Gradually, however, as the Committee “learned though correspondence and personal interviews that ‘negative’ propaganda was unacceptable to many,” the strident tone of these early pronouncements began to soften. The newsletters were restricted to “‘positive,’ non-controversial subjects,” such as “International Friendship at Work” and “Progress in the Field of Labor,” and more obviously anticommunist material was reserved
“for special mailings to carefully selected lists.”23 Increasingly, the women of the Committee devoted themselves to the more constructive project of
W O M E N
155
fostering democratic institution-building in the developing world. This tendency was best expressed in a series of “workshops” held in the United States between 1956 and 1963, to which were invited small groups of foreign women’s leaders “to discuss the responsibilities of freedom, techniques of voluntary activity and civil leadership, and the contributions women can make to their community and nation.”24 These events were complemented by an extensive program of activities abroad, including numerous overseas trips by Committee members; the occasional Committee-organized conference on foreign soil, most notable of which was a 1963
seminar held in Iran; and the posting of field-workers to Africa and South America. Yet, throughout its existence, the fundamental activity of the Committee of Correspondence remained, as its name suggested, the exchange of personal letters between its American members and their correspondents abroad who, by the mid-1960s, numbered as many as 5,000
women in over 140 countries.
To a certain extent, this shift of emphasis signified a return to the sort of internationalist, proto-feminist work that Bauman had been carrying out before the Cold War took hold in the late 1940s. The Committee’s activities appear to have given rise to a genuine feeling of community—of common values and interests based on a shared female identity—which transcended the international tensions of the period. “It is almost impossible to realize that two short months ago we had most of us never seen one another,” wrote Gertrude Protain, a West Indian participant in a 1960
workshop, “and yet in such a short space of time about forty women of varied backgrounds and races could succeed in forming a chain of friendship around the world.”25 One reason for the emergence of this sense of sisterhood (not a word used at the time, but it accurately describes some of the emotions aroused by the Committee’s work) was the extraordinary level of cultural sensitivity shown by the American women toward their foreign correspondents. Special sessions held prior to workshops and foreign trips trained members in discussion skills pioneered by such voluntary women’s organizations as the League of Women Voters.26 After the workshops had ended, participants were sent highly sophisticated ques-tionnaires that evaluated every aspect of their experience; one even asked the foreign visitor what motives she thought lay behind the organizers’
choice of program. “We always shared, we all participated, and we picked up what we felt was closest to us,” recalled Zarina Fazelbhoy, an eminent
156
T H E T R U T H S H A L L M A K E Y O U F R E E
Pakistani physician who had taken part in the Committee’s first workshop in 1956. “Never at any time did they tell us the ‘best’ way to do anything.”27 There was also the apparently inexhaustible good humor and openness to new experiences shown by Committee women, none of whom was in the first flush of youth, when on their foreign travels. Jean Picker, a former UN correspondent who joined the Committee in 1958, was particularly “game,” rounding off a day spent traveling though East Africa along unpaved roads in scorching heat by dancing “with several chiefs.”28
At the same time, it is important to realize that the change in the Committee’s mission harmonized with the evolution of U.S. foreign policy. The Eisenhower administration had realized the formidable communist challenge in the Third World—the Soviet record of rapid modernization held obvious attractions for developing nations, as did offers by Moscow of favorable trading arrangements and technical assistance—and had responded in some ingenious ways. At the same time they encouraged modernization through democratic means, including the training of “leadership groups,” U.S. officials tried to humanize their country’s image by fostering bonds of personal sympathy between the citizens of the “new nations” and ordinary Americans. People-to-People, a United States Information Agency program created in 1956, was an example of this new kind of “grassroots diplomacy,” as was the Peace Corps, an even bolder initiative launched in 1961 by the Kennedy administration.29 In addition to their impact abroad, such measures had the advantage of binding U.S. citizens more tightly into the Cold War consensus at home.