Peace Corps

Peace Corps. Created by President John F. Kennedy on 1 March 1961 and headed by R. Sargent Shriver, the Peace Corps became a popular symbol of Kennedy's “New Frontier.” Its purpose was to send American volunteers abroad for two years to work in developing countries in order to cement U.S. relations with the Third World, contribute to economic development, and promote peace. The Peace Corps gave citizens an opportunity to respond to the spirit of civic activism stimulated by the young president's stirring exhortation, “Ask not what your country can do for you—but what you can do for your country.”

The Peace Corps Act, passed by Congress in September 1961, established three goals: “1) To help people of interested countries and areas in meeting their needs for trained manpower; 2) To help promote a better understanding of Americans on the part of the peoples served; and 3) To help promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.”

The first volunteers went to Ghana in August 1961 and were immediately followed by volunteers to twelve other countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Participants numbered 545 in 1961, increasing to 15,556 men and women by 1966. The average age was twenty‐four. Volunteers brought a wide range of professional skills, from medicine to agronomy, but most were college graduates with liberal arts degrees. The largest program, elementary and secondary education, was strongest in Africa, where the corps responded to requests for teachers from newly independent nations. The Peace Corps also focused on rural and urban community development, primarily in Latin America. This activity, Kennedy believed, would supplement the efforts of the Alliance for Progress to direct revolutionary ferment into channels consistent with American strategic interests.

The Peace Corps declined in the late 1960s as U.S. policies in Latin America and Southeast Asia alienated many young people. By the end of the Vietnam War, the agency had shrunk more than 50 percent. The gender ratio of volunteers, roughly equal in the mid‐1960s, also became skewed toward males, as young men sought to avoid the draft by joining the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps survived, however, and continued sending some 6,000 volunteers abroad annually. By the year 2000, over 150,000 Americans had served in 132 counties.
See also Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Africa; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Asia; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Latin America; Sixties, The; Voluntarism.

Bibliography

Gerard T. Rice , The Bold Experiment, 1985.
Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman , All You Need Is Love, 1998.

Elizabeth Cobbs Hoffman