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Before Founding
the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
by Martha Leslie Allen, Ph.D.
Adapted and excerpted from presentation at the "Dr. Donna
Allen Memorial Symposium" held August 3-4, 2001 at the Freedom
Forum, Arlington, Virginia.
Donna was active in the labor movement, having done economic research for various trade unions, including the AFL Metal Trades Department, in 1944-1945, and the Railway Brotherhoods as an employee of the National Labor Bureau in 1948, as well as in 1949 for the Presidential Emergency Board. She had been appointed by President Truman under the Railway Labor Act to hear emergency cases in industrial relations.
In Albany, New York, Donna finished her thesis on collective bargaining under the Railway Labor Act and graduated in June of 1952 with a Masters in Economics. She also began writing her book on fringe benefits. From 1953 through 1955, Donna taught at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations.
Her political activism also intensified during this time. Donna worked passionately on the campaign to defend the innocence of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg and to prevent their execution as spies. In 1953 she worked against CIA involvement in overthrowing the newly elected government in Guatemala. Donna also became active in the League of Women Voters' Freedom Agenda Study Project. She participated in its workshops on such topics as government loyalty oaths and freedom of expression.
Donna moved to Washington, DC with her family of six in 1957.
Peace and nuclear disarmament were of prime importance to Donna. In 1959 she began working with the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE). She joined their efforts to inform the public how dangerous nuclear weapons build-up policies were, and how crucial it was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. She became a member of the national Legislative Committee of WILPF and later the committee's chair, as well as a member of the WILPF National Board.
In 1960 she joined the staff of Vermont Congressman William H. Meyer to assist in the fight he had initiated in Congress against extension of nuclear weapons to Germany. She also worked on his campaign for re-election, writing campaign brochures and fliers, and even made a trip to Vermont to explain the congressman's votes on the nuclear issues.
In the fall of 1961 when the U.S. and the Soviet Union ended the moratorium and resumed nuclear testing in the atmosphere, Donna was among those who founded Women Strike for Peace (WSP), an organization that began with a national and international protest by women on November 1, 1961. Donna led the delegation that day to the Soviet embassy in Washington, DC. Another delegation led by Dagmar Wilson went to the White House.
A journalist covering the delegations stopped at the Soviet embassy for an interview. "I had a question for Mrs. Donna Allen," he wrote.
I have noticed that so many of the nuclear bomb protest stories seem to wind up on the women's pages, creating an impression that the average American male is more concerned about building a fallout shelter than joining the "little woman" in a peace picket line. What do you think about this?
Mrs. Allen said she believed that women have a particular role in efforts to prevent war 'because women are naturally more concerned about the next generation.
"But aren't men concerned about the next generation, too?" I asked, pressing for elaboration. "I can't speak for the men,' she replied with a smile, and that was that."
To combat the efforts made to silence First Amendment freedoms of speech, press, assembly and petition, in 1961, Donna helped to organize a local Washington Area Committee to Abolish the House Un-American Activities Committee. On November 16, 1962 her concern for everyone's right to express themselves and to work with others to bring about peace was delivered in a speech at the National Guardian 14th Anniversary Dinner in New York. "The program of Women Strike for Peace is a single-minded one," she stated.
We stand for an end to testing, an end to the arms race, and for reliance upon the United Nations for preservation of the world it represents. But you know it is a complex world where human survival and politics can be separated only in theory. We have almost as many different political approaches as we have women, and this is wonderful. We respect and we treasure them all. Out of them all so long as they are freely expressed without social pressure against any will come the action we feel is in the interest of human survival. No peace dove can fly if either its left wing or its right wing is cut off. We have been urged, by turns, to do both.
Between 1961 and 1964, Donna, an economist, wrote about the economics of disarmament.
before delivering a paper at the Conference on the Economics of Disarmament
She was a delegate to the annual meeting of WILPF in 1962. She testified before Congress and at national and international conferences, such as the International Arms Control and Disarmament Symposium in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in January 1964, and in December 1964 at the Conference on Economic Aspects of Disarmament in Vienna, Austria. After the Vienna Conference, she went to Paris, France where she joined a 15-nation European demonstration against a nuclear NATO and was arrested. She and the others who were arrested spent some six hours in a French jail. She spoke at that evening's rally, sharing the spotlight with Eve Curie and other notables, before an audience of thousands.
On November 19, 1964, Donna, along with Dagmar Wilson, also of Women Strike for Peace in Washington, and Russ Nixon, general manager of the National Guardian in New York, received subpoenas to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in Executive Session. They were to be questioned in secret in connection with visits they had made to the State Department in 1963 to urge that an entry permit be granted to a Japanese peace movement leader who was scheduled to give a ten-day lecture tour in the U.S. The State Department had in fact granted their request for a visa.
