April 7, 2025 • 43 mins
The draft board raids were part of an antiwar movement, largely grounded in Catholic religious convictions, that spanned almost four years. Part one covers the basic context of the Vietnam War and why the U.S. was involved in the first place, and the earliest raids on draft boards.
Research:
- "Statement: the Boston Eight" Newsletter. ULS Digital Collections. https://digital.library.pitt.edu/islandora/object/pitt%3A31735058194170
- “Draftees ‘Lost’ in Raids Immune for January.” Boston Globe. 12/10/1969.
- “Draftees ‘Lost’ in Raids Immune for January.” The Boston Globe. 12/10/1969.
- “Hardy Rites Tomorrow.” Camden Courier-Post. 10/4/1971.
- Arnold, Hillel. “Draft Board Raids.” https://hillelarnold.com/draft-board-raids/
- Associated Press. “Testify FBI Had Role in N.J. Break-in.” De Moines Register. 5/21/1973.
- Astor, Maggie. “Their Protest Helped End the Draft. 50 Years Later, It’s Still Controversial.” New York Times. 5/19/2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/19/us/catonsville-nine-anniversary.html
- Berrigan, Frida. “50 years later, the spirit of the Catonsville Nine lives on.” Waging Nonviolence. 5/16/2018. https://wagingnonviolence.org/2018/05/catonsville-nine-50-years-later/
- Cassie, Ron. “Trial by Fire.” Baltimore. May 2018. https://www.baltimoremagazine.com/section/historypolitics/50-years-ago-catonsville-nine-sparked-national-wave-of-vietnam-war-resistance/
- Dear, John. “The Camden 28.” National Catholic Reporter. 9/18/2007. https://www.ncronline.org/blogs/road-peace/camden-28
- Enoch Pratt Free Library. “Fire and Faith: The Cantonville Nine File.” 2005. http://c9.digitalmaryland.org/
- Fisher, James T. “Debating 'The Camden 28': A scholar and an activist discuss a new film about the Catholic Left.” America: The Jesuit Review. 9/17/2007. https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/625/100/debating-camden-28
- Fisher, James T. “Debating 'The Camden 28': Activist nuns, punk rock and the demise of the Catholic Left.” America: The Jesuit Review. 9/17/2007. https://www.americamagazine.org/issue/625/100/debating-camden-28-0
- Friedman, Jason. “Draft Card Mutilation Act of 1965.” Free Speech Center. 7/2/2024. https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/draft-card-mutilation-act-of-1965/
- Giacchino, Anthony, director. “Camden 28.” PBS Point of View. 2007.
- Gilette, Howard Jr. “Camden, New Jersey.” The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia. https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/camden-new-jersey/
- Greenberg, Kyrie. “Camden 28 revisit court where they were tried for ’71 break-in to protest Vietnam War.” WHYY. 12/6/2018. https://whyy.org/articles/camden-28-revisit-court-where-they-were-tried-for-71-break-in-to-protest-vietnam-war/
- Hammond, Linda C. “FBI Says Informer Was Paid $7500.” Courier-Post. 5/30/1973.
- Hardy, Robert. “Affidavit.” Via Camden28.org.
- Kroncke, Francis X. “RESISTANCE AS SACRAMENT.” http://www.minnesota8.net/Kroncke/essays/resistance.htm
- Lacy, Tim. “The Media Raiders: The FBI, Hoover, and the Catholic Left.” Society for U.S. Intellectual History. https://s-usih.org/2024/12/media-raiders-fbi-hoover-catholic-left/
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Photos: The Milwaukee 14 - a fiery '68 protest against the Vietnam War.” 9/20/2016. https://www.jsonline.com/picture-gallery/life/2016/09/20/photos-the-milwaukee-14---a-fiery-68-protest-against-the-vietnam-war/90517276/
- Mische, George. “Inattention to accuracy about 'Catonsville Nine' distorts history.” National Catholic Reporter. 5/17/2013. https://www.ncr
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Back in twenty twenty, we did
a two part episode on co Intel pro, which was
a series of FBI counterintelligence programs that started out ostensibly
focused on communism, but they went on to target an
array of primarily left wing organizations and movements in the
(00:35):
United States. One of my really favorite parts of working
on that was getting to how those programs came to
an end. The FBI still does counterintelligence, but these formerly
defined co intel pros ended after a group of regular
people pulled off a heist at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania,
(00:58):
and then they sent what they found to news agencies.
This group of regular people called themselves the Citizens Commission
to Investigate the FBI, and at the very end of
those episodes we mentioned that some of them went on
to become part of a group called the Camden twenty eight,
(01:18):
who had raided a draft office in Camden, New Jersey
in nineteen seventy one. So I have wanted to do
a Camden twenty eight episode for the last five years,
like it's been on the list for a long time.
As I finally got into working on this, though, I
realized that just focusing on the Camden twenty eight really
(01:41):
wouldn't convey that this was not just one raid on
one draft board office. It was part of a whole
anti war movement that was largely grounded in Catholic religious convictions.
And this movement spanned almost four years. So this turned
into a two part episode. Today we are going to
(02:03):
have some very basic context of the Vietnam War and
why the US was involved in the first place. Due
to the progression of time, we have reached a point
where I think the majority of our listeners did not
live through this or grow up in the immediate aftermath
of it. So if you did and you're like, why
(02:26):
are you explaining this to me? I think a lot
of people are not as steeped in some of this
as like Holly and I.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Were in our youths.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, So we're going to talk about why the US
was involved in the first place, and we're going to
talk about a couple of the earliest raids on draft
boards in this part of the two parter. Then on
Wednesday we will talk about the raids that happened later
in this movement and the Camden twenty eight specifically.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So, the Vietnam War was a long, complicated conflict that
is known in vs. Vietnam as the American War or
the Resistance War against America. It was part of a
wider pattern of conflict and war in Southeast Asia, involving
multiple other nations beyond just the US and Vietnam. It
(03:15):
went on for nearly twenty years. So we're not going
to try to give a detailed account of the entire thing,
or even to try to cover all the most notable moments.
As Tracy just said, we're giving this overview for context.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah. I kept being like, should I mention this too?
Should I mention this too? And it was there are
too many things, And then it was a twelve episode
arc and then our whole podcast is just about Vietnam,
which those already exist, those already exist, there's plenty available.
Over the course of its history, Vietnam has been an
(03:49):
independent nation at some points and it has been colonized
at others. And the period that's most relevant to today's
episode starts with France colonizing Va Vietnam and other parts
of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. Then, during World
War II, Japan negotiated with v Shi France to occupy Vietnam.
(04:11):
Vietnam remained under French administration until almost the very end
of the war, and then Japan took control, imprisoned the
French officials, and then killed the ones who refused to comply.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
The events of World War II contributed to a growing
independence movement in Vietnam. One part of this movement was
the League for the Independence of Vietnam, also known as
the Vietmen, founded by Ho Chi Minh. The Vietmen had
been established in northern Vietnam, not far from the border
with China, and it had a primarily Communist leadership. As
(04:46):
World War.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
II came to an end, the Vietmen launched an uprising
to try to secure independence for Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh
declared Vietnam to be an independent republic with its capital
at Hanoi in s September of nineteen forty five. Not
long after that, Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai abdicated and declared
(05:07):
his allegiance to the newly established Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But with the end of World War II, France wanted
to regain control of its colonial possession, and with the
support of its allies, it tried to do just that.
These allies included the US, although a lot wasn't publicly
known about the US involvement until much later. This led
to the First Indochina War, also called the French Indochina War,
(05:36):
which stretched from nineteen forty six to nineteen fifty four.
This war formally ended with the Geneva Convention of nineteen
fifty four, which also dealt with some ongoing issues from
the Korean War that had ended with an armistice in
nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
The accords that were signed at this convention created a
ceasefire line at the Seventeenth Peril, with the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam on one side and the State of Vietnam
also called the Republic of Vietnam without the Democratic part
on the other. These are more generally referred to as
North and South Vietnam. The accords also called for the
(06:17):
establishment of a demilitarized zone along that line and a
three hundred day period for troops to be withdrawn to
their respective sides of the line. This division of Vietnam
was also supposed to be temporary, with the future of
a unified Vietnam to be decided through a fair and
free election.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
From the United States point of view, the idea that
this election could result in a unified communist Vietnam was
a major problem. This was during the Cold War between
the United States and the USSR, which was also communist.
