Garry Davis

Sol Gareth "Garry" Davis was born on July 27, 1921, in Bar Harbor, Maine, to Meyer Davis and Hilda Davis, née Hodgkins, whose backgrounds were Jewish and Irish, respectively. He graduated from The Episcopal Academy in 1940 and went on to attend the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University. Davis died on July 24, 2013, in South Burlington, Vermont, three days before his 92nd birthday, having entered hospice care six days prior. He was survived by a daughter from his first marriage, Kristina Starr Davis; two sons, Troy and Kim; a daughter, Athena Davis, from his third marriage; two siblings; and a granddaughter.

Before becoming internationally known as a peace activist, Davis built a career as a Broadway stage actor. He performed on Broadway between 1941 and 1951, accumulating credits that included Stalag 17, Bless You All, Three to Make Ready, and the musical Let's Face It!, in which he served as understudy to Danny Kaye and performed in Kaye's place. He also took on a leading role in Three to Make Ready. During World War II, Davis interrupted his civilian career to serve in the U.S. Army as a B-17 bomber pilot.

His wartime experience, including the death of his brother and the casualties he caused while bombing the city of Brandenburg, shaped his subsequent turn toward peace activism. In May 1948, Davis renounced his American citizenship at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France, declaring himself a citizen of the world. Later that year, on November 19, 1948, he interrupted a United Nations General Assembly session, proclaiming that sovereign states divided humanity and drove it toward total war. His support committee, the Garry Davis Council of Solidarity, was co-founded by writers Albert Camus, André Breton, and Claude Bourdet, Emmaus movement originator Abbé Pierre, and former French Résistance leader Robert Sarrazac, who also joined Davis in founding the World Citizens movement. The committee helped rally more than 15,000 people in Paris to demand that the UN recognize the rights of humanity. Eleanor Roosevelt, in her My Day column, criticized his actions as flash-in-the-pan publicity.

In January 1949, Davis established the International Registry of World Citizens in Paris, which registered more than 750,000 individuals. On September 4, 1953, he formed the World Government of World Citizens, an organization aimed at advancing fundamental human rights. He subsequently established the World Service Authority in 1954 as the executive and administrative agency of that government. The World Service Authority issues documents including the World Passport, which Davis based on his interpretation of Article 13(2) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Davis first used his World Passport on a trip to India in 1956.

Davis remained publicly active across several decades. He ran for mayor of Washington, D.C., in 1986 as the World Citizen Party candidate, receiving 585 votes, and declared himself the World Citizen Party candidate for the 1988 U.S. presidential election. At the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, he issued a world currency denominated in kilowatt-hours of solar power, based on a concept proposed by Buckminster Fuller; these kilowatt dollars are documented as the earliest emissions reduction currency. In March 2012, at age 90, Davis began hosting a weekly radio program, World Citizen Radio, on the Global Radio Alliance. In 2012 he sent a World Passport to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and shortly before his death he sent one to whistleblower Edward Snowden in Moscow.

Davis authored multiple books on world citizenship, including My Country Is the World: The Adventures of a World Citizen (1961), Passport to Freedom: A Guide for World Citizens (1992), and World Government, Ready or Not! (2003), among others.