Beverly Johnson Biehr

Casualties of Peacemaking Beverly Johnson Biehr

Something important was about to happen. You could feel it in the air and I was right in the middle of the 1968 political firestorm. I taught summer school in Major Daley's Peace Corp program which was intended to keep inner city kids off the streets. By design, it provided tools of empowerment to Latino and Black high schoolers to learn about the political system and ways to effect peaceful change. When Chicago hosted the Democratic National Convention, it was Corp's young teachers and pastors' turn to learn about radical empowerment and political discontent. The business of the sixties is still unfinished, but our legacy, 'How to protest war' and 'How to do peacemaking' remains a good foundation for the co-existence of peace and justice. We were just regular young people, but we heralded change by creating new paths toward equality in race relationships and learning to become peacemakers in Chicago and throughout the world. Winner of a Royal Palm Literary Award 2016, Florida Writers Association.