complex woman with all her strengths and weaknesses unflinchingly portrayed. Through this extraordinarily rich biographical portrayal, Bacon also succeeds in illuminating much that is significant in 20th-century American history: the century-long unfolding of diverse peace movements, with pioneering women of the WILPF at center stage; and the parallel development of feminist thought and women's struggles for equality and justice.
