Peace Corps
The Peace Corps is an independent agency and program of the United States government that trains and deploys volunteers to communities in partner countries around the world. It was established in March 1961 by an executive order of President John F. Kennedy and authorized by the United States Congress the following September by the Peace Corps Act.
The official goal of the Peace Corps is to assist developing countries by providing skilled workers in fields such as education, health, entrepreneurship, women's empowerment, and community development. Volunteers are American citizens, typically with a college degree, who are assigned to specific projects in certain countries based on their qualifications and experience. Following three months of technical training, Peace Corps members are expected to serve at least two years in the host country, after which they may request an extension of service. Volunteers are strongly encouraged to respect local customs, learn the prevailing language, and live in comparable conditions.
In its inaugural year, the Peace Corps had 900 volunteers serving 16 countries, reaching its peak in 1966 with 15,556 volunteers in 52 countries. Following budget cuts in 1989, the number of volunteers declined to 5,100, though subsequent increases in funding led to renewed growth into the 21st century; by its 50th anniversary in 2011, there were over 8,500 volunteers serving in 77 countries. Since its inception, more than 240,000 Americans have joined the Peace Corps and served in 142 countries.
History
1950–1959
In 1950, Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers, proposed, in an article titled, "A Proposal for a Total Peace Offensive," that the United States establish a voluntary agency for young Americans to be sent around the world to fulfill humanitarian and development objectives. Subsequently, throughout the 1950s, Reuther gave speeches to the following effect:I have been saying for a long time that I believe the more young Americans who are trained to join with other young people in the world to be sent abroad with slide rule, textbook, and medical kit to help people help themselves with the tools of peace, the fewer young people will need to be sent with guns and weapons of war.In addition, following the end of World War II, various members of the United States Congress proposed bills to establish volunteer organizations in developing countries. In December 1951, Representative John F. Kennedy suggested to a group that "young college graduates would find a full life in bringing technical advice and assistance to the underprivileged and backward Middle East... In that calling, these men would follow the constructive work done by the religious missionaries in these countries over the past 100 years." In 1952 Senator Brien McMahon proposed an "army" of young Americans to act as "missionaries of democracy". Privately funded nonreligious organizations began sending volunteers overseas during the 1950s. While Kennedy is credited with the creation of the Peace Corps as president, the first initiative came from Senator Hubert H. Humphrey, Jr., who introduced the first bill to create the Peace Corps in 1957—three years before Kennedy, as a presidential candidate, would raise the idea during a campaign speech at the University of Michigan. In his autobiography The Education of a Public Man, Humphrey wrote,
Only in 1959 did the idea receive serious attention in Washington when Congressman Henry S. Reuss of Wisconsin proposed a "Point Four Youth Corps". In 1960, he and Senator Richard L. Neuberger of Oregon introduced identical measures calling for a nongovernmental study of the idea's "advisability and practicability". Both the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee endorsed the study, the latter writing the Reuss proposal into the pending Mutual Security legislation. In this form it became law in June 1960. In August the Mutual Security Appropriations Act was enacted, making available US$10,000 for the study, and in November ICA contracted with Maurice Albertson, Andrew E. Rice, and Pauline E. Birky of Colorado State University Research Foundation for the study.
1960–1969
In August 1960, following the 1960 Democratic National Convention, Walter Reuther visited John F. Kennedy at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport to discuss Kennedy's platform and staffing of a future administration. It was there that Reuther got Kennedy to commit to creating the executive agency that would become the Peace Corps. Under Reuther's leadership, the United Auto Workers had earlier that summer put together a policy platform that included a "youth peace corps" to be sent to developing nations. Subsequently, at the urging of Reuther, John F. Kennedy announced the idea for such an organization on October 14, 1960, at a late-night campaign speech at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor on the steps of the Michigan Union. He later dubbed the proposed organization the "Peace Corps." A brass marker commemorates the place where Kennedy stood. In the weeks after the 1960 election, the study group at Colorado State University released their feasibility a few days before Kennedy's Presidential Inauguration in January 1961.Critics opposed the program. Kennedy's opponent, Richard M. Nixon, predicted it would become a "cult of escapism" and "a haven for draft dodgers."
