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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. The first draft-card burners were American men taking part 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, Eugene Keyes, setting fire to his card on Christmas Day in Champaign, Illinois. 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.
Geoffrey Richard Mullen was an Australian draft resister whose jailing in 1971 became a focal point of opposition to conscription for the Vietnam War.
References
- ↑ Freudenberg, Graham (2009), A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam's Life in Politics (revised ed.), Viking, p. 247., ISBN 978-0-670-07375-7
- ↑ 'History maker turns historian' Adelaide Advertiser, 16 January 1988, p. 2
- ↑ Interview with Robert Martin [sound recording], Peter Donovan, 1989 Adelaide Gaol Oral History Project State Library of South Australia
