first confrontation between police and anti-war protesters of the decade in New York. During the Cuban Missile Crisis that October, the group sponsored demonstrations across the country, including a march in front of the White House that drew 2,000 people. When the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty was signed in the wake of the crisis it was a mixed blessing for the SPU. While they had always been against nuclear testing, so much of its identity was bound up with anti-nuclear war activism that it struggled to find a new footing. Furthermore it was undermined by the factional struggles within the YPSL between the Shachtmanite "realignment tendency" -- which favored socialist entry into the Democratic party—and the more non-electoral "labor party tendency" led by Mike Parker. The Shachtmanites tried to dilute the labor party tendency's control of SPU by urging a merger with Student SANE, but this fell through. Debates among the YPSLs over when, if ever, to support peace candidates and questions over foreign policy consumed the top leadership, and the organization dissolved in the spring of 1964. A second incarnation of the Student Peace Union was formed in the fall of 1964 by some of the young SPU members and David McReynolds. While not very prominent nationally, it had chapters on a few campuses not otherwise known for New Left activism - Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, St. Peter's College, Idaho State University and Rocky Mountain College. It merged with the Campus Americans for Democratic Action to form the Independent Students' Union in 1967 Papers of the Student Peace Union are located in the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. References Publications The Pacifist Ethic and Humanism by Philip Altbach [Chicago : Student Peace Union, 1960 The Youth Peace Corps and the Cold War by Michael Parker [Chicago : Student Peace Union, 1961 Program Statement of the 1961 National Convention of the Student Peace Union. Chicago: The Union, 1961 SPU Organizer's Handbook Chicago: The Union, 1961 Student Peace Union Chicago: The Union, 1962 Berlin: a Statement Chicago: The Union, 1962 Minutes of the Student Peace Union National Convention, April 27–29, 1962, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio. [Ohio? : The Union, 1962 Feiffer on Vietnam by Jules Feiffer New York : Student Peace Union, 1967 Bertrand Russell on the War in Vietnam [Bronx, N.Y.] : The Union, 1963 Songs for Peace; 100 Songs of the Peace Movement. New York, Oak Publications, 1966