Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America's Biggest Mass Arrest

Mayday 1971: A White House at War, a Revolt in the Streets, and the Untold History of America's Biggest Mass Arrest by Roberts, Lawrence. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781328766724.

"A deeply researched narrative of Nixons mass arrest of the thousands of protesters who flooded the capital in the darkest days of the Vietnam War."—New York Times "Its impossible to read MAYDAY 1971 without thinking of our own recent summer of unrest -- and the autumn of discontent we face." ---Washington Post It was the largest act of civil disobedience in US history. They surged into Richard Nixons Washington by the tens of thousands in spring 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end Americas war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nations capital. And the White House, headed by an increasingly paranoid president, was determined to stop it. Washington journalist Lawrence Roberts, drawing on dozens of interviews, unexplored archives, and newfound White House transcripts, recreates these largely forgotten events through the eyes of dueling characters. Woven into the story too are now-familiar names including John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers. It began with a bombing inside the U.S. Capitol—a still-unsolved case to which Roberts brings new information. To prevent the Mayday Tribes guerrilla-style traffic blockade, the government mustered the military. Riot squads swept through the city, arresting more than 12,000 people. As a young female public defender led a thrilling legal battle to free the detainees, Nixon and his men took their first steps down the road to the Watergate scandal and the implosion of the presidency. Mayday 1971 is the ultimately inspiring story of a season when our democracy faced grave danger, and survived.