National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia leader Sybil Stockdale with Senator Bob Dole, Ross Perot, and others, circa 1970.

In the early years of the Vietnam War, wives of men missing in action or taken as prisoners were terrified to speak out about their husbands’ plights, according to historian Heath Hardage Lee.

“The military ordered the POW/MIA wives and their families to adhere to a ‘Keep Quiet’ policy,” Lee said. “At the start of the Vietnam conflict, the wives were informed that if they talked about their husbands’ capture, it might negatively affect the men’s treatment in prison and hurt their chances of returning home.”

A grassroots organization that helped turn that around is the focus of an upcoming exhibition being created by the Dole Institute of Politics at the University of Kansas.

“The League of Wives: Vietnam’s POW/MIA Allies & Advocates,” scheduled to open in May at the Dole Institute, will tell the story of the women who founded the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. The organization eventually became the National League of POW/MIA Families.

National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia leader Sybil Stockdale with Senator Bob Dole, Ross Perot, and others, circa 1970.

Lee, of Virginia, the 2017 Dole Archives Curatorial Fellow, is curating the exhibit based on her book “The Reluctant Sorority: The True Story of Survival and Rescue from the Homefront,” due for release in 2018.

“The wives’ weapons were organization, tenacity and their willingness to ditch the very military protocols they were trained to adhere to,” Lee said, in a statement about the exhibit. “Ultimately, these Vietnam War wives quit waiting for their husbands to be rescued by the American government.”

Instead, Lee said, the women did the job themselves with help from U.S. Sen. Bob Dole, among other top Washington officials.

Around the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, the wives came together, held rallies, worked with political leaders and publicly called for priority to be placed on getting their husbands home.

At a rally on May 1, 1970, at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., League co-founder Louise Mulligan said the date represented the international distress signal, mayday. She was joined by fellow League founders Sybil Stockdale, Phyllis Galanti and Jane Denton.

“This is our call, a call of distress for our thousands of sons, husbands and fathers who have been detained brutally for years,” Mulligan said, according to a typed script of her remarks being used for the Dole Institute exhibition. “…Have we become so callous that these men are going to be written off? Our President has said, ‘A just peace is in sight.’ Yet, no commitment has been made to our men languishing in prisoner camps.”

Mulligan shared numbers for missing or imprisoned men — more than 1,500 at the time — and said it had taken the men’s families a year to “educate the world” on the truth of the situation.

Event poster, Appeal for International Justice for American POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia, 1970.

“Do not turn your back on the hundreds of mothers who want their sons returned,” Mulligan said, in the script. “Do not ignore the children who cry out for the love and guidance of their fathers and the hundreds of wives who have grieved for years, some for husbands who will never return! Hear our call of distress and the cry from within the walls of the prison camps — May Day, May Day!!!! Help. Please Help!”

The “Keep Quiet” policy was in place under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Lee said.

Tactics and that policy changed after Richard Nixon was elected in 1968, Lee said. She said the new administration saw the public relations value the wives could provide and that helping American POWs and MIAs would become a unifying cause for the entire country.

Dole was an early and ardent supporter of the cause, and helped boost the League’s national visibility, according to the Dole Institute.

His support for the League is a “little-remembered” part of Dole’s legacy, said Audrey Coleman, assistant director and senior archivist at the Dole Institute. Dole officials learned about the connection when Lee visited KU in 2015 to research some of the Dole Institute collections.

“It also resonates today as a prime example of a grass-roots effort becoming a partnership of citizens and their government officials,” Coleman said. “This transformative partnership changed U.S. government protocol regarding prisoners of war and missing in action — and ultimately, the fate of their husbands.”

The “League of Wives” exhibition is just the third exhibition to be created by the Dole Institute, Coleman said.

It’s being funded by a $50,000 gift from Harlan and Alice Ann Ochs of Colorado Springs, Colo., according to the Dole Institute. Harlan’s late brother Larry Ochs was former Mayor of Colorado Springs and a strong advocate for the POW/MIA cause.

After being displayed in Lawrence the exhibition will travel, Coleman said. It will open at the Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum in March 2018 and at the Virginia Historical Society — home to a collection of League co-founder Galanti’s papers — in early 2019. Each institution will customize the display with materials from its own collections.

When details about the exhibition’s opening at the Dole Institute are set, they will be posted online at doleinstitute.org.