A Federal District Court jury in Boston convicts Dr. Benjamin Spock and three others, including Yale University Chaplain William Sloane Coffin, Jr., of conspiring to aid, abet and counsel draft registrants to violate the Selective Service Act.
During the Johnson administration, Spock, a physician and the famous author of The Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, was a ubiquitous figure at antiwar demonstrations. In April 1967, Spock, Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., and entertainer Harry Belafonte led an estimated 300,000 people on a march to the United Nations headquarters in New York City, the largest antiwar demonstration to date. Spock was one of the original signers of A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority, published in September 1967, which supported draft resistance and the right of servicemen to refuse to obey “illegal and immoral orders.”
