Peace Corps
Based on Wikipedia: Peace Corps
On a chilly October night in 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy arrived at the University of Michigan well past midnight. He was exhausted, running on fumes at the tail end of a brutal presidential campaign. Several thousand students had stayed up waiting for him on the steps of the Michigan Union. What happened next would launch one of America's most ambitious experiments in soft power—and create a pipeline that has sent more than 240,000 Americans to 142 countries over six decades.
Kennedy, speaking off the cuff, asked the crowd how many of them would be willing to spend years of their lives working in a developing country. The response was electric. Within weeks, students had collected thousands of signatures pledging to serve. A brass marker now commemorates the spot where Kennedy stood that night.
But here's the thing most people don't know: Kennedy wasn't the originator of the idea. He was, in a sense, a talented thief.
The Idea That Wouldn't Die
The concept of sending young Americans abroad to help developing nations had been floating around Washington for years before Kennedy seized on it. Walter Reuther, the combative president of the United Auto Workers union, had proposed something similar back in 1950. His pitch was elegant in its logic: train young people with slide rules, textbooks, and medical kits instead of guns. Send them as missionaries of modernization rather than soldiers of empire.
Reuther spent the entire decade giving variations of this speech to anyone who would listen. "The more young Americans who are trained to join with other young people in the world," he argued, "the fewer young people will need to be sent with weapons of war."
Congressional interest percolated throughout the 1950s. Interestingly, a young Congressman named John F. Kennedy from Massachusetts suggested in 1951 that college graduates could find "a full life" bringing technical assistance to the Middle East, comparing such work to religious missionary efforts. Senator Brien McMahon of Connecticut proposed an "army" of young Americans to serve as "missionaries of democracy" the following year.
But the real legislative push came from an unexpected source: Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota. The future vice president introduced the first actual Peace Corps bill in 1957—three full years before Kennedy's famous Michigan speech. The reception was lukewarm at best.
"Some traditional diplomats quaked at the thought of thousands of young Americans scattered across their world. Many senators, including liberal ones, thought it a silly and unworkable idea."
That's Humphrey himself, writing in his autobiography with the rueful candor of a man who watched someone else take credit for his baby.
From Campaign Promise to Executive Order
The idea finally gained traction in 1959 when Congressman Henry Reuss of Wisconsin proposed a "Point Four Youth Corps." Congress authorized a feasibility study with a budget of ten thousand dollars—not exactly a ringing endorsement. Colorado State University researchers were contracted to determine whether the whole concept was even "advisable and practicable."
Then came that fateful August meeting at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport. Walter Reuther showed up to discuss platform and staffing for a potential Kennedy administration. It was there, on that storied Cape Cod property, that Reuther finally secured Kennedy's commitment to creating what would become the Peace Corps. The United Auto Workers had already drafted a policy platform including a "youth peace corps" for developing nations.
Kennedy's opponent, Richard Nixon, was not impressed. He predicted the Peace Corps would become a "cult of escapism" and "a haven for draft dodgers." This was, it would turn out, a prediction with some uncomfortable accuracy—though not in the way Nixon intended.
On March 1, 1961, barely six weeks after his inauguration, Kennedy signed Executive Order 10924. The Peace Corps was officially real.
The Cold War Context
Understanding the Peace Corps requires understanding the paranoid climate of 1961. The Soviet Union was aggressively courting newly independent nations in Africa and Asia. Revolutionary sentiment was spreading. The Cuban missile crisis was still a year away, but the Cold War was white-hot.
Kennedy saw the Peace Corps as a counterweight to the "Ugly American" stereotype—a reference to the 1958 novel that depicted bumbling, culturally insensitive American diplomats alienating allies across Southeast Asia. The book had become a sensation and a source of national embarrassment. Kennedy wanted to project a different image: idealistic young Americans living alongside villagers, speaking local languages, sharing hardship rather than dispensing aid from air-conditioned offices.
He appointed his brother-in-law Sargent Shriver to run the program. Shriver was a dynamo—a man who could charm Congress, wrangle bureaucracies, and sell idealism without seeming naive. Kennedy largely stepped back and let Shriver build the organization from scratch.
One crucial decision: the Peace Corps would have no connection to the Central Intelligence Agency. Kennedy was adamant. In an era when the CIA was running covert operations across the developing world, this separation was essential for the program's credibility. Volunteers needed to be seen as exactly what they claimed to be—not intelligence assets with cover stories.
