On May 17, 1968, a group of nine radical Catholics, including six who were or had been members of religious orders, bore witness against the Vietnam War through a dramatic protest in Catonsville, Maryland, just outside of Baltimore. Dubbed by the press as the Catonsville Nine, they forced their way into the office of Local Draft Board 13 located in the Knights of Columbus Hall. The protestors then seized 378 files, which they burned in a nearby parking lot with homemade napalm that they viewed as a symbol of the barbarity of the Vietnam War. They also viewed the fire as an “enduring Christian symbol that evoked the Pentecost . . . and the Nine hoped to spark a similar renewal” (104). In the presence of the press, which had been alerted about their actions, they prayed in front of the flames. Following the tenets of civil disobedience, the protesters quietly awaited arrest for destroying government property and interfering with the Selective Service system. Their October 1968 Baltimore trial drew national and international attention. During the proceedings, the defendants explained the religious motivations for their protest and condemned the United States for its militaristic foreign policy and for creating a socially unjust society at home. After the jury left to begin its deliberations, with the consent of the judge, all in the courtroom stood as the Nine again joined hands and recited the Lord's Prayer. The trial concluded with the expected guilty verdict and prison sentences.
In 1970, after several failed judicial appeals, four of the nine, including activist priests Phillip and Daniel Berrigan, the most well known of the protesters, refused to report for incarceration and gained yet more publicity by going underground. Daniel Berrigan in particular taunted the FBI with public appearances at anti-war rallies despite a massive manhunt orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover. All were eventually imprisoned, but their action inspired Catholics and others to conduct hundreds of similar raids on draft boards across the nation, and their story has been memorialized in multiple cultural forms, including a play inspired by the trial's testimony that continues to be performed to this day, and by feature and documentary films, novels, songs, and poetry.
While there are numerous accounts of the activities of the Catonsville Nine, Shawn Francis Peters sought to write a more complete and dispassionate history of their protest, trial and the aftermath, one that traces each of the participant's lives, personalities, and motivations and one that digs deeply into the event itself. Peters grew up in Catonsville, although he was a tiny child at the time of the raid and thus has no personal memory of the event. Raised a Catholic, he recalls being fascinated by the Catonsville Nine since childhood and collecting material even as he pursued other academic projects. In writing this book, Peters draws on heavily on the Berrigans' published writings and unpublished correspondence, the writings of several of the other activists, contemporary and oral history interviews, the trial transcript, and the religious press. Also, he gained access to FBI files, which not only provide new insights into the activities of the protestors, but also provide fascinating evidence of the FBI's obsession with the Catonsville Nine.
Peters's book is essentially a narrative of the events from the planning of the protest, to the trial, including coverage of demonstrations in Baltimore by the activists' supporters and the reaction to the trial, to the manhunt and prison experiences of the Catonsville Nine. However, what particularly enriches the book are the life stories of the activists and of the other key participants, including the draft board's head clerk, who sought to defend her files from destruction, the lawyers on both sides, and the trial judge, who gave the defense great liberties. The author makes clear how their backgrounds and experiences helped shape each individual's involvement in the protest and trial.
The Catonsville Nine's most apparent goal was to find a more effective way to stop the Vietnam War. Many in the group were already involved in the peace movement, but they felt that its current tactics, including marching, demonstrating, writing, fasting and draft evasion, were ineffective, and they were seeking a more powerful and dramatic means to slowdown the machinery of war by throwing “a roadblock into a system which they considered murderous, which was grinding young men . . . to death in Vietnam” (229). Peters makes clear that their motivations were even more far reaching then ending America's involvement in Vietnam. In their statements at the scene of the draft records burning and during the trial, they called for justice, and economic and social equality throughout the world. Members of the group and other liberal Catholics of the sixties were inspired by Pope Paul and Vatican II, which Philip Berrigan argued “‘was shaking the dust from scripture, challenging clergy and lay people to reexamine their commitment to social justice, and creating space for Catholics to transcend indifference and apathy” (23). Three of the Catonsville Nine, former Maryknoll priest and nun Thomas and Marjorie Mellville, and Maryknoll brother John Hogan, had served in Guatemala, and their actions at Catonsville were shaped by the exploitation of the peasantry that they witnessed and by the emerging ethos of liberation theology. Although missed by most accounts of the Catonsville Nine, as Peters clearly demonstrates, their actions were not solely directed at America's foreign policy but also sought to draw attention to the oppression of the poor in the Third World and in the United States and to the injustices suffered by African-Americans.
Peters's book deepens our understanding of the 1968 protest in Catonsville, Maryland. But while he touches briefly on the Catholic left, he can be chided for failing to place their protest within the broader history of the anti-war movement and of the Catholic New Left. Stronger contextualization would make a good book even better.