In the US, there was a lot of anxiety around
the idea of Vietnam unifying itself as a communist nation
(07:01):
and forming an alliance with the USSR or with its
neighbor China, which had become a communist nation in nineteen
forty nine. This was also connected to the nuclear arms
race between the US and the USSR, and worries around
which nations would have access to nuclear weapons and where
the USSR would be able to station them. And this
(07:23):
wasn't just about Vietnam. A lot of US foreign policy
at this point rested on the Domino theory, which is
the idea that if one nation quote fell to communism,
its neighbors would inevitably follow. The US was trying to
stop communist governments from forming or existing in other parts
(07:45):
of the world as well. This included the CIA, orchestrating
a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala
in nineteen fifty four. We covered that as a two
parter in September twenty nineteen. We have talked about a
number of times.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That the United States is willing to prop up a
dictator if that meant a nation not becoming communist. With
all of this in mind, the United States did not
pledge to follow the agreements that had been signed at
the Geneva Convention, and neither did the State of Vietnam,
which then also did not work with the North on
(08:24):
holding that election that was supposed to happen. Initially, the
VIETMM was not interested in trying to start another war
over this, but that started to change in the second
half of the nineteen fifties. Eventually, the National Liberation Front
and its military arm, the viet Cong, started trying to
take control of South Vietnam. It was getting support from
(08:48):
Communists living in South Vietnam as well as from non communists.
Some saw this as a chance to get rid of
corruption in the South Vietnamese government. Others sought this so
out Vietnamese government was out of touch with its own
people and that the communist government would be better. The
government of South Vietnam was also predominantly Catholic, and the
(09:10):
largely Buddhist population was facing religious oppression and persecution. Yeah,
there were definitely people who did not want the whole
of Vietnam, like people living in Vietnam who did not
want the whole of Vietnam to become Communist and wanted
international support in this. But there's also a very growing
(09:31):
amount of support for the Communist As all this was happening,
the North Vietnamese also started building a supply route known
as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to support its efforts
in the South. Those efforts included a lot of guerrilla
tactics that the South Vietnamese, who had largely been trained
by Americans and other Westerners, weren't really quite prepared for.
(09:53):
By the start of the nineteen sixties, it was obvious
to the United States that South Vietnam could not win
and this conflict without more help. At first, most people
in the United States were generally supportive of US military
action in Vietnam. The fear of communism in its expansion,
the Cold War, and nuclear proliferation were all huge political issues.
(10:18):
This was true even though the US military had already
been through a three year war in Korea, which had
some similarities to what was happening in Vietnam, and at first,
US support to Vietnam was mostly through things like equipment
and training, without a lot of US personnel station there,
so most people didn't really have a personal or family
(10:38):
connection to what was happening. But that changed in the
nineteen sixties. The US started ramping up as support of
South Vietnam by deploying helicopters and Green berets, and by
nineteen sixty two, about nine thousand American troops had been
sent overseas. The US also started using napalm and Dell
(11:00):
like agent orange to destroy the vegetation that the North
Vietnamese were using for cover, and to also deprive them
of food. In January of nineteen sixty five, there was
an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. The exact details
of this incident still are not clear today, but two
US destroyers reported that they had been fired upon by
(11:22):
North Vietnamese patrol boats. Not long after this incident, Congress
passed a joint resolution known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
which set in part quote that the Congress approves and
supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief,
to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack
(11:43):
against the forces of the United States and to prevent
further aggression. The president at this point was Lyndon B. Johnson,
and this basically allowed him to essentially wage war in
Vietnam without a formal declaration of war on Vietnam Congress.
Bombing campaigns and larger troop deployments started not long after this.
(12:07):
Every time the United States has been involved in a war,
there have been people opposed to it, whether that opposition
was on political or ideological grounds relating to that specific conflict,
or was rooted in an opposition to war more generally.
But as the United States military involvement in Vietnam grew,
the anti war movement did as well, becoming the largest
(12:30):
movement against a foreign war in US history, and this
became an incredibly divisive, deeply polarizing social and political issue.
We'll talk more about it after a sponsor break. As
(12:52):
we said before the break, in general, most Americans supported
the United States military efforts in Vietnam at the start
of its involvement in this conflict. At least what was
publicly known as the involvement in the conflict, largely because
of things like opposition to communism and the fact that
at first this support did not involve large scale troop deployments,
(13:16):
but support for the war started to wane as that changed.
Part of this was connected to the news coverage. As
the US military presence grew in Vietnam, so did the
number of journalists there. There were roughly six hundred accredited
journalists in Vietnam at the height of the war in
nineteen sixty eight, and some of them were reporting from
(13:37):
combat zones. This was also really the first war that
the US had fought during the television era. Televisions did
exist before this, long before this, and there had been
newsreels and other visual news sources during earlier wars as well,
but it was only after the Korean War that there
(13:58):
were televisions in more than half of American homes, and
some of the images and stories that were coming out
of Vietnam and being broadcast on the news in people's
living rooms were truly horrifying. On top of all that,
during his nineteen sixty four presidential campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson
(14:19):
had said he wouldn't be expanding the US presence in Vietnam,
but after an attack on a US air base not
long after his second inauguration, Johnson ordered a bombing campaign
known as Operation Rolling Thunder, followed by the deployment of
more ground troops. By the end of the year, there
were roughly one hundred eighty thousand US military personnel in Vietnam,
(14:43):
and by nineteen sixty eight that number had risen to
well over half a million. As the number of personnel increased,
sowed tod the number of casualties, and soon about three
hundred Americans were dying in Vietnam every week. This was
a fraction of the number of TI civilian deaths in Vietnam,
which people in the US were also seeing on the news.
(15:06):
Opposition to the war grew in parallel with this increase
in troop deployments. We talked about the teachings that were
part of this movement in our Saturday Classic from this
past February twenty second. There were also marches and sit
ins and demonstrations against companies like Dow Chemical, which was
the primary producer of Nepal. Some of the public opposition
(15:29):
to the war was tied to the growing hippie movement
and counterculture movements, and it was associated with things like music,
drug use, and free love. Other demonstrations against the war
were visceral and intentionally disturbing, including multiple people who set
themselves on fire, mirroring the acts of Buddhist monks in
(15:49):
Vietnam who had emilated themselves in protest in nineteen sixty seven.
Some of the anti war marches and demonstrations in the
US were enormous. One of the organizations that formed to
resist the war effort was the National Mobilization Committee to
End the War in Vietnam aka the MOB, which organized
demonstrations and marches in multiple US cities. On April fifteenth
(16:13):
of that year, hundreds of thousands of people marched in
New York City, San Francisco, and other major cities. On
October twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, about one hundred thousand
people rallied near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d C.
With roughly fifty thousand of them marching to the Pentagon
across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. One of the
(16:37):
famous images of the anti war movement was taken at
this protest. It was of George Harris, later known as Hibiscus,
placing carnations in the barrels of the rifles that were
being wielded by military police. Photographer Bernie Boston titled this
photo flower power. Beat. Poet Alan Ginsberg had popularized that
(16:58):
term in a nineteen six essay that called for demonstrators
to carry flowers and give them to soldiers, police, spectators,
and other people. This photo was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
While opposition to the Vietnam War was really growing in
the mid to late nineteen sixties, it wasn't really one
cohesive movement. There were a lot of different.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
People and groups who opposed the war.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
For different reasons, and they all had their own priorities
and their own methods. There were people who thought the
US shouldn't be in Vietnam at all, or that the
war had become unwinnable and the US should withdraw. Some
who opposed the war connected what was happening in Vietnam
to US foreign policy in other parts of the world,
including the coup in Guatemala that we mentioned earlier, or
(17:46):
they drew connections between foreign wars and issues of poverty, racism,
and discrimination.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
At home, but.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
One specific issue that a lot of people objected to
was the draft. This draft took place via the Selective
Service System, which was first established in nineteen forty. The
war on the horizon at that point was, of course,
World War II, which was already underway in other parts
of the world, but that the US was not actively
(18:15):
part of yet.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
With very few.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Exceptions, men in the United States, regardless of whether they
were citizens, were required to register with the local Selective
Service Board also called the Draft board when they turned eighteen.
