42 Burn Draft Cards in Berkeley

May 5, 1965 - Forty-two persons, most of them University of California students, burned their draft cards in a bonfire on the sidewalk of downtown Berkeley, Calif., today.

They described their behavior as a protest against President Johnson’s dispatch of 19,000 Marines and paratroopers to the Dominican Republic.

Students tossed their cards into the flames outside the Selective Service Board office at Bancroft Way and Oxford Street, three blocks from the main entrance to the campus.

They collected the ashes and took them and a black coffin to the office of Mrs. Nell Head, draft board coordinator.

“We are delivering a petition of protest regarding the invasion of the Dominican Republic,” James Petras, a graduate student in Latin American studies, told the baffled coordinator. “We are mourning the dead Dominican freedom fighters.”

Mrs. Head told the students that if they wanted a replacement for the cards, they would have to fill out forms and send them to Sacramento.

FBI agents watched the action from across the road, and Berkeley police photographed the burning of the draft cards.

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