Lawrence Roberts - Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of Americas Biggest Mass Arrest

First Mariner Books edition 2021

Copyright 2020 by Lawrence Roberts

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Roberts, Lawrence, (Journalist) author.

Title: Mayday 1971 : a White House at war, a revolt in the streets, and the untold history of Americas biggest mass arrest/Lawrence Roberts.

Other titles: White House at war, a revolt in the streets, and the untold history of Americas biggest mass arrest

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019033950 (print) | LCCN 2019033951 (ebook) | ISBN 9781328766724 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781328766748 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358561972 (pbk.)

Subjects: LCSH: Vietnam War, 19611975Protest movementsUnited States. | DemonstrationsWashington (D.C.)History20th century. | Mall, The (Washington, D.C.)History20th century. | Government, Resistance ToUnited StatesHistory20th century. | Washington (D.C.)History20th century. | Civil disobedienceUnited StatesHistory20th century. | MilitarismUnited StatesHistory20th century. | United StatesPolitics and Government19691974.

Classification: LCC DS 559.62. U 6 R 63 2020 (print) | LCC DS 559.62. U 6 (ebook) | DDC 959.704/31dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033950

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019033951

Frontispiece: Map by Mapping Specialists, Ltd.

Part 1 March 1971: Washington Star photo by Bernie Boston/Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection Washington Post

Part 2 April 1971: Washington Star photo by Bill Perry/Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection Washington Post

Part 3 May 1971: Reprinted with permission of the DC Public Library, Star Collection Washington Post

Cover design by Mark R. Robinson

Cover photograph courtesy of the DC Public Library, Washington Star Photo Collection, Washington Post

Author photograph Matt Rose

v2.0421

For Nancy and Jacob

Whenever American institutions have provided a hysterical response to an emergency situation, we have come later to regret it.

JUDGE HAROLD H. GREENE

A NOTE TO READERS : The events described herein involved thousands of participants and touched many more lives. By necessity I have chosen key people to represent the whole. Within that group are eight who played particularly interesting roles. The story you will read is told largely through their eyes. The eight are highlighted below in boldface. To help you track them, they generally will be identified by first names after their initial introductions in these pages.

THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION

WHITE HOUSE

President Richard M. Nixon

H. R. Haldeman, chief of staff

John Ehrlichman, domestic policy chief

Egil Bud Krogh Jr., Ehrlichmans assistant

Henry A. Kissinger, national security chief

Tom Huston, staff assistant

John Dean, White House counsel

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

John Mitchell, attorney general

Richard Kleindienst, deputy attorney general

William H. Rehnquist, chief legal counsel

J. Edgar Hoover, FBI director

William Sullivan, FBI intelligence chief

LEADERS OF THE 1971 SPRING OFFENSIVE

PEOPLES COALITION FOR PEACE & JUSTICE

Rennie Davis

David Dellinger

John Froines

Sidney Peck

Jerry Coffin

THE MAYDAY TRIBE/YIPPIES

Stew Albert

Judy Gumbo

Abbie Hoffman

Jerry Rubin

Leslie Bacon

VIETNAM VETERANS AGAINST THE WAR

John Kerry

John OConnor

Jack Mallory

Tim Butz

Michael Phelan

POLICE AND COURTS OF WASHINGTON, D.C.

D.C. POLICE

Jerry V. Wilson, police chief

Maurice Cully Cullinane, assistant chief

Gerald Caplan, counsel

LAWYERS

Barbara A. Bowman, director, Public Defender Service

Norman Lefstein, deputy director, Public Defender Service

Michael Wald, public defender

Philip J. Hirschkop, civil liberties attorney

D.C. JUDGES

Harold H. Greene, chief judge

William Bryant

Charles Halleck

MAJOR PROTESTS AGAINST AMERICAS VIETNAM WAR

SPRING 1965

• First teach-in against the war, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

• Rally in D.C. sponsored by Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)

• Vietnam Day teach-in, University of California, Berkeley

APRIL 1967

• Mass marches in New York City and San Francisco, sponsored by National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe)

OCTOBER 1967

• Mobe rally in D.C., with Yippies attempt to levitate the Pentagon

• Stop the Draft Week in Oakland, California

AUGUST 1968

• Mobe and Yippie actions during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago

JANUARY 1969

• Counter-inaugural protest by the Mobe and others in Washington at Richard Nixons first swearing-in

FALL 1969

• National Moratorium demonstrations, including rallies, work stoppages, and teach-ins, held October 15 and November 15

MAY 1970

• D.C. rally to protest wars expansion into Cambodia and mourn four students killed by National Guard at Kent State University in Ohio

MARCH THROUGH MAY 1971

• The Spring Offensive and Mayday, including protests by the Peoples Coalition for Peace and Justice, the Mayday Tribe, the National Peace Action Coalition (NPAC), and Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW)

At daybreak on saturday, May 1, 1971, two helicopters banked over the monuments of Washington, D.C., and hovered above the Potomac riverfront. The pilots relayed sobering news back to their superiors. It wasnt long before Jerry Vernon Wilson, the citys chief of police, left the downtown hotel room where hed been sleeping all week. He headed to the Department of Justice for an emergency private meeting. There, he joined eleven men from Justice, the White House, the Pentagon, and the National Guardthe institutions most vested in preserving order on the streets of the capital.

For weeks, demonstrators had been flowing into Washington for marches, rallies, and sit-down protests, demanding an end to Americas war in Vietnam. The nonstop action had exhausted the government men, eroded their patience and their confidence. Now they worried about what was coming next.

Down by the placid blue-tinged river, a ragtag encampment was growing fast. Tens of thousands of young people were turning West Potomac Park into the staging area for the most zealous of the protests. When the workweek got underway on Monday morning, May 3, the militants, who called themselves the Mayday Tribe, planned to stream out of the park into the city, using their bodies and their cars to block bridges, traffic circles, and the approaches to government office buildings. Deprive Washington of its workers, and the federal city would stall. Maydays leaders hoped this unprecedented show of public disaffection would raise the spectre of social chaos, knocking President Richard M. Nixon off course and forcing him to bring all the troops home from Southeast Asia.