Through the Selective Service system, men had previously been drafted
to serve in World War Two and the Korean War.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Just like there has been an anti war movement alongside
every war, there have been objections to conscription every time
the United.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
States has used it, but opposition to the draft during
the Vietnam War became massive. The US had a large
population of men of draftable age thanks to the post
World War two baby boom, so especially at first, there
were a lot of lawful ways for people to defer
their service or to be made exempt without keeping the
(19:08):
military from meeting its enlistment goals. Like college students were
eligible for deferment, and the longer person stayed in school,
the longer they could differ. Married men with children were
eligible for hardship deferment, and people could also be exempted
for a number of medical conditions. As many as half
of the people who were eligible for the draft during
(19:30):
the Vietnam War got some kind of deferral or exemption.
People who met the criteria could also register as conscientious
objectors and be assigned an alternative service. Yes, some of
this was narrowed down as the war progressed, but at
first there were a lot of different ways that people
could be deferred for a long time. People did also
(19:51):
evade the draft by fleeing to Canada or another country,
or by just refusing to report for induction. It's that
more than half a million people evaded the draft during
the Vietnam War. People objected to the draft for a
lot of reasons. To some, it was unconscionable for anyone
to be forced to serve in the military. Others sought
(20:15):
there were circumstances in which a draft was called for
and just, but that the war in Vietnam was not
one of them. Although all men were required to register
for the draft, there were racial and economic disparities in
who was actually called to serve, which led to criticisms
from civil rights activists and people who advocated for the
rights of the poor. Changes were made to the draft
(20:38):
system midway through the war to try to mitigate some
of these issues. Once someone registered with the Draft Board,
they were issued a card containing their identifying information and
their draft status. By law, these draft cards had to
be carried at all times. People who opposed the war
(20:58):
or specifically posed the draft started burning their draft cards
as a symbolic act of protest. This didn't erase their
registration or stop them from being drafted, but it more
made a statement. In nineteen sixty five, Congress passed the
Draft Card Mutilation Act, which established fines of up to
(21:19):
ten thousand dollars or five years in prison for knowingly
destroying or mutilating a draft card. Since the law required
cards to be carried at all times, it already implied
that it was illegal to destroy them, but this made
that explicit.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
With the passage of that law, burning a draft card
could take on another layer of protest. A person could
do it publicly with the intention of being arrested. One
person who did this was David Paul O'Brien, He and
three others burned their draft cards in front of a
crowd outside the South Boston Courthouse on March thirty first,
(21:58):
nineteen sixty six. O'Brien told FBI agents who were on
the scene that he knew what he had done was illegal,
but that he had done it because of his beliefs.
He was indicted, tried, and convicted, and at trial he
told the jury that he hoped his action would inspire
others to adopt those same beliefs. O'Brien was by far
(22:20):
not the only person to do this, but his case
was the one that went all the way to the
Supreme Court, which issued a seven to one decision that
this law did not violate First Amendment protections on free speech.
Like the Flower Power imagery that we mentioned earlier, burning
draft cards became emblematic of opposition to the Vietnam War.
(22:42):
While burning a draft card didn't stop someone from being drafted,
there were also anti war activists who were trying to
destroy draft records in a way that would stop the draft,
and that was by going to the draft boards to
do it.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
We're going to talk more about that. After we paused
for a sponsor break. In September of nineteen sixty five,
nineteen year old Barry Bondis received his draft notice. He
went to Minneapolis for his physical and his psychological tests,
(23:20):
and on his paperwork he listed his birthplace as Earth
and his race as human. He and his father Tom
started trying to get him exempted from service on religious grounds.
That led to a meeting at the draft board office
in Elk River, Minnesota. Tom said that he was worried
about the draft because he had twelve sons, and a
(23:43):
member of the draft board asked where the rest of
them were. Tom was outraged by this question and stormed out,
and later the family came up with a plan to
deliver the rest of Barry's brothers to the draft board.
They had come up with an interpretation in which the
rest meant residue and residue meant waste, So they put
(24:06):
a couple of pails in the bathroom and they collected
their waste in them, And then on February twenty third,
nineteen sixty six, Barry took buckets of waste to the
draft board. His initial plan seems to have been to
basically leave them on the secretary's desk and say here's
the rest of my brothers. But once he was in
the office, he had another idea, which was to dump
(24:30):
the waste into the file cabinet containing the draft records.
That December, Barry Bondas was convicted of damaging government property
and interfering with the Selective Service. This seems like kind
of a spur of the moment decision on Bondas's part
to actually dump the human waste into the file cabinet,
but according to news reports from the time, he was
(24:53):
heavily influenced both by his father and by the family's
religious beliefs. Bondas isn't usual described as being part of
the movement that evolved to target draft boards, but this
is probably the earliest incident of draft board vandalism during
the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
A religious movement to target draft boards started a little
later in nineteen sixty seven. On October twenty seventh of
that year, four people entered a draft board office in Baltimore, Maryland,
located in the United States Customs House. Philip Berrigan was
a Catholic priest. Thomas Lewis was an artist and an
organizer with artists concerned about Vietnam. David Eberhardt was secretary
(25:37):
of the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission. These three presented themselves
as having some reason to be at the Draft office,
like needing to change their address or to check their
draft status. Once they were in the office.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
They poured a bottles of blood, reportedly it was their
own blood onto the draft records. A fourth man, James Mangle,
was a minister in the United Church of Christ, and
he acted as a lookout and tried to get in
the way of anybody who might come in and try
to stop them. But this was not so the four
(26:11):
men could make their escape. Once they were done. Getting
arrested was part of the point, and they were just
waiting for that to happen. Once they had poured the
blood on the draft files, they issued a statement to
the press that said, in part quote, we shed our
blood willingly and gratefully. We pour it upon these files
to illustrate that with them, and with these offices, begins
(26:35):
the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood ten thousand
miles away.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
They were charged with conspiracy and an attempt to mutilate
selective service records. They reportedly turned down offers of leniency
instead remaining in jail as an act of political protest,
and fasted and prayed while there.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Well.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
They made no secret of what they had done. They
pleaded not guilty so their case would go to court,
and continued to keep the issue in the spotlight.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
One of the people who watched their trial from the
gallery was US Army veteran George Misha, who had worked
with the Catholic Organization Mary Nol missionaries in Mexico and
connected US policy in Vietnam to its policies in Latin America.
When the question was raised at trial of whether the
(27:27):
Selective Service Board couldn't just use their duplicate copies to
keep the draft functioning, it was revealed that there were
no duplicates. When he heard this, Misha turned to his
wife and said they should burn the cards.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
The four men on trial became known as the Baltimore Four,
and their demonstration was the first of what sometimes described
as the Catholic number group actions. The Catholic led protests
and some that were arranged by people who were not Catholic,
were often described using the numb number of people involved
and the city where the action took place.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
A few months after the Baltimore four was the Catonsville Nine.
One of those nine people was George Misha. Tom Lewis
and Philip Berrigan were involved as well. They had been
convicted of pouring blood on the draft records in Baltimore,
but they had not yet been sentenced, at least I
think there's some kind of contradictory reporting here of why
(28:28):
they were not incarcerated at this point in the timeline.
Another person who was part of this was Philip Beregan's
brother Daniel, who was also a priest.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The Catonsville nine break in happened on May seventeenth, nineteen
sixty eight, a little more than a month after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Junior and the widespread civil
unrest that had followed it. The North Vietnamese had also
launched a coordinated surprise attack known as the Tet Offensive
at the end of January on the Lunar New Year
(28:59):
Holiday Tet. Although both sides claimed victory in the Tet Offensive,
this did not bring a decisive end to the war,
as the North Vietnamese had hoped when planning the operation,
but American casualties did spike during this part of the conflict.
