International Days of Protest

The draft sent more than 2 million Americans to Vietnam, many of them baby boomers. Millions more avoided the war through deferments. Draft dodgers burned their cards to protest the war. (Loan, Gary E. Stevens)

The First Amendment took center stage in anti-war demonstrations 49 years ago this week, as the first draft card was burned in public amid nationwide protests decrying U.S. involvement in the escalating Vietnam conflict.

In August 1965, Congress passed a law prohibiting the willful destruction of draft cards. Two months later, a young Catholic pacifist, David Miller, burned his draft card in front of a crowd a rally in New York part of the Vietnam Day Committees International Days of Protest Oct. 15-16. Miller was later arrested by the FBI and sentenced to 30 months in prison. Despite the law, draft card burning became a common form of anti-war protest, even though numerous court decisions including the 1968 U.S. Supreme Court caseUnited States v. OBrien ruled that the law did not violate protesters First Amendment rights to free speech.

When Newseum curators were collecting artifacts for The Boomer List exhibit, they wanted to include a draft card from the era as a defining symbol of the boomer generations story. But they were having a hard time finding one to display. On a hunch, director of collections Carrie Christoffersen called her father, who promptly unearthed his draft card and mailed it to the Newseum, still in its plastic wallet sleeve. Why did he have it after all these years? Christoffersen said her father told her, half-jokingly, Its a federal document! You cant get rid of that kind of thing.

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International Days of Protest