Milwaukee 14 staged fiery Vietnam protest downtown
Milwaukee saw several protests against the Vietnam War in 1968, but on Sept. 24 of that year, 14 protesters wanted to make sure their message was easy to see.
That evening, the group soon known as the Milwaukee 14 — which included five Catholic priests and a minister from the Church of Scientology — raided the downtown Selective Service Administration office, seized thousands of draft cards and set them on fire using homemade napalm.
To make sure their message reached a wider audience, the group lured reporters to the site — a patch of green space across from the Brumder Building, 135 W. Wells St. — with the promise of a “headline” story of “national significance,” the Milwaukee Sentinel reported Sept. 25.
The reporters weren’t disappointed. “Firemen extinguished the flaming bags, which sent black smoke billowing into the air, within minutes after the fire was set … ,” Michael Kirkhorn wrote in a front-page story in The Journal Sept. 25.
“None of the protesters tried to avoid arrest. They hugged and congratulated each other as the bags burned in a pile at the base of a flagpole and seemed elated even as they were loaded in the (police) wagons.”
In a statement given to reporters before the fire was started, the protesters said they were showing their opposition to sending American men to fight in Vietnam “as killers for the state.”
Four of the 14 arrested men were from Milwaukee: Michael Cullen, an activist who operated Casa Maria House of Hospitality; Father Larry Rosebaugh, a staff member at Casa Maria; Robert Graf, a member of Casa Maria and a student at Marquette University who edited the Catholic Radical newsletter; and Jerry Gardner, a grad student at Marquette and a teacher at North Division High School.
The 14 were charged with being party to burglary, theft and arson to property.
Local antiwar activists praised their actions.
A rally at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee drew 300 supporters on Oct. 15; two weeks later, 450 Marquette students marched to the Safety Building at North Ninth and West State streets, where they chanted “Thank you, thank you, thank you” at the protesters still housed in the jail there, according to an Oct. 2, 1968, Journal story.
Not everyone felt that way. The day after the fire, during a speech condemning the Milwaukee 14’s actions at a Milwaukee County Democrats meeting, the Sentinel reported that members of the crowd shouted “Shoot ‘em” and “Kill, kill, kill.”
On May 26, 1969, a jury found 12 of the 14 guilty of all charges, and the men were sentenced to two years in prison, but they all received early paroles. A month later, a separate federal case was thrown out when U.S. District Judge Myron Gordon concluded that media coverage made finding a truly impartial jury impossible.
Gardner and Cullen, whose cases had been heard in federal court, were found guilty shortly thereafter and spent about a year in prison.