Which was one of the reasons support for the war
continued to wane in the United States. The House of
(29:21):
Representatives had called for a congressional review of US policy
in Vietnam, and the US had replaced the commander in
charge of its military forces there. So when seven men
and two women went into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland,
removed three hundred and seventy eight draft files, covered them
with homemade napalm in the parking lot, and set them
(29:43):
on fire. In the wake of all this, it was
a major national news story. Pouring blood on the draft
records had been evocative, and so was burning them with napalm.
They had made it from a recipe they adapted from
a Special Forces handbook. As had happened in Baltimore, getting
arrested and facing trial was part of the point, and
(30:05):
so was the news coverage they had tipped off the
media ahead of time. None of the Catonsville nine were
eligible for the draft. They were exempt because of their age,
their sex, or some other reason. They spoke of being
motivated by their religious convictions, including the fact that only
five of the roughly four hundred Catholic bishops in the
(30:26):
US had spoken out in opposition to the war. Thomas Melville,
one of the participants, told reporters that since their church
had failed to act officially, they felt it was up
to them to act as individuals to speak out in
the name of Catholicism and Christianity.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Some of the participants also spoke out on what they
saw as parallels between US involvement in Vietnam and its
actions in other parts of the world. We mentioned George
Misha's time in Mexico earlier. John Hogan had served as
a mission buil business manager in Guatemala, and Marjorie and
Thomas Melville had both been in Guatemala in connection with
(31:06):
the Marinol Catholic Mission movement. They had all seen the
impact of things like the CIA orchestrated coup that we
mentioned earlier. These activists saw patterns of oppression, inequality, and poverty,
including within the United States, as interconnected with what was
happening in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
After setting the draft records on fire, the Catonsville Nine
prayed for peace while waiting to be arrested. They refused bail,
and they fasted while waiting in jail. Their trial began
in federal court on October fifth, nineteen sixty eight, and
it lasted for five days. There was an anti war
protest on the first day of the trial, which happened
(31:47):
at the same time as a George Wallace campaign rally,
which made it a tense day. Anti war protests continued
on in the later days of the trial as well.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
At trial, the defendants admitted to what they had done,
but without describing themselves as guilty. They talked about burning
the draft records as an act of conscience, one connected
to a desire to end suffering around the world, including
within the United States. David Darst, who is a Christian brother,
(32:19):
said quote, I wanted to do a tiny bit to
stop the machine of death I saw moving.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
The Catonsville nine were found guilty on all charges. They
were fined and given sentences of between twenty four and
forty two months each. Tom Lewis and Philip Brigan were
given the longest sentences, in part because of their earlier
conviction for pouring blood on the draft records in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
David Darst died in a car accident before his sentence began,
and Mary Moylan, the Berrigan brothers, and George Misha all
went into hiding rather than reporting for their incarceration. The
four of them were all eventually captured or turned themselves in,
but that took years. The last of them, Mary Moylan,
(33:06):
turned herself in ten years after the trial. Dan Berrigan
also seemed to kind of taunt authorities. He would regularly
appear in public to speak or to participate in some
kind of protest or demonstration, and then he would disappear again.
The Canonsville Nine became the inspiration for a whole movement
of direct actions at draft board offices. At least thirty
(33:28):
of them were connected to the Catholic Left movement, which
was focused on nonviolent resistance against the Vietnam War and
against warmore generally, especially among the people who were motivated
by their religious convictions, these were public demonstrations not just
with the possibility of being arrested and charged with a crime,
but with the intent of that happening, because that was
(33:51):
part of the sacrifice and part of the impact of
what they were doing. The effects these draft board raids
had on the actual was often temporary. Although testimony in
the Baltimore four case had suggested that there were no
backup records, there weren't registers and other paperwork. Draft files
(34:12):
were often damaged but not completely destroyed in this process,
so a lot of the time it was possible to
reconstruct most or all of them later, so it sort
of put a pause on drafts happening from a particular office,
rather than a total stop to them. We're going to
talk about more of the nearly three hundred draft board
(34:33):
raids carried out between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy
two next time. In the meantime, I have lister mail. Marvelous.
This is from Brandon, Brandon wrote after our episode on
doctor Daniel Hale Williams, and Brandon wrote, Hi, there, Sym,
I see. I wanted to say thank you for highlighting
(34:56):
such an interesting figure in history whom I'd only heard
simple anecdotes about previously. The comprehensive dive into his past
makes for an exceptional story. Mister Williams reminds me of
one of my great ancestors who made huge advances in
the black community during the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds.
(35:16):
His name was doctor Aaron McDuffie Moore, and his great
great granddaughter is the CEO of the Durham Colored Library,
founded by doctor Moore in nineteen fifteen, who has written
a very comprehensive official biography of his life. I and
the rest of the family would love for you to
tell his story and highlight him as well. You ladies
(35:38):
are so good at it. You can order his biography here. Also,
would you mind suggesting how I might go about getting
a similar podcast started so that I can monetize telling great,
historically relevant stories to a wide audience. I'm sitting on
a treasure trove and currently spinning my wheels getting started.
Much appreciate all you do. Keep up the great work.
Cheers Brandon. Thank you so much, Brandon. I had not
(36:02):
actually heard of the Durham Colored Library before. This is
new information to me. This biography of Aaron McDuffie Moore
is called Aaron McDuffie Moore, an African American physician, educator
and founder of Durham's Black Wall Street. If you go
(36:23):
to durhamcl dot org standing for Durham d U r
h A M. Colored Library dot org, you can learn
more about this biography and how to get a copy
of it. So thank you so much to write for
writing and asking or letting us know about that In
terms of the question about starting a podcast, that's a
(36:44):
very big question.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
There are lots of.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Resources around about how to get started in podcasting. One
place that I point people to a lot when they
are getting started is called Transom dot org. Just Transom,
but transom dot org is their website and they have
(37:08):
a ton of resources about podcasting, about storytelling, all of
that kind of stuff. It can be a place to
really get started and learn new ideas and strategies. In
terms of monetizing a podcast, that's a complicated question. There
are lots of different ways to try to monetize a podcast,
(37:28):
and there are a lot of different services now that
allow podcast hosts and creators to have or have advertisements. Dynamically,
it'serted into their show, which is how ours work. We
have some ads that we Holly and I record, but
then we have other ads that come in through a
(37:50):
sort of network. I don't think we can really offer
advice on any particular one, but that is a way
to get ads into a podcast. Asked if you are
just starting out and building an audience, Yeah, we're in
that unique position where we're part of a bigger network
that has been you know, the show has been part
(38:11):
of for like close to fifteen more now, So in
that regard, we don't really deal with a lot of
the monetization part we had. There's literally a whole sales
team within our company that does that. Yeah, I will
say this just as a matter of expectations management. A
(38:32):
lot of podcasts don't make any money, right, right, the
vast majority don't make any money. So I would I
always encourage people, even if we bring them into our network,
to not anticipate that this will be a significant driver
of income or revenue, right, just as a reality scenario, Like,
I don't want anybody to think, like, you know, the
(38:54):
chart of like record publish money and it doesn't like
a situation. Yeah, my spouse and I were in a
meeting and we were doing the sort of the introductory
talking about who we are. It was a personal meeting
that not important in the context, but he said something like,
(39:14):
I have learned that the way to have a really
financially successful podcast is to have started it way in
the past, which we are extraordinarily lucky to have stepped
into a podcast that was already established and also at
this point to have been on it for more than
twelve years. Because the process of building an audience and
(39:37):
getting your work more widely heard can be a long road.
