World Citizens Association

The World Citizens Association was founded in Chicago in 1939 under the patronage of Anita McCormick Blaine. The Association worked for world community awareness and toward promoting the practice of solving problems from an international point of view.

From the description of Records, 1939-1953. (University of Chicago Library). WorldCat record id: 52247997

The World Citizens Association was an outgrowth of S. de Maderiaga's attempts at founding an American division of the World Foundation. Maderiaga advanced this endeavor with the help of Ruth Cranston of Boston and Ann Morgan of New York. The World Citizens Association was founded in Chicago in 1939 and was financed solely by Mrs. Anita (Emmons) McCormick Blaine. It was a membership organization with fees of one dollar, which entitled members to all the Associations publications. Additionally, members at large, that are those members who were not part of the Central Committee of which the Executive Committee was a part, offered no direct voice in the development of the organization.

The Central Committee, headed by Ray Lyman Wilbur and later by Mrs. Blaine herself, met rarely. The majority of the work of the Association was carried on by an Executive Committee composed of: Anita Blaine (Chairman), Quincy Wright (Secretary), Edwin H. Cassels (Treasurer), and an executive director and other staff. The executive directors were Rodger S. Green (1939), Edwin C. Clough (1940-1941), Henri Bonnet (1941-1943), Jean Miner (1943-1945), and Virginia Roderick (1945-1953) consecutively.

The Association did not advocate a specific plan for world political organization, but rather was primarily interested in arousing an interest in and a sense of the importance of a new approach to international relations, pointing towards the creation of a climate of opinion in the United States that would permit the United States Government to participate more fully in some kind of reorientation of political relations of national states.

In an attempt to increase public awareness around international issues, the Association published various reports and articles and distributed them via a free mailing list that at one time was composed of as many as 150,000 names. The Association also held a conference in 1941, which they had hoped to be the first of a series. The Owentsia Conference led to the production of a report that was eventually circulated widely, and whose object was the examination of the questions regarding a system of international relations.

Like Maderiaga's World Foundation, the Association favored establishing and sponsoring local groups owing allegiance in principle to the Central Committee. Only one group however, the Chicago Group (whose papers are now in the MSS collection of the University), was ever established. The papers of the Association contain much material relating to the Chicago Group.

From the guide to the World Citizens Association. Central Committee. Records, 1939-1953, (Special Collections Research Center University of Chicago Library 1100 East 57th Street Chicago, Illinois 60637 U.S.A.)