Activism in the Heartland: Local Identities, Community, and The Day After in Lawrence, Kansas

Abstract

In the early 1980s, as the “polite” mainstream anti-nuclear movement grew under the banner of the Freeze Campaign, activists and supporters at the local level strove to achieve much the same thing as the Campaign’s national organizers in St. Louis did. Political efficacy, public support, and the registering of grassroots opposition—however small or insignificant it might seem—was sought in order to mobilize widespread opposition to the Reagan administration’s nuclear weapons policies. Local freeze activism existed in all fifty states, along with additional campaigns on related issues complementing the wider anti-nuclear movement. Many local groups affiliated with the Freeze Campaign in the early 1980s were established peace groups and found the freeze proposal a simple and effective organizing tool. Lawrence, Kansas, was no different. A medium-sized college town in eastern Kansas, it had a history of confrontation between radicals and conservatives, a progressive spirit, and existed in the midst of the nation’s conservative heartland. The major local peace group—the Lawrence Coalition for Peace and Justice—became involved in the freeze movement in 1982, around the same time as local and state freeze referenda campaigns were emerging around the nation. Lawrence’s story might seem typical of local anti-nuclear campaigns in the early 1980s, but like most local stories, it offers a unique perspective on the anti-nuclear movement and its operation in the midst of Middle America.