Spiritual Criminals: An Interview with Dr. Michelle Nickerson
By Anna Wilmhoff
Íæż½ã½ã 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, Íæż½ã½ã 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 Íæż½ã½ã’s Water Tower Campus. On Wednesday, October 16, Dr. Nickerson will deliver another talk in Coffey Hall’s McCormick Lounge on Íæż½ã½ã’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.