I mean, some shows are incredibly lucky and kind of
hit that viral moment, but the viral moment doesn't happen
for a lot of shows. And for people that are
doing something that is a labor of love that they're
just really dedicated to and passionate about, that can carry
people through a lot. But there are also people who
(40:00):
eventually decide, hey, like, I'm spending so much time on
this and so much effort on this, and I cannot
continue to do it for indefinitely and definitely without being
able to make it a profitable thing. So yeah, I
don't know if I have. I used to have a
whole list of other resources besides Transom to direct people to,
(40:26):
but that's a good starting point. I will also say
this because it has come up a number of times
where I will be out in the world, especially if
I'm at like an event or something, and someone comes
up and wants to, like, pitch me a show. You
don't have to be part of a big network to
make a podcast. You don't have to wait for permission
(40:47):
to make the thing that is in your heart, and
like we said, even if you are, the odds of
actually making money at it are not amazing. So like
I always encourage people to just make it. Never assume
there's one great idea that you have and you will
never have another good one. Make the great idea and
then see what happens. And as he said, you might
(41:10):
decide this is too much time and effort for me
to do if I'm not getting compensated in some way,
which is totally fine and in no way of failure
because you have made something and that is amazing. But yeah,
I always don't. You don't have to wait for permission
from a network or a sponsor or anything. You can
just make it as it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of
(41:32):
reminded of the number of pretty successful authors I know
who've published a lot of books and also have day jobs. Yeah,
which is one of those things where if I had
a magical wand a magical wand a magic wand to
change things about society would include you know, artists and
(41:52):
writers and crafts people earning a living wage on the
things that they love to make. Ed We'll say, you know,
try what you want to try. Do not feel tied
to how other shows that are doing podcasts are doing
it so important. They're like, it's a wide open field
(42:14):
to feel free to take risks, do interesting things, not
try to sound like other shows already sound. Hopefully any
of that was helpful if you'd like to send us
a note about this or any other podcasts. Where at
history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and you can't subscribe
(42:37):
to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else
you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Hello and Welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson
and I'm Holly Frye. Back in twenty twenty, we did
a two part episode on co Intel pro, which was
a series of FBI counterintelligence programs that started out ostensibly
focused on communism, but they went on to target an
array of primarily left wing organizations and movements in the
(00:35):
United States. One of my really favorite parts of working
on that was getting to how those programs came to
an end. The FBI still does counterintelligence, but these formerly
defined co intel pros ended after a group of regular
people pulled off a heist at the FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania,
(00:58):
and then they sent what they found to news agencies.
This group of regular people called themselves the Citizens Commission
to Investigate the FBI, and at the very end of
those episodes we mentioned that some of them went on
to become part of a group called the Camden twenty eight,
(01:18):
who had raided a draft office in Camden, New Jersey
in nineteen seventy one. So I have wanted to do
a Camden twenty eight episode for the last five years,
like it's been on the list for a long time.
As I finally got into working on this, though, I
realized that just focusing on the Camden twenty eight really
(01:41):
wouldn't convey that this was not just one raid on
one draft board office. It was part of a whole
anti war movement that was largely grounded in Catholic religious convictions.
And this movement spanned almost four years. So this turned
into a two part episode. Today we are going to
(02:03):
have some very basic context of the Vietnam War and
why the US was involved in the first place. Due
to the progression of time, we have reached a point
where I think the majority of our listeners did not
live through this or grow up in the immediate aftermath
of it. So if you did and you're like, why
(02:26):
are you explaining this to me? I think a lot
of people are not as steeped in some of this
as like Holly and I.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Were in our youths.
Speaker 2 (02:35):
Yeah, So we're going to talk about why the US
was involved in the first place, and we're going to
talk about a couple of the earliest raids on draft
boards in this part of the two parter. Then on
Wednesday we will talk about the raids that happened later
in this movement and the Camden twenty eight specifically.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
So, the Vietnam War was a long, complicated conflict that
is known in vs. Vietnam as the American War or
the Resistance War against America. It was part of a
wider pattern of conflict and war in Southeast Asia, involving
multiple other nations beyond just the US and Vietnam. It
(03:15):
went on for nearly twenty years. So we're not going
to try to give a detailed account of the entire thing,
or even to try to cover all the most notable moments.
As Tracy just said, we're giving this overview for context.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah. I kept being like, should I mention this too?
Should I mention this too? And it was there are
too many things, And then it was a twelve episode
arc and then our whole podcast is just about Vietnam,
which those already exist, those already exist, there's plenty available.
Over the course of its history, Vietnam has been an
(03:49):
independent nation at some points and it has been colonized
at others. And the period that's most relevant to today's
episode starts with France colonizing Va Vietnam and other parts
of Southeast Asia during the nineteenth century. Then, during World
War II, Japan negotiated with v Shi France to occupy Vietnam.
(04:11):
Vietnam remained under French administration until almost the very end
of the war, and then Japan took control, imprisoned the
French officials, and then killed the ones who refused to comply.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
The events of World War II contributed to a growing
independence movement in Vietnam. One part of this movement was
the League for the Independence of Vietnam, also known as
the Vietmen, founded by Ho Chi Minh. The Vietmen had
been established in northern Vietnam, not far from the border
with China, and it had a primarily Communist leadership. As
(04:46):
World War.
Speaker 2 (04:46):
II came to an end, the Vietmen launched an uprising
to try to secure independence for Vietnam. Ho Chi Minh
declared Vietnam to be an independent republic with its capital
at Hanoi in s September of nineteen forty five. Not
long after that, Vietnamese Emperor Bao Dai abdicated and declared
(05:07):
his allegiance to the newly established Democratic Republic of Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
But with the end of World War II, France wanted
to regain control of its colonial possession, and with the
support of its allies, it tried to do just that.
These allies included the US, although a lot wasn't publicly
known about the US involvement until much later. This led
to the First Indochina War, also called the French Indochina War,
(05:36):
which stretched from nineteen forty six to nineteen fifty four.
This war formally ended with the Geneva Convention of nineteen
fifty four, which also dealt with some ongoing issues from
the Korean War that had ended with an armistice in
nineteen fifty three.
Speaker 2 (05:53):
The accords that were signed at this convention created a
ceasefire line at the Seventeenth Peril, with the Democratic Republic
of Vietnam on one side and the State of Vietnam
also called the Republic of Vietnam without the Democratic part
on the other. These are more generally referred to as
North and South Vietnam. The accords also called for the
(06:17):
establishment of a demilitarized zone along that line and a
three hundred day period for troops to be withdrawn to
their respective sides of the line. This division of Vietnam
was also supposed to be temporary, with the future of
a unified Vietnam to be decided through a fair and
free election.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
From the United States point of view, the idea that
this election could result in a unified communist Vietnam was
a major problem. This was during the Cold War between
the United States and the USSR, which was also communist.
In the US, there was a lot of anxiety around
the idea of Vietnam unifying itself as a communist nation
(07:01):
and forming an alliance with the USSR or with its
neighbor China, which had become a communist nation in nineteen
forty nine. This was also connected to the nuclear arms
race between the US and the USSR, and worries around
which nations would have access to nuclear weapons and where
the USSR would be able to station them. And this
(07:23):
wasn't just about Vietnam. A lot of US foreign policy
at this point rested on the Domino theory, which is
the idea that if one nation quote fell to communism,
its neighbors would inevitably follow. The US was trying to
stop communist governments from forming or existing in other parts
(07:45):
of the world as well. This included the CIA, orchestrating
a coup to overthrow the democratically elected government of Guatemala
in nineteen fifty four. We covered that as a two
parter in September twenty nineteen. We have talked about a
number of times.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
That the United States is willing to prop up a
dictator if that meant a nation not becoming communist. With
all of this in mind, the United States did not
pledge to follow the agreements that had been signed at
the Geneva Convention, and neither did the State of Vietnam,
which then also did not work with the North on
(08:24):
holding that election that was supposed to happen. Initially, the
VIETMM was not interested in trying to start another war
over this, but that started to change in the second
half of the nineteen fifties. Eventually, the National Liberation Front
and its military arm, the viet Cong, started trying to
take control of South Vietnam. It was getting support from
(08:48):
Communists living in South Vietnam as well as from non communists.
Some saw this as a chance to get rid of
corruption in the South Vietnamese government. Others sought this so
out Vietnamese government was out of touch with its own
people and that the communist government would be better. The
government of South Vietnam was also predominantly Catholic, and the
(09:10):
largely Buddhist population was facing religious oppression and persecution. Yeah,
there were definitely people who did not want the whole
of Vietnam, like people living in Vietnam who did not
want the whole of Vietnam to become Communist and wanted
international support in this. But there's also a very growing
(09:31):
amount of support for the Communist As all this was happening,
the North Vietnamese also started building a supply route known
as the Ho Chi Minh Trail to support its efforts
in the South. Those efforts included a lot of guerrilla
tactics that the South Vietnamese, who had largely been trained
by Americans and other Westerners, weren't really quite prepared for.
