Norma Becker (1930–2006) was a founder of the

Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee The Fifth Avenue Vietnam Peace Parade Committee was a coalition of organizations which coordinated events opposing the Vietnam War in the mid-1960s. It coordinated its constituent groups to stage anti-war parades, rallies, and "peace-ins" primarily ...

, which drew tens of thousands to protest the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...

, and of the Mobilization for Survival coalition. She served as chairperson of the pacifist

War Resisters League The War Resisters League (WRL) is the oldest secular pacifist organization in the United States, having been founded in 1923. History Founded in 1923 by men and women who had opposed World War I, it is a section of the London-based War Resisters' ...

from 1977 to 1983. Born in the Bronx in 1930, Becker graduated from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City, United States. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools ...

in 1951. She began teaching social studies at a Harlem junior high school and received her master's degree in education from

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

in 1961. In 1963, as she said later, she was "recruited into the civil rights movement by Sheriff 'Bull' Connor of Birmingham labama" Appalled by media accounts of Connor's use of dogs to subdue civil rights demonstrators, Becker went South to teach in the summer Freedom Schools. Over the next years, she rose to leadership in the burgeoning movement against the war in Vietnam. In 1965, she helped to start the Peace Parade Committee. In 1970 she was on the working committee of War Tax Resistance, a group that was practicing and advocating tax refusal as an anti-war measure."A Call to War Tax Resistance" ''The Cycle'' 14 May 1970, p. 7 In 1977, after the Vietnam War ended, Becker helped create the Mobilization for Survival, which linked the emerging movement against nuclear power to opponents of nuclear weapons and the wider antiwar movement. On June 12, 1982, the "Mobe" drew some 700,000 people to Central Park, in what

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''NYT'') is an American daily newspaper based in New York City. ''The New York Times'' covers domestic, national, and international news, and publishes opinion pieces, investigative reports, and reviews. As one of ...

later described as "a boisterous and festive call for the end of the nuclear arms race."

See also

References

Further reading