American Museum of Peace Explores Peace

American Museum of Peace

The American Museum of Peace (AMP) honors the intention for peace that has been central to the vision of America from the beginning, an intention for peace that is ever-so-critical today. Never before have we been so perfectly presented with the undeniable truth that all life is one interconnected, interdependent whole.

AMP finds the good and builds on it, celebrating the high ideals of America’s peacemakers, their commitment to life, to liberty of conscience, to freedom and justice; those peacemakers who lived and worked to fulfill and extend the best that has come before us and the promise of America’s founding.

Active and influential in their own spheres, these men and women of conscience, compassion and peace understood that peace is multi-dimensional: a condition experienced by an individual in harmony with conscience, a dynamic resulting in right relationship with another and a cornerstone of America’s founding, existing as a goal from the beginning and never absent from that day to this.

AMP presents their stories, the dilemmas they faced, the lessons they learned and taught that we might learn from their example, build on the good that has come before us and form a more perfect union and a more peaceful world.

AMP explores the interconnected, interdependent nature of reality from the perspective of various disciplines, inviting visitors to consider the ancient wisdom texts, the philosophic, religious, and metaphysical teachings in light of scientific discoveries and contemporary concerns.

AMP is a place to explore the attitudes and attributes of peace, a place that extols the principles and practices that foster peace; a place that encourages us to see the opportunities for peace that exist within and around us, reminding us that peace is ours to choose – NOW.

Incorporated in the District of Columbia and registered as an educational 501(c)(3) organization, the American Museum of Peace (AMP) Inc. is a museum-in-the-making that is actively researching America’s peace history, sponsoring special programs in the DC metro area, seeking support, developing its online presence and establishing a sure foundation for the museum. As it grows AMP will seek a larger physical location in our nation’s capital where it can create and feature core, traveling and special exhibits, offer workshops, activities and programs, develop partnerships and serve as a national and community resource:

To honor those who have lived to fulfill and extend the inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness;
To extol the principles and practices that foster compassion, cooperation, civility and peace;
To kindle a desire to foster peace at home and around the world;
To advance the possibility of peace for current and future generations.

This website, AMPeace.org, provides a glimpse of the vision and an introduction to the scope of exhibits and programs offered at the American Museum of Peace (AMP).

AMP needs your support. Every donation is vital towards sustaining AMP’s growth and development. Each donation makes it possible for AMP to continue the research, organizational, web, program and exhibit development necessary to establish AMP as a significant museum presence in Washington, DC, one that draws on America’s rich and diverse peace history to create exhibits and programs in DC, on the AMPeace.org website and for special features and traveling exhibits.

Your tax-deductible contribution will help to establish AMP in our nation’s Capital where local, national and international visitors can remember and celebrate those who lived and labored to uphold and extend those principles of peace that are so vital to our nation and to the world, a place where each can reflect on the attitudes and attributes that promote peace that we might rededicate ourselves to a more perfect union and a more peaceful world.

Make your tax-deductible contribution to AMP via PayPal: or mail your contribution to: American Museum of Peace, The Towers #1106west, 4201 Cathedral Avenue NW, Washington DC, 20016.

Hiawatha Wampum Belt (cir. 1142 - 1451)

This belt, named after the Great Peacemaker’s helper Hiawatha, records a time when the Seneca, Cayuga, Onondaga, Oneida, and Mohawk nations buried their weapons of war under the roots of a very tall evergreen tree to live in peace. Each square represents a nation and the line connects each nation in peace:

"Into the depths of the earth, down into the deep under earth currents of water flowing into unknown regions, we cast all weapons of strife. We bury them from sight forever and plant again the tree. Thus this wall of Great Peace be established and hostilities shall no longer be known among the Five Nations but only peace to a united people."
Benjamin Rush (1745 - 1813)

Physician, humanitarian, educator, signer of the Declaration of Independence, social reformer and advocate for establishing a U.S. Department of Peace as part of the U.S. cabinet.

"The American war is over, but this is far from the case with the American Revolution. Nothing but the first act of the great drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government; and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government."
Thomas Jefferson (1743 - 1826)

Speaking in 1793 as the first U.S. Secretary of State under President Washington.

“The Moral duties which exist between individual and individual in a nature accompany them into a state of society and the aggregate of the duties of all the individuals composing the society constitutes the duties of that society towards any other; so that between society and society the same moral duties exist as did between the individuals composing them while in an unassociated state, their maker not having released them from those duties in their forming themselves into a nation."
Sojourner Truth (1797 - 1883)

Preacher, advocate for the abolition of slavery and women's rights.

"Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God?

Who made mine black? Was it not the same God?

Am I to blame therefore because my skin is black?

Does it not cast a reproach on our Maker to despise a part of His children because He has been pleased to give them a black skin?"
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

Ordained minister, lecturer, essayist, poet and philosopher

"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles."
Jane Addams (1860 - 1935)

Sociologist, author, advocate for peace and social reforms and the recipient of the 1931 Nobel Peace Prize shared that year with Nicholas Murray Butler.

"The lessons of great men are lost unless they reinforce upon our minds the highest demands which we make upon ourselves…They are lost unless they drive our sluggish wills forward in the direction of our highest ideals."
I am only one, but still I am one.

"I cannot do everything, but still I can do something.

I will not refuse to do something I can do."

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

American author, political activist, and lecturer
Abraham Heschel (1907 - 1972)

Jewish scholar, theologian, philosopher, professor of ethics, humanitarian and advocate for peace, social justice, civil & human rights.

"A person is not just a specimen of the species called Homosapiens. He is all of humanity in one, and whenever one man is hurt, we are all injured."
Fannie Lou Hamer (1917 - 1977)

American voting rights activist, civil rights leader and field organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the first African-American to be seated as a party delegate at a national political party convention.

"We’re doing something that will not only free the black man in Mississippi but hopefully will free the white one as well. No man is an island."
"My own experience of human unity was in Quaker meeting for worship in California just after visiting Japanese American friends at Tanforan Racetrack, where after Pearl Harbor, they had been taken from Palo Alto, CA, before being sent to an internment camp in Wyoming. We had to visit our friends through barbed wire. They were staying in horse stalls.

"Later, in Meeting, I was unbearably saddened, and felt tremendous kinship with my Japanese American friends, and a feeling of union and love with all humanity."

Irwin Abrams (1914 - 2010)

Educator, scholar, author, humanitarian, and Nobel Peace historian.
Mattie Stepanek (1990 - 2004)

Poet, published author, humanitarian, advocate for peace

"We must learn peace and teach peace so that we can be peace and live in peace."

"Peace is ours to choose. Choose peace."
Elise Boulding (1920 - 2010)

Sociologist, educator and proponent for Peace & Conflict Resolution academic programs.

“A culture of peace really depends on identifying and developing these skills in our local communities, in our schools...We need great clarity of mind, keen powers of observation, good listening skills, but most of all we need a kind of grounding in what it means to be human on this planet. What is our relationship with all living things?

"How do we become what humans could become? How can we grow in our humanity? It all depends on what we can do in ourselves, as much as on what we can do in the world around us."
Pete Seeger (1919 - 2014)

American folk singer, songwriter, humanitarian, environmentalist, peace, human and civil rights activist.

“If there’s something wrong, speak up!"
Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)

Author, poet, essayist, dancer, singer, actress, producer, civil rights activist, humanitarian.

"Good done anywhere is good done everywhere.

"For a change, start by speaking to people rather than walking by them like they're stones that don't matter.

"As long as you're breathing, it's never too late to do some good."