(09:53):
By the start of the nineteen sixties, it was obvious
to the United States that South Vietnam could not win
and this conflict without more help. At first, most people
in the United States were generally supportive of US military
action in Vietnam. The fear of communism in its expansion,
the Cold War, and nuclear proliferation were all huge political issues.
(10:18):
This was true even though the US military had already
been through a three year war in Korea, which had
some similarities to what was happening in Vietnam, and at first,
US support to Vietnam was mostly through things like equipment
and training, without a lot of US personnel station there,
so most people didn't really have a personal or family
(10:38):
connection to what was happening. But that changed in the
nineteen sixties. The US started ramping up as support of
South Vietnam by deploying helicopters and Green berets, and by
nineteen sixty two, about nine thousand American troops had been
sent overseas. The US also started using napalm and Dell
(11:00):
like agent orange to destroy the vegetation that the North
Vietnamese were using for cover, and to also deprive them
of food. In January of nineteen sixty five, there was
an incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. The exact details
of this incident still are not clear today, but two
US destroyers reported that they had been fired upon by
(11:22):
North Vietnamese patrol boats. Not long after this incident, Congress
passed a joint resolution known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution,
which set in part quote that the Congress approves and
supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief,
to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack
(11:43):
against the forces of the United States and to prevent
further aggression. The president at this point was Lyndon B. Johnson,
and this basically allowed him to essentially wage war in
Vietnam without a formal declaration of war on Vietnam Congress.
Bombing campaigns and larger troop deployments started not long after this.
(12:07):
Every time the United States has been involved in a war,
there have been people opposed to it, whether that opposition
was on political or ideological grounds relating to that specific conflict,
or was rooted in an opposition to war more generally.
But as the United States military involvement in Vietnam grew,
the anti war movement did as well, becoming the largest
(12:30):
movement against a foreign war in US history, and this
became an incredibly divisive, deeply polarizing social and political issue.
We'll talk more about it after a sponsor break. As
(12:52):
we said before the break, in general, most Americans supported
the United States military efforts in Vietnam at the start
of its involvement in this conflict. At least what was
publicly known as the involvement in the conflict, largely because
of things like opposition to communism and the fact that
at first this support did not involve large scale troop deployments,
(13:16):
but support for the war started to wane as that changed.
Part of this was connected to the news coverage. As
the US military presence grew in Vietnam, so did the
number of journalists there. There were roughly six hundred accredited
journalists in Vietnam at the height of the war in
nineteen sixty eight, and some of them were reporting from
(13:37):
combat zones. This was also really the first war that
the US had fought during the television era. Televisions did
exist before this, long before this, and there had been
newsreels and other visual news sources during earlier wars as well,
but it was only after the Korean War that there
(13:58):
were televisions in more than half of American homes, and
some of the images and stories that were coming out
of Vietnam and being broadcast on the news in people's
living rooms were truly horrifying. On top of all that,
during his nineteen sixty four presidential campaign, Lyndon B. Johnson
(14:19):
had said he wouldn't be expanding the US presence in Vietnam,
but after an attack on a US air base not
long after his second inauguration, Johnson ordered a bombing campaign
known as Operation Rolling Thunder, followed by the deployment of
more ground troops. By the end of the year, there
were roughly one hundred eighty thousand US military personnel in Vietnam,
(14:43):
and by nineteen sixty eight that number had risen to
well over half a million. As the number of personnel increased,
sowed tod the number of casualties, and soon about three
hundred Americans were dying in Vietnam every week. This was
a fraction of the number of TI civilian deaths in Vietnam,
which people in the US were also seeing on the news.
(15:06):
Opposition to the war grew in parallel with this increase
in troop deployments. We talked about the teachings that were
part of this movement in our Saturday Classic from this
past February twenty second. There were also marches and sit
ins and demonstrations against companies like Dow Chemical, which was
the primary producer of Nepal. Some of the public opposition
(15:29):
to the war was tied to the growing hippie movement
and counterculture movements, and it was associated with things like music,
drug use, and free love. Other demonstrations against the war
were visceral and intentionally disturbing, including multiple people who set
themselves on fire, mirroring the acts of Buddhist monks in
(15:49):
Vietnam who had emilated themselves in protest in nineteen sixty seven.
Some of the anti war marches and demonstrations in the
US were enormous. One of the organizations that formed to
resist the war effort was the National Mobilization Committee to
End the War in Vietnam aka the MOB, which organized
demonstrations and marches in multiple US cities. On April fifteenth
(16:13):
of that year, hundreds of thousands of people marched in
New York City, San Francisco, and other major cities. On
October twenty first, nineteen sixty seven, about one hundred thousand
people rallied near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, d C.
With roughly fifty thousand of them marching to the Pentagon
across the Potomac River in Arlington, Virginia. One of the
(16:37):
famous images of the anti war movement was taken at
this protest. It was of George Harris, later known as Hibiscus,
placing carnations in the barrels of the rifles that were
being wielded by military police. Photographer Bernie Boston titled this
photo flower power. Beat. Poet Alan Ginsberg had popularized that
(16:58):
term in a nineteen six essay that called for demonstrators
to carry flowers and give them to soldiers, police, spectators,
and other people. This photo was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize.
While opposition to the Vietnam War was really growing in
the mid to late nineteen sixties, it wasn't really one
cohesive movement. There were a lot of different.
Speaker 1 (17:20):
People and groups who opposed the war.
Speaker 2 (17:22):
For different reasons, and they all had their own priorities
and their own methods. There were people who thought the
US shouldn't be in Vietnam at all, or that the
war had become unwinnable and the US should withdraw. Some
who opposed the war connected what was happening in Vietnam
to US foreign policy in other parts of the world,
including the coup in Guatemala that we mentioned earlier, or
(17:46):
they drew connections between foreign wars and issues of poverty, racism,
and discrimination.
Speaker 1 (17:52):
At home, but.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
One specific issue that a lot of people objected to
was the draft. This draft took place via the Selective
Service System, which was first established in nineteen forty. The
war on the horizon at that point was, of course,
World War II, which was already underway in other parts
of the world, but that the US was not actively
(18:15):
part of yet.
Speaker 1 (18:17):
With very few.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Exceptions, men in the United States, regardless of whether they
were citizens, were required to register with the local Selective
Service Board also called the Draft board when they turned eighteen.
Through the Selective Service system, men had previously been drafted
to serve in World War Two and the Korean War.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Just like there has been an anti war movement alongside
every war, there have been objections to conscription every time
the United.
Speaker 2 (18:47):
States has used it, but opposition to the draft during
the Vietnam War became massive. The US had a large
population of men of draftable age thanks to the post
World War two baby boom, so especially at first, there
were a lot of lawful ways for people to defer
their service or to be made exempt without keeping the
(19:08):
military from meeting its enlistment goals. Like college students were
eligible for deferment, and the longer person stayed in school,
the longer they could differ. Married men with children were
eligible for hardship deferment, and people could also be exempted
for a number of medical conditions. As many as half
of the people who were eligible for the draft during
(19:30):
the Vietnam War got some kind of deferral or exemption.
