Igal Roodenko

Biography

Roodenko graduated from Townsend Harris High School in Manhattan, New York. He attended Cornell University from 1934 to 1938, where he received a degree in horticulture. Roodenko was a gay man, and a printer by trade.

He was an active member of the War Resisters League (WRL), and was a conscientious objector to military service in World War II. Roodenko was on the executive committee of the WRL from 1947 to 1977, and was the league's chairman from 1968 to 1972. Early in the war, he was sent to a camp in Montezuma County, Colorado to perform Civilian Public Service in lieu of military service. Roodenko's principles led him to refuse to work, which in turn led to his arrest, conviction, and imprisonment at the Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone. He sued the United States government, challenging the constitutionality of the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940. On 22 December 1944, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit found against Roodenko, and the United States Supreme Court denied a writ of certiorari on 26 March 1945. He and conscientious objectors in six other federal prisons began a hunger strike on 11 May 1946 to draw attention to the plight of war resistors. Roodenko was not released from prison until January 1947.

Roodenko was an early member of the Committee for Nonviolent Revolution, a pacifist group founded in New York City in 1946. Other prominent members included Ralph DiGia, Dave Dellinger, George Houser, and Bayard Rustin. After his release from prison, Roodenko lived in a tenement at 217 Mott Street on the Lower East Side of New York. Rustin rented an apartment one floor below Roodenko, and this proximity, along with the exceptional number of young radicals living on Mott Street and on nearby Mulberry Street and elsewhere in the neighborhood, enabled Roodenko's continuing activism.

In 1947 he was arrested with Rustin and a number of other protestors during the Journey of Reconciliation for deliberately violating a North Carolina law requiring segregated seating on public transportation. At their trial, Rustin and Roodenko were both convicted. Rustin was sentenced to 30 days on a North Carolina chain gang. The judge said to Roodenko, "Now, Mr. Rodenky (sic), I presume you're Jewish." "Yes, I am," Roodenko replied. "Well, it's about time you Jews from New York learned that you can't come down bringing your nigras with you to upset the customs of the South. Just to teach you a lesson," the judge sentenced him to 90 days on a chain gang - three times the length of Rustin's sentence.

Roodenko was arrested numerous other times throughout his life: in 1962 for leading a peace rally in Times Square (his sentence was suspended, as the judge was sympathetic with the aims of the protestors). At other times for protesting against mistreatment of Soviet dissidents, against Cornell University's investments in South Africa, and, in Poland in 1987, along with four other members of the WRL, for trying to strengthen organizational connections with Polish dissidents. At the time of his death, Roodenko was a member of Men of all Colors Together.

In 1983, discussing the difficulties of political activism with a reporter from the New York Times, Roodenko memorably stated that "if it were easy, any schmo could be a pacifist." Roodenko died on 28 April 1991 in Beekman Downtown Hospital in New York of a heart attack. He is survived by his niece, Amy Zowniriw.

Awards

Roodenko was awarded the War Resisters League Peace Award in 1979.