While others doubted whether recent graduates had the necessary skills and maturity for such a task, the idea was popular among students, and Kennedy pursued it. He asked respected academics such as Max Millikan and Chester Bowles to help him outline the organization and its goals. During his inaugural address, Kennedy again promised to create the program: "And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country". President Kennedy in a speech at the White House on June 22, 1962, "Remarks to Student Volunteers Participating in Operation Crossroads Africa", acknowledged that Operation Crossroads for Africa was the basis for the development of the Peace Corps. "This group and this effort really were the progenitors of the Peace Corps and what this organization has been doing for a number of years led to the establishment of what I consider to be the most encouraging indication of the desire for service not only in this country but all around the world that we have seen in recent years". The Peace Corps website answered the question "Who Inspired the Creation of the Peace Corps?", acknowledging that the Peace Corps was based on Operation Crossroads Africa founded by Rev. James H. Robinson.
On March 1, 1961, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924 that officially started the Peace Corps. Concerned with the growing tide of revolutionary sentiment in the Third World, Kennedy saw the Peace Corps as a means of countering the stereotype of the "Ugly American" and "Yankee imperialism," especially in the emerging nations of post-colonial Africa and Asia. Kennedy appointed his brother-in-law, Sargent Shriver, to be the program's first director. Shriver fleshed out the organization and his think tank outlined the organization's goals and set the initial number of volunteers. The Peace Corps began recruiting in July 1962; Bob Hope recorded radio and television announcements hailing the program.
Until about 1967, applicants had to pass a placement test of "general aptitude" and language aptitude.
After an address from Kennedy, who was introduced by Rev. Russell Fuller of Memorial Christian Church, Disciples of Christ, on August 28, 1961, the first group of volunteers left for Ghana and Tanganyika. The program was formally authorized by Congress on September 22, 1961, and within two years over 7,300 volunteers were serving in 44 countries. This number increased to 15,000 in June 1966, the largest number in the organization's history.
The organization experienced controversy in its first year of operation. On October 13, 1961, a postcard from a volunteer named Margery Jane Michelmore in Nigeria to a friend in the U.S. described her situation in Nigeria as "squalor and absolutely primitive living conditions." This postcard never made it out of the country. The University of Ibadan College Students Union demanded deportation and accused the volunteers of being "America's international spies" and the project as "a scheme designed to foster neocolonialism." Soon the international press picked up the story, leading several people in the U.S. administration to question the program. Nigerian students protested the program, while the American volunteers sequestered themselves and eventually began a hunger strike. After several days, the Nigerian students agreed to open a dialogue with the Americans.
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War notably affected the Peace Corps in both terms of draft evasion and volunteer protests.Joining the Peace Corps became an option for avoiding the draft, either by applying to the Peace Corps and claiming it was unrelated to the draft, or by joining as a fulfilment of the alternative service required to maintain Conscientious Objector status. Joining the Peace Corps secured draft deferment, agreed upon at its creation in 1961, though as the war continued several deferments were not granted and volunteers were forced to end their service early. In 1967, Peace Corps director Jack Vaughn made a case against drafting PCVs to the Presidential Appeals Board, but was not successful in securing deferments for volunteers.
Many existing Peace Corps volunteers stationed around the world protested the Vietnam War, forcing a response from the Peace Corps as a government program. Bruce Murray, a volunteer in Chile, wrote a letter in 1967 protesting the war and sent it to the New York Times, who did not publish it. It was published locally in Chile and Murray's service was terminated without opportunity to contest or appeal, and he was subsequently drafted after being refused Conscientious Objector status. Murray sued in 1969 and won, and the Peace Corps began to tolerate more forms of protest from volunteers, though this was an unofficial leniency that would be ignored if the protest was too public or drew too much attention, examples including volunteers in Bolivia criticising the war in PCV-produced publication Pues, and the 1970 protest outside the US embassy in Afghanistan for US vice president Agnew's visit.