Burning+of+Draft+Cards

= Burning of Draft Cards ﻿   =

Written by Tim Croy

Draft cards were made during Vietnam war because the U.S. was running low on soldiers. The U.S. needed more men to be sent to Vietnam to help the U.S. fight the war. Males had to sign up for the draft when they turned 18. You got your draft card and there was a lottery to see if his number was picked. If your number got called, you would have to serve in the army. The men had to serve in the army for 2 years before they could return home. People realized what was really happening in Vietnam and didn’t want anything to do with the war. ==== A guy named David O’Brien burnt his draft card on March 31, 1966 in front of South Boston Courthouse in front of many people. Some of those people were in the FBI and took him in the courthouse.He went to supreme court for that and he said burning his draft card was a freedom of speech and said it did not violate the First Amendment. The government realized his act was a protest against war and decided it was not freedom of speech. O’Brien was sentenced to 6 years of jail time. Men saw the burning and they started burning their draft cards too. Men started saying the slogan “We wont go” and it became known throughout the U.S. In October 1967, there were draft card “turn ins” all over the country. Turn ins were when the men gave back their draft cards to the government. In San Francisco alone there were 300 draft cards returned to the government. ==== ==== By 1965, 380 men were prosecuted due to refusing to go to the army. Men kept refusing to go to war and the prosecutions went up to 3,305. At the end of 1969 there were 33,960 men refusing to go. Men were getting prosecuted all around the country for burning their draft cards or refusing to go to war. The government did not want to keep killing men though, so instead they sent them to jail. In May of 1969, from all of Northern California, 4,440 were ordered to report for duty, 2,400 did not show up. ==== ==== Everyone was protesting against the war, nobody liked what the U.S. was doing in Vietnam. The anti-war protests began spreading through the country and all the men started burning their cards. They did not want to fight in Vietnam. It wasn’t because they were afraid, but because they knew what was really happening over there. They didn’t want to kill civilians and destroy there homes. They knew the government was lying and they didn’t like it. The regular citizens of the United States did not think what the government and president was doing in Vietnam was good. ==== __[]__

__Bibliography:__ A LFANGE, D EAN , J R. 1968 Free Speech and Symbolic Conduct: The Draft Card Burning Case. //Supreme Court Review// 1968: 1–52.

Kindig, Jessie. "Vietnam: Draft Resistance." // UW Departments Web Server //. Web. 25 Jan. 2011.