American Friends Service Committee

The American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker-founded nonprofit that promotes peace, justice, and humanitarian aid through relief work, advocacy, and peacebuilding.

Quaker relief work during World War I: Humanitarian assistance organized by Quakers for civilians affected by World War I. The committee began in 1917 to provide conscientious objectors a constructive alternative to military service.
Religious Society of Friends: A Christian movement, commonly called Quakers, whose members emphasize direct spiritual experience and peace testimony. The committee arose from the Society of Friends and continues to draw on its peace witness.
Rufus M. Jones: An American Quaker theologian and educator who helped found the American Friends Service Committee. Jones was a leading advocate for creating a Quaker service organization during World War I.
Civil rights movement: A mid-twentieth-century movement to end racial segregation and secure equal rights in the United States. The committee supported civil rights organizing as part of its broader commitment to social justice.
International Committee of the Red Cross: A humanitarian organization that protects and assists people affected by armed conflict under international humanitarian law. Both provide aid in conflict, but the Red Cross has a formal role under the Geneva Conventions.
Civilian Public Service: A United States program that assigned conscientious objectors to unpaid civilian work during World War II. The committee helped organize service opportunities for conscientious objectors who rejected military duty.
Conscientious objection: Refusal to perform military service because of moral, religious, or political convictions. World War I conscientious objectors helped prompt the committee’s creation and early service programs.
Henry J. Cadbury: An American Quaker biblical scholar and peace activist who helped lead the American Friends Service Committee. Cadbury shaped the committee’s relief and peace work and shared the 1947 Nobel Peace Prize.
Internment of Japanese Americans: The forced removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry by the United States during World War II. The committee provided aid and advocacy for Japanese Americans facing wartime removal and confinement.
Mennonite Central Committee: A Mennonite relief, development, and peace organization founded in 1920. It shares Anabaptist and Quaker commitments to peace and service while arising from a different tradition.

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American Civil Liberties UnionRelated: Its pacifist networks overlapped with the wartime dissenters who built the ACLU.