Lloyd, Georgia, 1913-....

Author, peace activist, world government advocate and philanthropist Georgia Lloyd, 1913-1999, was executive secretary of the Campaign for World Government from 1943 until 1990. A descendant of two well-to-do politically and civically active families, the Lloyds of Illinois and the Mavericks of Texas, Georgia was also a proponent of civil and women's rights, labor and socialism. Over the course of her seventy year activist career she was involved with the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee, the National Woman's Party, the Socialist Party of Chicago, and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

The fourth child of pacifist Lola Maverick Lloyd and Chicago Tribune heir William Bross Lloyd, Georgia was born September 5, 1913 in the Winnetka, Illinois "Wayside House" of her paternal grandfather Henry Demarest Lloyd. Her great-grandfather, William Bross, helped elect Lincoln to the Presidency, served as acting governor of Illinois from 1865 to 1869, and was a cofounder of the Chicago Tribune. Her grandfather Henry Demarest Lloyd, son-in-law to Bross, was an advocate for social reform and author of the history of Standard Oil, Wealth Versus Commonwealth. Georgia's father, William Bross Lloyd, ran for Senate as the Socialist candidate from Illinois in 1918, although his political leanings changed dramatically in later years.

Georgia's mother's family, the Mavericks, were an established Texas family whose most prominent member was rancher and speculator Samuel Augustus Maverick, signatory of the 1836 Texas Declaration of Independence, and mayor of San Antonio from 1839-1840. Georgia's mother Lola, cofounder of the Women's Peace Party and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, later traveled with the 1915 Ford Peace Expedition to Europe and worked for peace and world government throughout her career.

Georgia's parents Lola and William divorced in 1916, after which time she and her three siblings Jessie (b. 1904), Mary Maverick (b. 1906) and William Jr. (b. 1908), spent the majority of their childhood in their mother's custody in Winnetka. The children were raised in a home "full of discussion about civil liberties, the rights of labor, peace, and international relations," placing a strong emphasis on pacifism and political activism. Through this initial emphasis the Lloyd children were impressed with the importance of civic duty and taking up the defense of worthy causes. Each of the four would later become involved in a variety of progressive and pacifist causes, from working in labor journalism to serving at a conscientious objector service camp.

Following the divorce of her parents, Georgia attended Winnetka public schools for several years. When her mother's peace work took them to Switzerland in 1926, Georgia studied at the Fellowship School, an institution founded by Quakers in the small town of Gland, near Geneva. Upon her return to the United States in 1928 or 1929, Georgia continued her unique educational path at Marietta Johnson's School of Organic Education in Fairhope, Alabama. The school was best known for its progressive, unregimented approach to learning, encouraging students to pursue their own interests and skills at an individual pace. Following graduation in 1930, Georgia went on to major in economics at Antioch College, where she was greatly impressed by Manmatha N. Chatterjee, a pacifist professor with whom she occasionally corresponded in the decades following graduation.

While at Antioch, Georgia began her career as an activist, working for Alice Paul and the National Woman's Party as a lobbyist for the Equal Nationality Bill in 1934, and working for the presidential campaign of Socialist candidate Norman Thomas. She remained a vocal Socialist throughout the McCarthy era, and appears to have been a party member for the remainder of her life.

In 1935, after four years at Antioch, Georgia transferred to the University of Chicago, from which she graduated in 1937 with a degree in political science. During her time in Chicago she met numerous students through the International House at the university, and became greatly interested in the question of Indian independence. Later that same year, she began to work for the organization co-founded by her mother and Rosika Schwimmer: the Campaign for World Government (CWG).

Georgia worked under her brother William in the CWG Chicago office, where she was responsible for lobbying Congress, letter-writing, and other organizational duties. In 1943, as a result of William's departure for a conscientious objector alternative service camp, Georgia took the reins of the Chicago office and coordinated efforts with Edith Wynner in New York. Following her mother's death in 1944, disagreement between Rosika Schwimmer, Edith Wynner and the Lloyd children over the authority and mission of the CWG led to a schism between the New York and Chicago offices. This division led in 1945 to Georgia's becoming executive secretary of the now splintered Campaign for World Government, run from the Chicago office. She served in this role until 1990.

In her role as executive secretary of the Campaign, Georgia attended the 1945 United Nations conference in San Francisco as an accredited Non-Governmental observer. She served as a delegate to the conference of federalist organizations in Luxembourg in 1946, and to the Montreux Conference in 1947, best known as the meeting at which the World Association of World Federalists was founded.

Georgia also succeeded her brother as editor of the CWG's newsletter World Federation Now, and in 1944 co-authored a book with Edith Wynner entitled Searchlight on Peace Plans; Choose Your Road to World Government. "Searchlight" examined peace plans from the year 1306 to 1944, and generated a notable amount of public interest, with reviews appearing in the pacifist press and papers such as the New York Times, L.A. Times, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. The book's positive reception led to numerous radio and lecture series appearances by Lloyd and Wynner, offering them an opportunity to analyze various peace plans and argue for a supranational world government as the most effective guarantor of global peace.

While researching this book Georgia met her husband, Paul Berndt, a German refugee and mechanical engineer born in Staargard, Germany who had fled Pomerania in 1939 or early 1940. Over the course of their life together, Paul and Georgia lived in New York, Chicago, and Evanston, Illinois. They had two children: Lola Maverick (b. 1948) and Arthur William (b. 1950). Berndt passed away in 1976, and a decade later Georgia married an old friend, M. Mansfield Beshears, whom she amicably divorced several years later.

Georgia's interests ranged from Indian independence to world government, the women's and civil rights movements, socialism and pacifism. She was an avid violinist, playing in the Antioch College orchestra and continuing to play throughout her adult life. Georgia's civic activities included serving on the Board of Directors of the Illinois Women's Agenda from 1985-1988, as program chairman and vice-president of the League of Women Shoppers of Chicago from 1939-1940, as the treasurer for the Chicago Civil Liberties Committee from 1937-1941, and as a life trustee of the Music Center of the North Shore. Over the course of her career she served as a committee member (most often treasurer) for numerous other organizations, including the War Resister's League (1943), the Keep America Out of War Congress (1940-1941), the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (1944), and the Socialist Party of Chicago (1943). In 1989 she and her siblings William and Jessie donated approximately 1.3 million dollars to Antioch College to establish a professorship in peace studies and world law, and in 1990 the school bestowed the Arthur Morgan award to them jointly.

Georgia Lloyd passed away on February 18, 1999.

From the guide to the Georgia Lloyd papers, 1915-1994, 1930-1990, (The New York Public Library. Manuscripts and Archives Division.)