Dorothy Detzer

Who was Dorothy Detzer?

Dorothy Detzer was for twenty-two years the National Executive Secretary of the U.S. of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

As a high school graduate, Detzer decided to forgo the traditional college course, opting instead to travel in the Far East and live for a time in the Philippines. Returning to the U.S., she went to live at Hull House, attending the Chicago School of Civics and Philanthropy while working as an officer of the Juvenile Protective Association.

At the end of World War I, she spent a year in Austria doing relief work for the American Friends Service Committee. She later spent two years in Russia as an AFSC famine relief administrator in the Volga valley. Seeing the ravages of war and enduring the loss of her twin brother Don, who was gassed during World War I and died from a lingering illness, convinced Detzer that social work was not enough and that she wanted to work actively for pacifist causes. Upon her return to the U.S. in 1924, Detzer assumed the national secretaryship of WILPF, U.S. Section.

Detzer lobbied for the initiation of numerous legislative investigations, notably one launched by Senator Gerald P. Nye on the munitions industry.