ABSTRACT
The American Fellowship, like the British which it succeeded in less than a year, was born from the travail of the First World War. It was founded on November 11, 1915, after Henry Hodgkin had met sixty-eight men and women of like convictions in Long Island, New York. Before 1917, the work was directed towards ending the fighting and helping conscientious objectors, for whom legal aid was arranged after America joined the Allies. Since the first Negro slaves landed in the United States in 1619, some of the worst tragedies in America’s turbulent history have arisen from the racial struggle in the South. In 1919 propaganda for military intervention in Mexico spread throughout the United States. On December 4th Norman Thomas, then Secretary of the American F.o.R., sent a letter to its members urging them to oppose war with Mexico.
