Spiritual Criminals: An Interview with Dr. Michelle Nickerson

By Anna Wilmhoff

 

Loyola history professor Dr. Michelle Nickerson’s most recent book, Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, was published this August by the University of Chicago Press. In the following interview, Dr. Nickerson discusses her book as well as the story which inspired it—the Camden 28’s raid on a New Jersey draft board and their subsequent trial.  

Dr. Nickerson will be speaking about Spiritual Criminals at two upcoming events. On Wednesday, September 18, Loyola University Chicago Law School, the Hank Center for Catholic Intellectual Heritage, and the Gannon Center for Women and Leadership will host “In Defense of Others, In Defense of Faith: The Camden 28 Trial and the Vietnam War.” The event will be held at Corboy Law Center on Loyola’s Water Tower Campus. On Wednesday, October 16, Dr. Nickerson will deliver another talk in Coffey Hall’s McCormick Lounge on Loyola’s Lake Shore Campus. This event is co-sponsored by the Theology Department, the History Department, and Peace, Justice, and Conflict Studies.

To learn more about Spiritual Criminals and the Camden 28, visit Dr. Nickerson’s website, michellenickerson.com.

To people unfamiliar with the Camden 28, how would you describe the significance of their story?

The Camden 28 were a group of activists arrested for raiding a draft board to protest the Vietnam War in 1971.  They are important because they succeeded in defending themselves against the Nixon-era FBI and U.S. Attorneys who were desperate to get them behind bars because some of them possessed records confirming that the FBI was engaged in illegal activity.  In an incredible turn of events, the Camden 28 won acquittal despite the fact that they openly admitted their crime.  They successfully used moral suasion to convince the jury that they did the right thing in burglarizing the draft board even though they broke the law.

The other important aspect of this story is the movement history.  The “Catholic Left” was not a big movement in terms of people but big in terms of their effectiveness.  These draft board raids took place up and down the East Coast and into the Midwest, some on the West Coast, and hundreds of thousands of draft files were destroyed.  The Camden 28 was one of the last groups to conduct these raids. They stole or burned files necessary for the federal government to conscript men to fight in Vietnam.  Since there was no centralized recordkeeping system, this destruction interfered with the work of war making. It made it hard for the government to maintain the draft.

You’ve written about conservative women activists, but this book goes in a different direction.  What drew you to the story of the Camden 28?

Originally, it was the incredible story.  I could not believe what I'd heard about the action, the arrest, and trial.  It’s feature film material.  Especially interesting is the involvement of the informant, who was basically responsible for delivering the Camden 28 into the hands of the FBI.  A horrific event in his household then causes him to suffer a crisis of conscience.  He then turns against the Bureau before the trial, eventually helping the Camden 28 win acquittal.

I was born in Camden, and I grew up Catholic in South Jersey.  The story of the Camden 28 was not part of any kind of history that I learned growing up. I didn't come to know about the Camden 28 until after I completed my entire education and started teaching. That seemed ridiculous to me.

I also took an interest in the Catholic Social Teaching (CST) part of this story.  I grew up in a relatively conservative Catholic suburban parish.  The idea that there were leftist radicals in the church, and that the church's teaching inspired their political radicalism, just dumbfounded me, so I wanted to dig into that.

Can you tell me a little bit about what the research process entailed?

One of the big attractions to the overall project was the papers of a filmmaker, Anthony Giacchino. His first independent documentary project, called The Camden 28, was what familiarized me with the story in the first place. He donated his research for the documentary to the Swarthmore College Peace Collection. It turned out to be a great collection.

Once I started interviewing the Camden 28 these conversations became the most wonderful part.  I loved getting to know the defendants and other people involved with that history.  We’ve stayed in touch.  One of the defendants, Cookie Ridolfi, who features quite a bit in the book, had almost all of the transcripts of the three-month trial in her office. She gave them to me, which was a windfall.

What contributions does your book make to scholarship on the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement, the Catholic Church, and women’s history?

I try to underscore the extent to which these protests and this resistance to the draft made an impact on the government's ability to prosecute the war. The book also reveals the extent to which FBI officials went out of their way to try and harass radicals and interfere with their work.

I also think the book makes an important contribution to the history of Catholicism in the United States because I show how the principles of Catholic Social Teaching—including peace, respect for the rights of labor, recognition of human dignity, and the preferential option for the poor—percolate from church documents into American church culture over the early 20th century.  Eventually, Catholics in the civil rights and antiwar movement further adapted CST to the pressing circumstances of the Vietnam War. The book builds a case around the ways in which Catholicism, as a religious tradition, shape the politics of radicalism as a leftist political movement in the United States. 

Then there's an interesting story related to women’s history because, at the same time, the feminist movement is starting to unfold.  While themselves politicized on behalf of peace and racial justice, women are also observing where they fit into the gender hierarchy of the movement, especially through their relationships with radical men. It is doubly complicated, I note in the book, for Catholic women due to their parochial school educations and religious upbringing. Some of them had joined religious orders and most attended sex-segregated schools.  These institutions insulate them.  Then the sexual revolution creates new kinds of freedom and sexual expression.  They come into this new world very naive and unprepared for all the counterculture liberation.  At the same time, the movement transforms them in lasting and positive ways.  They are involved in risky but meaningful political activity. 

How would you connect the story of the Camden 28 to today’s political culture?

The effectiveness of the Catholic Left, especially its ecumenism and spirit of reform, moved the “Catholic” part of their political identity to a private place.  As we move out of the 1970s and early 1980s, progressive Catholics are increasingly working with other activists across faith traditions and in secular organizations.  Unlike conservative Catholics, progressives tend not to wear Catholicism on their sleeves.  I think this means Catholicism is still alive in progressive politics even as it is less visible. 

Is there anything else you want to add on or share?

I found it challenging but also illuminating to write about what was, at the time, called the “Puerto Rican riot” of 1971.  This was an uprising that ensued after Camden police brutally assaulted a Puerto Rican motorist.  He lingered unconscious for three weeks before he died.  While he was in the hospital, protesters gathered in front of City Hall, where a sudden law enforcement response triggered outrage that escalated to property destruction and violence.

The actual draft board raid happened on one of those nights.  I struggled to talk about the overlap between the two events because on the surface, they don't have anything to do with each other.  Some probing revealed alignment across campaigns for Puerto Rican rights, African American rights, and peacemaking.  I found it useful to tease out the relationships between people in these organizations that mostly failed to integrate racially, even as they pursued parallel political tracks.