People who met the criteria could also register as conscientious
objectors and be assigned an alternative service. Yes, some of
this was narrowed down as the war progressed, but at
first there were a lot of different ways that people
could be deferred for a long time. People did also
(19:51):
evade the draft by fleeing to Canada or another country,
or by just refusing to report for induction. It's that
more than half a million people evaded the draft during
the Vietnam War. People objected to the draft for a
lot of reasons. To some, it was unconscionable for anyone
to be forced to serve in the military. Others sought
(20:15):
there were circumstances in which a draft was called for
and just, but that the war in Vietnam was not
one of them. Although all men were required to register
for the draft, there were racial and economic disparities in
who was actually called to serve, which led to criticisms
from civil rights activists and people who advocated for the
rights of the poor. Changes were made to the draft
(20:38):
system midway through the war to try to mitigate some
of these issues. Once someone registered with the Draft Board,
they were issued a card containing their identifying information and
their draft status. By law, these draft cards had to
be carried at all times. People who opposed the war
(20:58):
or specifically posed the draft started burning their draft cards
as a symbolic act of protest. This didn't erase their
registration or stop them from being drafted, but it more
made a statement. In nineteen sixty five, Congress passed the
Draft Card Mutilation Act, which established fines of up to
(21:19):
ten thousand dollars or five years in prison for knowingly
destroying or mutilating a draft card. Since the law required
cards to be carried at all times, it already implied
that it was illegal to destroy them, but this made
that explicit.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
With the passage of that law, burning a draft card
could take on another layer of protest. A person could
do it publicly with the intention of being arrested. One
person who did this was David Paul O'Brien, He and
three others burned their draft cards in front of a
crowd outside the South Boston Courthouse on March thirty first,
(21:58):
nineteen sixty six. O'Brien told FBI agents who were on
the scene that he knew what he had done was illegal,
but that he had done it because of his beliefs.
He was indicted, tried, and convicted, and at trial he
told the jury that he hoped his action would inspire
others to adopt those same beliefs. O'Brien was by far
(22:20):
not the only person to do this, but his case
was the one that went all the way to the
Supreme Court, which issued a seven to one decision that
this law did not violate First Amendment protections on free speech.
Like the Flower Power imagery that we mentioned earlier, burning
draft cards became emblematic of opposition to the Vietnam War.
(22:42):
While burning a draft card didn't stop someone from being drafted,
there were also anti war activists who were trying to
destroy draft records in a way that would stop the draft,
and that was by going to the draft boards to
do it.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
We're going to talk more about that. After we paused
for a sponsor break. In September of nineteen sixty five,
nineteen year old Barry Bondis received his draft notice. He
went to Minneapolis for his physical and his psychological tests,
(23:20):
and on his paperwork he listed his birthplace as Earth
and his race as human. He and his father Tom
started trying to get him exempted from service on religious grounds.
That led to a meeting at the draft board office
in Elk River, Minnesota. Tom said that he was worried
about the draft because he had twelve sons, and a
(23:43):
member of the draft board asked where the rest of
them were. Tom was outraged by this question and stormed out,
and later the family came up with a plan to
deliver the rest of Barry's brothers to the draft board.
They had come up with an interpretation in which the
rest meant residue and residue meant waste, So they put
(24:06):
a couple of pails in the bathroom and they collected
their waste in them, And then on February twenty third,
nineteen sixty six, Barry took buckets of waste to the
draft board. His initial plan seems to have been to
basically leave them on the secretary's desk and say here's
the rest of my brothers. But once he was in
the office, he had another idea, which was to dump
(24:30):
the waste into the file cabinet containing the draft records.
That December, Barry Bondas was convicted of damaging government property
and interfering with the Selective Service. This seems like kind
of a spur of the moment decision on Bondas's part
to actually dump the human waste into the file cabinet,
but according to news reports from the time, he was
(24:53):
heavily influenced both by his father and by the family's
religious beliefs. Bondas isn't usual described as being part of
the movement that evolved to target draft boards, but this
is probably the earliest incident of draft board vandalism during
the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
A religious movement to target draft boards started a little
later in nineteen sixty seven. On October twenty seventh of
that year, four people entered a draft board office in Baltimore, Maryland,
located in the United States Customs House. Philip Berrigan was
a Catholic priest. Thomas Lewis was an artist and an
organizer with artists concerned about Vietnam. David Eberhardt was secretary
(25:37):
of the Baltimore Interfaith Peace Mission. These three presented themselves
as having some reason to be at the Draft office,
like needing to change their address or to check their
draft status. Once they were in the office.
Speaker 2 (25:51):
They poured a bottles of blood, reportedly it was their
own blood onto the draft records. A fourth man, James Mangle,
was a minister in the United Church of Christ, and
he acted as a lookout and tried to get in
the way of anybody who might come in and try
to stop them. But this was not so the four
(26:11):
men could make their escape. Once they were done. Getting
arrested was part of the point, and they were just
waiting for that to happen. Once they had poured the
blood on the draft files, they issued a statement to
the press that said, in part quote, we shed our
blood willingly and gratefully. We pour it upon these files
to illustrate that with them, and with these offices, begins
(26:35):
the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood ten thousand
miles away.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
They were charged with conspiracy and an attempt to mutilate
selective service records. They reportedly turned down offers of leniency
instead remaining in jail as an act of political protest,
and fasted and prayed while there.
Speaker 2 (26:57):
Well.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
They made no secret of what they had done. They
pleaded not guilty so their case would go to court,
and continued to keep the issue in the spotlight.
Speaker 2 (27:07):
One of the people who watched their trial from the
gallery was US Army veteran George Misha, who had worked
with the Catholic Organization Mary Nol missionaries in Mexico and
connected US policy in Vietnam to its policies in Latin America.
When the question was raised at trial of whether the
(27:27):
Selective Service Board couldn't just use their duplicate copies to
keep the draft functioning, it was revealed that there were
no duplicates. When he heard this, Misha turned to his
wife and said they should burn the cards.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
The four men on trial became known as the Baltimore Four,
and their demonstration was the first of what sometimes described
as the Catholic number group actions. The Catholic led protests
and some that were arranged by people who were not Catholic,
were often described using the numb number of people involved
and the city where the action took place.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
A few months after the Baltimore four was the Catonsville Nine.
One of those nine people was George Misha. Tom Lewis
and Philip Berrigan were involved as well. They had been
convicted of pouring blood on the draft records in Baltimore,
but they had not yet been sentenced, at least I
think there's some kind of contradictory reporting here of why
(28:28):
they were not incarcerated at this point in the timeline.
Another person who was part of this was Philip Beregan's
brother Daniel, who was also a priest.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
The Catonsville nine break in happened on May seventeenth, nineteen
sixty eight, a little more than a month after the
assassination of Martin Luther King Junior and the widespread civil
unrest that had followed it. The North Vietnamese had also
launched a coordinated surprise attack known as the Tet Offensive
at the end of January on the Lunar New Year
(28:59):
Holiday Tet. Although both sides claimed victory in the Tet Offensive,
this did not bring a decisive end to the war,
as the North Vietnamese had hoped when planning the operation,
but American casualties did spike during this part of the conflict.
Which was one of the reasons support for the war
continued to wane in the United States. The House of
(29:21):
Representatives had called for a congressional review of US policy
in Vietnam, and the US had replaced the commander in
charge of its military forces there. So when seven men
and two women went into the draft board in Catonsville, Maryland,
removed three hundred and seventy eight draft files, covered them
with homemade napalm in the parking lot, and set them
(29:43):
on fire. In the wake of all this, it was
a major national news story. Pouring blood on the draft
records had been evocative, and so was burning them with napalm.
They had made it from a recipe they adapted from
a Special Forces handbook. As had happened in Baltimore, getting
arrested and facing trial was part of the point, and
(30:05):
so was the news coverage they had tipped off the
media ahead of time. None of the Catonsville nine were
eligible for the draft. They were exempt because of their age,
their sex, or some other reason. They spoke of being
motivated by their religious convictions, including the fact that only
five of the roughly four hundred Catholic bishops in the
(30:26):
US had spoken out in opposition to the war. Thomas Melville,
one of the participants, told reporters that since their church
had failed to act officially, they felt it was up
to them to act as individuals to speak out in
the name of Catholicism and Christianity.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
Some of the participants also spoke out on what they
saw as parallels between US involvement in Vietnam and its
actions in other parts of the world. We mentioned George
Misha's time in Mexico earlier. John Hogan had served as
a mission buil business manager in Guatemala, and Marjorie and
Thomas Melville had both been in Guatemala in connection with
(31:06):
the Marinol Catholic Mission movement. They had all seen the
impact of things like the CIA orchestrated coup that we
mentioned earlier. These activists saw patterns of oppression, inequality, and poverty,
including within the United States, as interconnected with what was
happening in Vietnam.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
After setting the draft records on fire, the Catonsville Nine
prayed for peace while waiting to be arrested. They refused bail,
and they fasted while waiting in jail. Their trial began
in federal court on October fifth, nineteen sixty eight, and
it lasted for five days. There was an anti war
protest on the first day of the trial, which happened
(31:47):
at the same time as a George Wallace campaign rally,
which made it a tense day. Anti war protests continued
on in the later days of the trial as well.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
At trial, the defendants admitted to what they had done,
but without describing themselves as guilty. They talked about burning
the draft records as an act of conscience, one connected
to a desire to end suffering around the world, including
within the United States. David Darst, who is a Christian brother,
(32:19):
said quote, I wanted to do a tiny bit to
stop the machine of death I saw moving.
