Draft-card burning
Draft-card burning was a symbol of protest performed by thousands of young men in the United States and Australia in the 1960s and early 1970s as part of the anti-war movement. The first draft-card burners were American men participating in the opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War. The first well-publicized protest was in December 1963, with a 22-year-old conscientious objector, Gene Keyes, setting fire to his card on Christmas Day in Champaign, Illinois.[1] In May 1964, a larger demonstration, with about 50 people in Union Square, New York, was organized by the War Resisters League chaired by David McReynolds.[2][3]
By May 1965, it was happening with greater frequency around the US. To limit this kind of protest,[4] in August 1965, the United States Congress enacted a law to broaden draft card violations to punish anyone who "knowingly destroys, knowingly mutilates" his draft card.[5] Subsequently, 46 men were indicted[6] for burning their draft cards at various rallies, and four major court cases were heard. One of them, United States v. O'Brien, was argued before the Supreme Court. The act of draft-card burning was defended as a symbolic form of free speech, a constitutional right guaranteed by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court decided against the draft-card burners; it determined that the federal law was justified and unrelated to the freedom of speech.
In Australia, following the 1966 troop increases directed by Prime Minister Harold Holt, conscription notices were burned at mass demonstrations against Australian involvement in Vietnam. In June 1968, the government reacted by strengthening penalties for infractions of the Menzies government 1964 National Service Act, including the burning of registration cards. War protest ceased in 1972 when Australia's new Labor government withdrew troops from Vietnam and abolished conscription.
From 1965 to 1973, very few men in the US were convicted of burning their draft cards. Some 25,000 others went unpunished.[6] Before 1965, the act of burning a draft card was already prohibited by US statute—the registrant was required to carry the card at all times, and any destruction of it was thus against the law. Also, it was entirely possible for a young man to destroy his draft card and still answer his country's call to service by appearing at an induction center and serving in the military,[7] and it was possible for a registrant to faithfully keep his card on his person but fail to appear when called. The draft card was not an essential part of the government's ability to draft men into the military. Thus draft-card burning was an act of war resistance more than it was draft resistance.[5][8]
The image of draft-card burning was powerful and influential in American politics and culture.[7] It appeared in magazines, newspapers, and television, signaling a political divide between those who backed the US government and its military goals and those against US involvement in Vietnam.[9] Richard Nixon ran for president in 1968 on a platform based partly on putting an end to the draft, to undercut protesters making use of the symbolic act. As president, Nixon ended the draft in 1973, rendering the symbolic act of draft-card burning unnecessary.
Reactions[edit]
Within the anti-war movement[edit]
Even some supporters of the anti-war movement, such as William Sloane Coffin, expressed concern that the tactic was "unnecessarily hostile."[47]
High media exposure[edit]
Many in America were unhappy with the draft-card burners or the frequent depiction of them in the media. Joseph Scerra, national commander of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, spoke against what he saw as too much news coverage: "All of our young people are not burning up their draft cards. All of our young people are not tearing up the flag. All of our youth are not supporting North Vietnam and carrying Viet Cong flags."[48] In October 1967 at a rally in support of the government, a news photograph was snapped of a man kissing his draft card, his girlfriend smiling at his side.[48] In Playboy's November 1967 issue, Playboy Playmate Kaya Christian wrote that her "turn-offs" were "hypocrites" and "draft card burners".[49]
Leftist Ramparts magazine showed four draft cards being burned on the December 1967 cover. The Saturday Evening Post, a conservative publication, put an image of a draft-card burning on its January 27, 1968 cover. In 1967 off-Broadway and 1968 on Broadway and in London's West End, the musical Hair featured a climactic scene in Act I of a group of men in a hippie "tribe" burning their draft cards while the main character Claude struggles with the decision to join them.[50] Later, when the musical was staged in Yugoslavia, the draft-card burning scene was removed, as the local protesting youth viewed their army positively as a vehicle to fight off a possible invasion by the Soviet Union.[51]
Framing the movement[edit]
President Johnson spoke strongly against the draft-card protesters, saying in October 1967 that he wanted the "antidraft movement" investigated for Communist influences.[7] Reporting on his reaction, The New York Times presented the protests as being against the draft rather than the war.[7] Many commentators focused on draft resistance as an explanation rather than the more challenging war resistance: the protesters' main concern.[7]
Political impact[edit]
In 1968, when Richard Nixon was running for President, he promised to make the military into a purely volunteer force. In this, he was following others who had suggested such a strategy, including Donald Rumsfeld of the Republican Wednesday Group the year before.[7] At the beginning of his second term as President, Nixon stopped the draft after February 1973. The last man to be drafted entered the US Army on June 30, 1973.[52]