The First Volunteers
Bob Hope recorded radio and television announcements promoting the new program. Applications flooded in. Until about 1967, applicants had to pass a placement test covering "general aptitude"—basically demonstrating they possessed skills useful for Peace Corps assignments—along with a test of language-learning ability.
The training regimen was intensive: nine weeks at an American university focusing on conversational language, world affairs, and job-specific skills. Then three weeks at a Peace Corps camp in Puerto Rico. Finally, a week or two of orientation in both their home country and their destination.
On August 28, 1961, the first group of volunteers departed for Ghana and Tanganyika (the latter would later merge with Zanzibar to become Tanzania). Within two years, more than 7,300 volunteers were serving in 44 countries. By June 1966, that number peaked at 15,000—the largest in the organization's history.
Shriver practiced affirmative action before the term was common parlance. Women made up about 40 percent of the first 7,000 volunteers. Racial minorities, however, never reached five percent—a reflection of the limited number of Black college graduates in that era and the structural barriers that created that limitation.
The Postcard Incident
Controversy arrived quickly. Just weeks after the first volunteers deployed, a Peace Corps worker named Margery Jane Michelmore wrote a postcard to a friend back home describing her living situation in Nigeria. She mentioned "squalor and absolutely primitive living conditions."
The postcard never left the country. It was intercepted and became an international incident.
Nigerian students at the University of Ibadan demanded the volunteers' deportation. They accused the Americans of being "international spies" and called the Peace Corps "a scheme designed to foster neocolonialism." The international press picked up the story. Administration officials in Washington started asking uncomfortable questions.
The American volunteers sequestered themselves and eventually began a hunger strike. After several tense days, Nigerian students agreed to open dialogue with the Americans. The crisis passed, but it illustrated how precarious the Peace Corps' position would always be—young Americans, however well-intentioned, walking into complex post-colonial situations with all the cultural baggage their nationality implied.
Vietnam and the Draft Question
Nixon's prediction about draft dodgers proved partially prescient, though the reality was more nuanced than his dismissive characterization suggested.
Peace Corps service secured a draft deferment—this had been agreed upon at the program's creation in 1961. As the Vietnam War escalated, some young men applied to the Peace Corps explicitly to avoid military service. Others joined as fulfillment of the alternative service required to maintain Conscientious Objector status.
The arrangement grew contentious. As the war dragged on, some deferments were denied, and volunteers were forced to end their service early. In 1967, Peace Corps director Jack Vaughn argued before the Presidential Appeals Board against drafting volunteers mid-service. He lost.
Meanwhile, many volunteers already stationed overseas began protesting the war—creating an awkward situation for a government program. Bruce Murray, serving in Chile, wrote a letter opposing the war and sent it to the New York Times. They declined to publish it, but a Chilean newspaper did. Murray's service was terminated without opportunity to contest or appeal. He was subsequently drafted after being denied Conscientious Objector status.
Murray sued in 1969 and won. The Peace Corps began tolerating more forms of protest, though this remained an unofficial leniency. Push too hard or attract too much attention, and the hammer came down. Volunteers in Bolivia criticized the war in a volunteer-produced publication called Pues. In 1970, volunteers protested outside the American embassy in Afghanistan during a visit by Vice President Spiro Agnew.
The Peace Corps walked an impossible line: a government program staffed largely by idealistic young people serving during the most divisive war of their generation.
Transitions and Turmoil
Richard Nixon—who had predicted the Peace Corps would fail—became president in 1969. In 1971, he folded the organization into a new umbrella agency called ACTION. The move was widely seen as an attempt to diminish the program's independence and visibility.
Budget cuts in 1989 slashed the volunteer corps to just 5,100 people—down from its peak of over 15,000 two decades earlier. The organization seemed to be slowly suffocating.
Jimmy Carter, by contrast, was a true believer. His own mother, Lillian Carter, had served as a Peace Corps nurse in India at age 70. She called it "one of the most glorious experiences of her life." Carter signed an executive order in 1979 making the Peace Corps fully autonomous again. Legislation in 1981 cemented this independent status.
A footnote on Lillian Carter: she held the record as the oldest Peace Corps volunteer until 2008, when Audrey Thixton from Tulsa, Oklahoma volunteered at age 75 and served in Armenia.
The Darker Chapters
The Peace Corps' history includes episodes that the organization would prefer to forget.
In 1976, Deborah Gardner was found murdered in her home in Tonga, where she was serving as a volunteer. Dennis Priven, a fellow Peace Corps worker, was charged with her murder by the Tongan government. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and sentenced to serve time in a mental institution in Washington, D.C.
Priven was never admitted to any institution.
