National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE)

In June 1957, Clarence Pickett, Norman Cousins, Saturday Review’s editor and Lenore Marshall, scheduled a meeting in New York. Among the participants were representatives from the business world, science, work, literature and church. This group of anti-nuclear peace activists planned to guarantee an international ban on nuclear testing and adopted National Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy (SANE) as its name. They quickly became the largest and the most prominent peace group in the United States of America. Their initial objectives served to stimulate the debate about the dangers of nuclear tests, and, at the same time, this group became a leading fighting for disarmament.

For several decades, their members had been concerned with signing petitions, writing letters and advertisements in newspapers, organizing street demonstrations to pressure American leaders to stop testing and reduce the risk of a nuclear war. This movement was at the forefront of several antinuclear rallies in the 1950s and 1960s and during the Vietnam War, in November 1965. In June 1982, SANE joined the disarmament march and the rally in New York City. However, the organization’s greatest achievement was the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, suspending atmospheric nuclear tests.