All three refused to testify before HUAC in secrecy and demanded that the press and public be admitted to the hearing room. Their attorney cited appropriate rules and precedents of the House for such a request. However, the chairman of HUAC, Rep. Joe Poole (D-Texas), stated that "because of the nature of the inquiry and on the basis of information it expected to obtain," the testimony should be in closed session. "We've tried to protect everyone concerned from being unnecessarily harmed by some statement (made in public)," he said. Donna and the other defendants all said they did not have any information to give that would be detrimental or derogatory to anyone.
Donna and Dagmar Wilson received tremendous support from across the country. A letter from Dagmar to supporters in Women's Strike for Peace described the effect of that support: "Your flowers arrived by the truckload throughout the morning of December 7 and lined the walls of the corridor outside Hearing Room 226. Not only did they give moral support to Donna and me and to the Washington women who bravely waited during the long day's proceedings (some with babies), but they created the cheerful kind of atmosphere that is anathema to the hobgoblins who inhabit that part of the Old House Office Building." The flowers were sent by WSPers around the country as their "silent representatives" at the hearing.
At a meeting of four HUAC members, the committee refused to grant open hearings and later voted to recommend contempt citations. Donna Allen, Dagmar Wilson, and Russ Nixon were cited for contempt of Congress, tried in Federal court on April 7, 1965, and convicted and sentenced June 4. In early December 1965, Donna began working for the National Committee to Abolish HUAC.
A support group of prominent Americans was established called "Defenders of Three Against HUAC." Several members of the group testified in their trial. After much publicity, speaking tours and media appearances, the conviction was overturned in the Court of Appeals on August 2, 1966.
Donna was involved in the civil rights movement throughout the 1960's and beyond. In 1962 she donated a car to the southern civil rights movement and continued contributing financially - both herself and through sponsoring benefits. Her home became a movement center where southern activists stayed when they came north to raise funds and educate others about their movement activities. Donna was also a supporter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Commitee (SNCC) in Washington, DC. The "movement house" in Washington where she lived eventually became the home of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP), founded by her in 1972. The Afro-Hispanic Institute and the Afro-Hispanic Review were also housed there in the 1980's with it's founder, Dr. Stanley Cyrus, working closely with Donna.
Combining her concern over civil rights and the war in Vietnam, in 1965 Donna wrote, published and distributed thousands of copies of a publication entitled What's Wrong with the War in Vietnam. With photos and straightforward text and quotes, it pointed out dramatically some of the similarities in the struggles for civil rights and protests against the war.
Donna became a national leader in the anti-war movement. She traveled across the country several times speaking in numerous cities. She regularly spoke at rallies on the East Coast. In 1965, for example, she spoke at the Vietnam Peace Parade in New York City and in 1966 at a rally in Philadelphia. As the principle speaker in Des Moines, Iowa, she was quoted in the local paper as saying, "The war is not going to be ended until the silence is ended. . . . Peace is patriotic. Our goals are as high as anyone. The only answer is to speak louder, to increase our numbers." In July 1967, she spoke at an all-day peace workshop for women in the gardens of Dr. Linus and Ava Helen Pauling in California. In October of 1967, speaking in Rochester, NY, Donna is quoted in the local paper as saying: "If I say it honestly, the newspaper may write up a pretty awful story." But she stressed, "If you believe in democracy there is no alternative to expressing yourself honestly." In November of 1967, sponsored by the Toledo Committee for a Reasonable Settlement in Vietnam, Donna visited Toledo, Ohio to speak at a library, a Unitarian Church, classes at the University of Toledo, and at a meeting of the American Civil Liberties Union. In May 1969, Donna and others spoke at a rally for peace and justice in Pittsburgh, PA.
Donna took part in many joint efforts on behalf of peace and justice issues. In August 1965, she was one of 31 individuals who called for and organized the Assembly of Unrepresented People. She was active with the International Days of Protest, Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam, the Fort Hood Three, Vietnam Summer, Tri-Continental Information Center, and the October 21, 1967 demonstration at the Pentagon. Donna was an organizer for the Jeannette Rankin Brigade, held in January 1968, and in June 1968 for the Poor People's Campaign. She worked with the civil rights movement in its efforts to win political recognition for blacks in state and national electoral politics.
Increasing Emphasis on Media Democracy
From 1967 onward, Donna focused increasingly on media democracy issues. In one letter that year to an activist scholar of the labor movement, she wrote: "Who destroyed the civil liberties of the trade unions? America's 'free' press. My theory of civil liberties is that we'll never have them in this country as long as we have a controlled press, because the economic class that controls it will be able to persuade people against their own interests by propaganda, half truths, lies, [and] playing on simple people's simple emotions."
Donna's passion about the issue of media democracy was already well developed.. "After I destroy HUAC," she wrote further on in the letter, "I'm going to destroy the controlled press. Put it under political control of the people. . . . I wish I were working on this now, instead of on HUAC. We haven't even got any good proposals going on how to get our press back and free again. But there are lots of ways possible."
Newly elected to the Board of Directors of National Conference for New Politics, Donna spoke at its major convention in Chicago in September 1967. Several thousand attended this convention. Donna, the only female speaker, gave a talk on the media.
