US Custom House, Baltimore

Introduction

Text-to-speech Audio

The Custom House was built at the very beginning of the 20th century in Beaux-Arts style and is listed in the National Register of Historic Places. On October 27th, 1967, Philip Berrigan and Tom Lewis, later to be part of the Catonsville Nine action, were joined by David Eberhardt and James Mengel, in an act of civil disobedience that saw them labeled as “The Baltimore Four”. At the time the Customs House was home to the Baltimore Selective Service, and the four men entered and poured blood (a combination of their own blood and animal blood) onto draft records in protest of the Vietnam War. “We shed our blood willingly and gratefully in what we hope is a sacrificial and constructive act. We pour it upon these files to illustrate that with them and with these offices begins the pitiful waste of American and Vietnamese blood” - Statement of the Baltimore Four (The Catonsville Nine, Peters).

Images

Baltimore Custom House

Phillip Berrigan During Custom House Action

Backstory and Context

Text-to-speech Audio

Tom Lewis, a local artist and social justice activist was introduced to Philip Berrigan by a mutual friend. As the anti-war movement heated up, they sought new ways to protest the war and get those protests noticed. In 1965, draft card burning had become a popular move (popular enough that Congress made it a felony). However, both Lewis and Berrigan had already each served in the armed services (Berrigan fought in the army in WWII, Lewis was in the National Guard), so burning their own draft cards would have had no meaning. They came to realize that destroying the draft cards of others could serve twofold, as act of civil disobedience, and also as a way of interfering with the bureaucracy of the Selective Service.

They brainstormed and planned with other Baltimore anti-war activists, and two of those, David Eberhardt, who was secretary of the Interfaith Peace Mission, and James Mengel, a minister in the United Church of Christ, decided to join them in their action.

The men were unable to draw enough of their own blood for their purposes, so they had to purchase and mix in animal blood to have sufficient quantities. They entered the offices, distracted the clerks, opened the filing cabinets where the draft records were kept, and managed to anoint approximately 600 draft files with the blood. They then waited to be arrested.

Sources

Cyzyk, Skizz, et al. Hit & Stay. Haricot Vert Films, 2013.

Peters, Shawn Francis. The Catonsville Nine: A Story of Faith and Resistance in the Vietnam Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.

U.S. Custom House, Baltimore, U.S. General Services Administration. Accessed November 1st 2020. https://www.gsa.gov/historic-buildings/us-custom-house-baltimore-md.

Image Sources(Click to expand)

Vera de Kok, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

http://www.jonahhouse.org/archive/pics67-73.htm

Additional Information

Jonah House Description of Action