Speaker 1 (32:26):
The Catonsville nine were found guilty on all charges. They
were fined and given sentences of between twenty four and
forty two months each. Tom Lewis and Philip Brigan were
given the longest sentences, in part because of their earlier
conviction for pouring blood on the draft records in Baltimore.
Speaker 2 (32:45):
David Darst died in a car accident before his sentence began,
and Mary Moylan, the Berrigan brothers, and George Misha all
went into hiding rather than reporting for their incarceration. The
four of them were all eventually captured or turned themselves in,
but that took years. The last of them, Mary Moylan,
(33:06):
turned herself in ten years after the trial. Dan Berrigan
also seemed to kind of taunt authorities. He would regularly
appear in public to speak or to participate in some
kind of protest or demonstration, and then he would disappear again.
The Canonsville Nine became the inspiration for a whole movement
of direct actions at draft board offices. At least thirty
(33:28):
of them were connected to the Catholic Left movement, which
was focused on nonviolent resistance against the Vietnam War and
against warmore generally, especially among the people who were motivated
by their religious convictions, these were public demonstrations not just
with the possibility of being arrested and charged with a crime,
but with the intent of that happening, because that was
(33:51):
part of the sacrifice and part of the impact of
what they were doing. The effects these draft board raids
had on the actual was often temporary. Although testimony in
the Baltimore four case had suggested that there were no
backup records, there weren't registers and other paperwork. Draft files
(34:12):
were often damaged but not completely destroyed in this process,
so a lot of the time it was possible to
reconstruct most or all of them later, so it sort
of put a pause on drafts happening from a particular office,
rather than a total stop to them. We're going to
talk about more of the nearly three hundred draft board
(34:33):
raids carried out between nineteen sixty eight and nineteen seventy
two next time. In the meantime, I have lister mail. Marvelous.
This is from Brandon, Brandon wrote after our episode on
doctor Daniel Hale Williams, and Brandon wrote, Hi, there, Sym,
I see. I wanted to say thank you for highlighting
(34:56):
such an interesting figure in history whom I'd only heard
simple anecdotes about previously. The comprehensive dive into his past
makes for an exceptional story. Mister Williams reminds me of
one of my great ancestors who made huge advances in
the black community during the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds.
(35:16):
His name was doctor Aaron McDuffie Moore, and his great
great granddaughter is the CEO of the Durham Colored Library,
founded by doctor Moore in nineteen fifteen, who has written
a very comprehensive official biography of his life. I and
the rest of the family would love for you to
tell his story and highlight him as well. You ladies
(35:38):
are so good at it. You can order his biography here. Also,
would you mind suggesting how I might go about getting
a similar podcast started so that I can monetize telling great,
historically relevant stories to a wide audience. I'm sitting on
a treasure trove and currently spinning my wheels getting started.
Much appreciate all you do. Keep up the great work.
Cheers Brandon. Thank you so much, Brandon. I had not
(36:02):
actually heard of the Durham Colored Library before. This is
new information to me. This biography of Aaron McDuffie Moore
is called Aaron McDuffie Moore, an African American physician, educator
and founder of Durham's Black Wall Street. If you go
(36:23):
to durhamcl dot org standing for Durham d U r
h A M. Colored Library dot org, you can learn
more about this biography and how to get a copy
of it. So thank you so much to write for
writing and asking or letting us know about that In
terms of the question about starting a podcast, that's a
(36:44):
very big question.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
There are lots of.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
Resources around about how to get started in podcasting. One
place that I point people to a lot when they
are getting started is called Transom dot org. Just Transom,
but transom dot org is their website and they have
(37:08):
a ton of resources about podcasting, about storytelling, all of
that kind of stuff. It can be a place to
really get started and learn new ideas and strategies. In
terms of monetizing a podcast, that's a complicated question. There
are lots of different ways to try to monetize a podcast,
(37:28):
and there are a lot of different services now that
allow podcast hosts and creators to have or have advertisements. Dynamically,
it'serted into their show, which is how ours work. We
have some ads that we Holly and I record, but
then we have other ads that come in through a
(37:50):
sort of network. I don't think we can really offer
advice on any particular one, but that is a way
to get ads into a podcast. Asked if you are
just starting out and building an audience, Yeah, we're in
that unique position where we're part of a bigger network
that has been you know, the show has been part
(38:11):
of for like close to fifteen more now, So in
that regard, we don't really deal with a lot of
the monetization part we had. There's literally a whole sales
team within our company that does that. Yeah, I will
say this just as a matter of expectations management. A
(38:32):
lot of podcasts don't make any money, right, right, the
vast majority don't make any money. So I would I
always encourage people, even if we bring them into our network,
to not anticipate that this will be a significant driver
of income or revenue, right, just as a reality scenario, Like,
I don't want anybody to think, like, you know, the
(38:54):
chart of like record publish money and it doesn't like
a situation. Yeah, my spouse and I were in a
meeting and we were doing the sort of the introductory
talking about who we are. It was a personal meeting
that not important in the context, but he said something like,
(39:14):
I have learned that the way to have a really
financially successful podcast is to have started it way in
the past, which we are extraordinarily lucky to have stepped
into a podcast that was already established and also at
this point to have been on it for more than
twelve years. Because the process of building an audience and
(39:37):
getting your work more widely heard can be a long road.
I mean, some shows are incredibly lucky and kind of
hit that viral moment, but the viral moment doesn't happen
for a lot of shows. And for people that are
doing something that is a labor of love that they're
just really dedicated to and passionate about, that can carry
people through a lot. But there are also people who
(40:00):
eventually decide, hey, like, I'm spending so much time on
this and so much effort on this, and I cannot
continue to do it for indefinitely and definitely without being
able to make it a profitable thing. So yeah, I
don't know if I have. I used to have a
whole list of other resources besides Transom to direct people to,
(40:26):
but that's a good starting point. I will also say
this because it has come up a number of times
where I will be out in the world, especially if
I'm at like an event or something, and someone comes
up and wants to, like, pitch me a show. You
don't have to be part of a big network to
make a podcast. You don't have to wait for permission
(40:47):
to make the thing that is in your heart, and
like we said, even if you are, the odds of
actually making money at it are not amazing. So like
I always encourage people to just make it. Never assume
there's one great idea that you have and you will
never have another good one. Make the great idea and
then see what happens. And as he said, you might
(41:10):
decide this is too much time and effort for me
to do if I'm not getting compensated in some way,
which is totally fine and in no way of failure
because you have made something and that is amazing. But yeah,
I always don't. You don't have to wait for permission
from a network or a sponsor or anything. You can
just make it as it. Yeah. Yeah, I'm kind of
(41:32):
reminded of the number of pretty successful authors I know
who've published a lot of books and also have day jobs. Yeah,
which is one of those things where if I had
a magical wand a magical wand a magic wand to
change things about society would include you know, artists and
(41:52):
writers and crafts people earning a living wage on the
things that they love to make. Ed We'll say, you know,
try what you want to try. Do not feel tied
to how other shows that are doing podcasts are doing
it so important. They're like, it's a wide open field
(42:14):
to feel free to take risks, do interesting things, not
try to sound like other shows already sound. Hopefully any
of that was helpful if you'd like to send us
a note about this or any other podcasts. Where at
history podcasts at iHeartRadio dot com and you can't subscribe
(42:37):
to our show on the iHeartRadio app and anywhere else
you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you missed in
History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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