World War II Conscientious Objectors, Their Legacy of Art and Peace: October 15, 2014

The Poetry Center and City Lights Books co-present an evening devoted to the history presented in Steve McQuiddy's book Here on the Edge: How a small group of World War II conscientious objectors took art and peace from the margins to the mainstream (Oregon State University Press, 2013). The book focuses on the men, and affilliated women, who disengaged from the generally universalizing "war effort" undertaken with the United States' direct military involvement in World War II, and by legally declaring themselves "conscientious objectors," opted for relocation to Federal C.O. camps, administered and funded by the "historic peace churches." There they did forestry work and other hard manual labor—beyond which they organized and produced anti-war publications, theater, poetry, and music. In particular, the Waldport Camp, outside Portland, Oregon, became a site emphasizing the arts. Significant participants in the Fine Arts Group at the Waldport C.O. Camp after the war moved to San Francisco and other cities, where they became influential in postwar poetry, theater, publishing and other media, and, as Pacifists, in anti-war and anti-violence organizing.

Historian Steve McQuiddy is joined by two veterans of the Waldport C.O. Camp, Vladimir Dupre and Charles E. (Chuck) Davis, and following McQuiddy's presentation the three men are interviewed by Poetry Center director Steve Dickison, and respond to questions from the audience. The introduction is by Peter Maravelis of City Lights Books, after a welcome from a member of the City Lights staff.