On 10 December 1931 Jane Addams and Nicholas Murray Butler were jointly awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Addams, a social worker, was the founder of Hull House in Chicago and the first president of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. Butler was president of Columbia University and a strong supporter of the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928.

In December 1935 the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW) was organized, with Mary McLeod Bethune as the first president. Bethune was a leading member of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Black Cabinet," a group of African American leaders who lobbied for political reforms.

In April 1935 William E. Borah, a senator from Idaho, successfully demanded that funding for the Emergency Relief Appropriation Act and other New Deal relief efforts not be used to build munitions or warships. A persistent opponent of President Roosevelt's foreign policy and the leader...