The handling of the case has been heavily criticized. It raised uncomfortable questions about how the Peace Corps protected its own—and who exactly was being protected.
Evolution of the Mission
The earliest volunteers were often thought of as generalists—enthusiastic young Americans who could pitch in wherever needed. But from the very beginning, host countries requested technical specialists. Ghana, one of the first volunteer hosts, asked for geologists among their initial volunteer contingent.
The Nixon administration, despite its hostility to the program's public image, actually expanded its technical scope. The Peace Corps began including foresters, computer scientists, and small business advisers among its ranks.
In 1982, President Ronald Reagan appointed Loret Miller Ruppe as director. She initiated business-related programs, marking a significant shift in the organization's character. The Peace Corps began to emphasize entrepreneurship alongside its traditional focus on education and health.
Today, the organization lists its official goals as assisting developing countries with skilled workers in education, health, entrepreneurship, women's empowerment, and community development. Volunteers are typically college graduates assigned to specific projects based on their qualifications. Following three months of technical training, they commit to at least two years of service—though many request extensions.
The expectations remain demanding: learn the local language, respect local customs, live in conditions comparable to your neighbors. No air-conditioned compounds. No diplomatic bubbles.
The Numbers Tell a Story
In its inaugural year of 1961, the Peace Corps had 900 volunteers serving in 16 countries. Five years later, that had grown to 15,556 volunteers across 52 nations—the organization's all-time peak.
The decline was gradual, then steep. By 1989, only 5,100 volunteers remained active. Subsequent funding increases led to renewed growth into the 21st century. By the organization's 50th anniversary in 2011, there were over 8,500 volunteers serving in 77 countries.
The cumulative numbers are staggering: more than 240,000 Americans have served in 142 countries since that executive order in March 1961.
What the Peace Corps Actually Is
The Peace Corps occupies an unusual space in American government—and in American mythology.
It is, technically, an independent agency of the federal government. It is not part of the State Department or any other cabinet-level organization. This independence matters: it allows the organization to maintain some distance from American foreign policy, which in turn allows volunteers to be seen as something other than agents of empire.
The mission has always been officially framed around development: helping poor countries become less poor. Critics have questioned whether the real benefits flow more to the volunteers themselves—upper-middle-class Americans getting transformative travel experiences—than to the communities they ostensibly serve.
Hubert Humphrey addressed this directly:
"It is fashionable now to suggest that Peace Corps volunteers gained as much, or more, from their experience as the countries where they worked. That may be true, but it ought not to demean their work. They touched many lives and made them better."
The debate continues. So does the Peace Corps.
The Progenitor They Acknowledge
One origin story the Peace Corps officially embraces: Operation Crossroads Africa. Founded by Reverend James H. Robinson, this program sent American volunteers to Africa years before Kennedy's midnight speech in Michigan.
Kennedy himself acknowledged the debt publicly. Speaking at the White House on June 22, 1962, he told a group of Operation Crossroads Africa student volunteers:
"This group and this effort really were the progenitors of the Peace Corps and what this organization has been doing for a number of years led to the establishment of what I consider to be the most encouraging indication of the desire for service not only in this country but all around the world that we have seen in recent years."
Robinson, a Black minister who created an integrated program sending young Americans to build schools and hospitals in Africa during the Jim Crow era, rarely receives the credit that Kennedy, Shriver, and even Humphrey do. The Peace Corps website now acknowledges his role—but it took decades.
The Enduring Question
Is the Peace Corps a success?
The question itself may be unanswerable. What counts as success for a program designed to combat Cold War propaganda, develop poor nations, provide idealistic young people with formative experiences, and project American values abroad—all simultaneously?
The villages that hosted volunteers have, in some cases, developed. In others, they haven't. Volunteers have returned home with language skills, cross-cultural competencies, and stories that shaped their careers and worldviews. Some became diplomats, development professionals, or politicians. Others simply became more thoughtful citizens.
The "Ugly American" stereotype persists in some quarters. In others, the Peace Corps has genuinely built goodwill—individual relationships between Americans and people in 142 countries who might otherwise never have met someone from the United States.
The program that Walter Reuther dreamed up in 1950, that Hubert Humphrey introduced to Congress in 1957, that Kennedy promised on those Michigan steps in 1960, that Shriver built with manic energy in 1961—it endures. More than sixty years later, young Americans still ship out to villages and towns around the world, armed with whatever skills they possess and a willingness to live differently than they ever have before.
Whether that constitutes success depends entirely on what you think the Peace Corps was ever supposed to accomplish.