From then on her speeches were all focused on the role of mass media. In addition to the National Conference for New Politics, she gave media-related speeches at peace demonstrations in Washington, the Jeannette Rankin Brigade in January 1968 and at the Peace and Freedom Party convention in New York in June of 1968. " I had come to the conclusion, she wrote, "that even when using all forms of communication that we could devise, and despite great numbers, we still could not match the number of people that the relatively few mass media owners could reach with their information and opinions."
"It was more than clear to me out of my experience that their vastly superior ability to reach the majority of the public 24 hours a day gave them the power to disseminate name-calling and successfully persuade the public not to listen to our information, opinions and facts. Their news stories gave little or no space to the message our activities were trying to convey but a great deal of space for attacks on us . . . Mechanics of demonstrations, numbers of people, police actions, were reported but not our message. These media were not 'our free press"; they did not speak for us or report our news. Our press conferences were usually ignored, and when they weren't the coverage was often derogatory.
In July of 1968, Donna published an article in The Liberated Voice, entitled: "Up Against the Media." In this article she critiqued the media, discussing its concentration in the hands of a few and its effect on democracy. "Only a few thousand out of 200 million people, less than a hundredth of 1% of our population, now have the sole power to reach large numbers of the public with their viewpoints," she wrote.
These wealthy individuals with a monopoly control over the only means of reaching the American people are therefore in a position to persuade Americans that they have been given all the essential facts upon which to make their judgments and political decisions. Other views, they tell us, are only minority views, less important, extremist, or unpatriotic. In fact, to give these other views a hearing at all, they say, is proof of how fair the media are.
This situation describes not a free press but a controlled press -- a press controlled by a handful of very wealthy individuals representing a single economic class. They assume (whether they really believe it or not) that the interests of other Americans are identical to their own. But what are their interests? Profit-making and the control of ideas to maintain the status quo.
Donna documented the concentration of ownership in print, radio, television, and in the news services. She wrote about how the mass media silenced criticism of the status quo and of U.S. policies. "If the only way to reach the majority of the American people is through the mass media and the facts and opinions of large numbers of Americans are either not presented or not presented fairly," she wrote, "then we have effectively silenced criticism."
In May of 1969, Donna addressed a March and Rally for Peace and Justice in Pittsburgh. The title of her speech was "The Mass Media Monopoly." She began her talk by saying "The contest for 'the hearts and minds of the people' is not in Vietnam; it is right here at home." . . .
I asked a woman on the street if she would join our march to oppose the war in Vietnam. And she said, no, if we didn't fight the Vietnamese over there, we'd have to fight them here in the streets of Pittsburgh.
I asked a man if he would join in our call for low-income housing and medial care for the poor. No, he said, he's against socialized housing and medicine because it's the first step to communism.
I asked another man if he would protest the ABM with us. No, he explained, the Pentagon knows better than we do how to defend the country.
I asked a woman if she'd come hear a woman speaker. No, she said, women don't know anything.
I asked a man if he'd come to hear two black speakers talk about the city's needs, and he said, "No, we've had enough crime in the streets."
Where does this misinformation come from? Who told them the lie that we are in Vietnam to defend the U.S. from attack? Who told them the lies that the ABM is a defensive weapon? that low-income housing and medical care were communistic? that some Americans are inferior? Who reports in detail the crimes done by black people but nothing of the crimes against them? Who is keeping America confused and immobilized with misinformation?
The mass media monopoly.
Donna talked about the consolidation of media ownership in fewer and fewer, yet increasingly wealthy, hands. She described the history of the press in America. She discussed how profitable media ownership is and how media networks own other businesses, including those with war contracts. "At what point will we begin to do something about it?" she asked. "I suggest that the time is now."
In 1968 Donna had organized a women's media group called Americans for Equal Access to the Media. She soon realized, however, that she did not want to be working for access to the mass media. She wanted people to be able to speak for themselves in their own media, rather than seeking access to someone else's media. In her experience, men, even those who were her allies, resisted the ideas she discussed and tried to argue with her. She found that women, on the other hand, responded enthusiastically, understanding the need for people to be able to speak for themselves, rather than have others portray them.
Donna had been a feminist all her life, but it wasn't until the second half of the sixties that she consciously entered the women's movement. Her leadership in Women Strike for Peace and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom was a sign of her belief that women had something to say and changes to make in the world. Her involvement in the male-dominated leftist organizations made her realize that even progressive men were not giving women credit for their ideas, and were not ready to treat them as equals. She had gone to the first demonstration of the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City and written for early women's media such as No More Fun and Games, A Journal of Female Liberation. She did not want to be dependent on the male-owned mass media.
Donna obtained a second Masters, this time
in history, and in 1971 received her Ph.D. in that field at Howard
University in Washington. By 1972 Donna was ready to embark on
her life's work fighting for media democracy. That was the year
she founded the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.
© Copyright 2001 Martha Leslie Allen, Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
1940 Calvert Street, NW
Washington, DC 20009-1502
phone: 202-265-6707
www.wifp.org