By CONNIE ZEIGLER / Contributing editor
During the early years of American participation in the Vietnam War Indianapolis was not a center of anti-war activity. But by 1969 activity was increasing with the publishing and disbursement of the Free Press and the Indiana Liberal, both anti-war vehicles, as well as the founding of the anti-draft and anti-war Indianapolis Draft Project. In this period most of the local activity focused more singularly as an anti-draft movement.
In October 1969 a Vietnam War Moratorium Day took place across the nation. Tens of thousands marched in protest of the war. In Indianapolis, local colleges and high schools participated, but much more quietly. More than 1,000 students took part in a candlelight vigil at Butler University, according to The Indianapolis News, on Oct. 16. Butler and Christian Theological Seminary sponsored forum discussions about the war. About 20 students at Indiana Central University (now University of Indianapolis) held a 24-hour vigil, fasting for peace and “several dozen persons passed out leaflets” at Monument Circle, The News reported about the city’s participation in the Moratorium Day.
Despite this probably largest collective anti-war activity to date in the city, the Encyclopedia of Indianapolis mentions a poll that The Indianapolis News published after the moratorium which indicated 45 percent of respondents favored President Nixon’s position of “seeking an honorable end to the war.” Another 40 percent wanted to resume bombing in pursuit of a military victory. Only 15 percent supported an immediate end to the conflict.
The city did not have long to wait after the Moratorium before the most publicized anti-war action of the year occurred on Halloween night 1969 when eight people, including an Indianapolis teen, 19-year old Paul J. Mack, broke into the Selective Service office at 222 E. Ohio St., ransacked the office and damaged files. They taped a typewritten note to the door: “We call on people to take charge of their affairs and to end the dictatorship of the military and the rich . . . we are not criminals and are not ashamed of our actions . . . in due time we will identify ourselves.” The ellipses (perhaps connoting missing words) were included in the note printed in The Indianapolis News on April 12, 1970, in an article reporting that a federal grand jury had been seated to hear the evidence against the eight accused; only Mack was from Indianapolis.
According to The News article and yearslong subsequent reporting in the Star and News, the group that broke into the draft office called itself Beaver 55 – the source of the name was never explained in news coverage. The vandalism in Indianapolis was not the only action the group undertook. They also broke into Dow Chemical offices in Midland, Mich., in November 1969, a month after the Indianapolis crime. At Dow they damaged and destroyed files, saying their actions were justified because Dow produced chemicals used in the war.
Mack – a former star student and class president at the Latin School, a pre-seminary Catholic school that operated in Indianapolis from the mid-1950s to the late 1970s – was eventually convicted of federal crimes in 1970 and sentenced to six years in prison.
There were other protests and anti-war activities in the city in the 1970s, including the formation and anti-war marches of Hoosiers for Peace, ongoing activity of the Indianapolis Draft Project, and the arrest of anti-draft protestors who were known as the “Marian 8,” according to materials in the Indiana Historical Society collection. In 1971, the Indiana Civil Liberties Union adopted a position to support anti-draft protestors in court cases.
The Beaver 55 group’s break-in at Selective Services, with the participation of a local boy, continued to top the anti-war news in Indianapolis for years. Mack and his accomplices went back to court on appeal in 1972, eventually appealing all the way to the Supreme Court, which did not hear the case.
In fact, Beaver 55 was still making news well past the end of the Vietnam War. In 1975, Mack and his cohorts were back in Indianapolis federal court pleading for leniency, according to an April 10 report in The Indianapolis News. In the interim between the convictions and the re-hearing, according to Mack’s mother, Elizabeth, he had been holding down a job, going to college and fighting debilitating depression. Elizabeth Mack told the court that her son was trying to save lives by his actions and she asked the court to consider the light sentences that some of the participants in the Watergate scandal had received for that break-in in hopes her son’s sentence would be shortened. Paul Mack’s sister also spoke on his behalf. U.S. District Court Judge J. Holder was not moved by Mack’s rehabilitation efforts, nor his mental health problems. In February 1976, The Star reported that he was re-sentenced to three years in prison with time served to be counted since he was incarcerated in April 1975.
Almost a year before the Beaver 55 members started serving their prison sentence, Nixon had left the presidency in disgrace. In the same month that Mack was incarcerated, April 1975, the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam after sacrificing more than 58,000 lives (Vietnam Memorial list). The war ended with the communist North Vietnamese rolling over South Vietnam, but did not result in communism “island hopping” across the Pacific which had been predicted by many war hawks.
Paul Mack disappeared from Indianapolis records, presumably while he was in prison. Then he briefly resurfaced in 1978 when he was listed in the City Directory with an address in an apartment on West Drive, Woodruff Place. He did not appear in any City Directory after that and did not appear again in local newspapers until his mother’s obituary was published in The News in February 1993.
Along with noting that she had been a volunteer at the Indiana Women’s Prison, a tutor and a pantry worker at Holy Cross Catholic Church, the obit stated that she was the widow of Joseph S. Mack Sr., and it listed the names of her survivors, among them a brother, a sister and eight children, including Paul Mack.
Although historians disagree about the importance of the anti-war movement in bringing about an end to America’s participation in the Vietnam War, there is a clear line to be drawn from the anti-draft movement of the late 1960s to early 1970s, in which Indianapolis residents played a role, and the end of the draft, which came in January 1973. After that date the U.S. military moved to the all-voluntary system that has continues since that date.
Connie Zeigler holds a master’s degree in history. She enjoys digging up a surprising, forgotten story and sharing her pirate’s booty with Urban Times readers.
