America First Pin
ca. 1941
Metal
Gift of Ms. Ida Murphy
MHS Collections
1998 141 0002
America First was an isolationist movement begun by several Yale University graduates who wanted to form an organization in “support of those who feel, as we do, that the policy of the U.S. should be hemisphere defense rather than European intervention.” One of the founders, R. Douglas Stuart Jr., contacted Charles Lindbergh after the aviator’s first anti-war speech in 1939. Lindbergh spoke for the organization for the first time on October 23, 1940, after giving an address at Yale the night before. Over the next few months, Lindbergh gave thirteen speeches on behalf of America First, and his involvement in the organization helped to boost membership from 300,000 in early 1941 to 800,000 later in the year. St. Louis was home to a local unit of America First and hosted a rally at the Arena on May 3, 1941, where Lindbergh gave one of his speeches.
This pin features the official logo of the America First Committee. As the nation anxiously watched the unfolding events of World War II, the controversial Committee used the stars and stripes inlaid within a shield design to protest U.S. involvement into foreign affairs. While Americans have often rallied around the “red, white and blue” during wartime, this isolationist movement used the flag image as a potent symbol of the nation’s willful nonintervention into global politics.
Organized by the Virginia Historical
Society with additional support from the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter
Foundation and the
Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Changing Exhibitions Fund, American. Support
in St. Louis is provided by The Stanley and Lucy Lopata Foundation
This exhibition has been made possible in part
by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Great Ideas Brought to Life.
