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This was to be the first in a series of public showdowns that pitted Martin’s convictions against institutional or state powers. Just months before his graduation in 1941, he learned that as an “enemy alien” — as German citizens living in the U.S. were deemed — he was required to register for military service. In England, like other young idealists, he had set out to fight on the side of the left in the Spanish Civil War. But on a train carrying him south to a way station for volunteers, he realized that he couldn’t do it. His fighting would have to take non-violent forms.
As fellow Quaker and professor emerita, Ursula Franklin, wrote in an 80th birthday tribute to Martin, he became a Quaker because he was a pacifist rather than the other way around. “Martin understood more astutely than many Friends that pacifism should not be interpreted solely as an approach to war. Pacifism is a way of life; it dictates the pacifist’s response to power, be it when exercising power or being subjected to its external demands. The orders to kill are, of course, the final and most horrible demands of power but Martin saw clearly how many other demands of power need to be resisted as a public witness.”
As required by law, Martin registered with the U.S. authorities but stated, “Conscience...commands loyalty...to the truth as it is revealed to me....In the spirit of good citizenship...I have registered today in fulfillment of the government’s request....[But] any compromise assignment would imply a bargain with militarism, which I believe to be utterly wrong.” He was classified as a conscientious objector and, with the approval of his draft board, was allowed to serve out the war travelling through rural Virginia testing milk.
 From Rutgers, Martin entered a master’s program in resource economics — his thesis dealt with the soybean — at the University of North Carolina. His thoughts about a career were still evolving. Although the idea of farming continued to be “alluring,” he wrote to a friend, he wondered if he could overcome his “exclusive urban heritage.” His background, he told another, demanded more of him. In the end, he chose the life of an academic and accepted a job as an instructor in economics and rural sociology at a college in Kansas. By now, he had married Rebecca (Becky) Boone in 1943 and they had two sons, William and John. He had been in the country nearly a decade and decided that America had become his home; he would apply for citizenship. In makng his application, he again declared his pacifism. “I do not believe in this country engaging in armed conflict for any reason and I cannot contribute anything to be used solely and directly in furtherance of armed conflict.” In response to his application, Martin was required to appear in a district court; the government wanted to determine his “attitude toward bearing arms.” The only service he was prepared to give, he told the court, was “any relief of suffering, or any effort of a constructive nature which [does] not require entering the armed forces.” His application for citizenship was denied; Martin had not “established attachment to the principles of the Constitution and favorable disposition toward the good order and happiness of the United States.”
With the assistance of the American Friends Service Committee and the American Civil Liberties Union, Martin took his case to the U.S. Supreme Court. On February 20, 1950 in a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court overturned the Kansas Supreme Court decision. Martin, who was in the process of completing a Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin at the time, was now an American citizen. Ironically, his citizenship coincided with his adopted country’s obsession with “un-American activities.” In a letter to friends, entitled, “Thoughts on Becoming a Citizen,” he wrote wistfully, “America has changed so much since 1937 that I have questioned at times if I had any right to assume the role of a citizen of a political state which is rapidly turning more and more towards authoritarian controls.”
Martin would later see the same authoritarian controls in the powerful, right-wing John Birch Society. He denounced its members at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in Los Angeles in 1963. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The Birch Society and other American rightist groups have their origins in the same kind of confusion and emotionalism that led to the rise of Hitlerism in Germany, a noted Quaker sociologist said here Tuesday. According to M. L. Cohnstaedt,...the ordinary followers of such movements have...an irrational fear of the changes that wiser people realize are inevitable.” He began receiving hate calls and threatening messages.
Martin’s Room, continued >
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