Mayday 1971

January 27, 2020
Journalist Roberts debuts with a vivid and deeply sourced account of the events leading up to and following the May 1971 mass arrest of more than 12,000 antiwar protesters by Washington, D.C., police acting in concert with Richard Nixon’s White House. Though demonstrators failed to achieve their goal of shutting down the federal government in order to force an end to the Vietnam War, “the lessons of Mayday restored the right of dissent to the streets of Washington,” Roberts writes. He chronicles the “Spring Offensive,” as organizers called it, from the Weather Underground’s March 1971 bombing of the U.S. Capitol, through the April encampment of antiwar veterans in West Potomac Park, to the traffic blockades and other acts of civil disobedience that occurred from May 1 to May 6. Profiling protest leaders, as well as public defenders and police officials who protected the rule of law against Nixon’s anti-Mayday “war council,” Roberts convincingly argues that the White House’s authoritarian attitudes and actions foreshadowed the Watergate scandal. Readers with an interest in protest movements, the history of Washington, D.C., and 1960s and ’70s counterculture will be rewarded by this comprehensive and accessible account. Agent: Gail Ross, the Ross Yoon Agency.

February 1, 2020

In this debut, investigative journalist Roberts focuses on an act of civil disobedience: anti-war demonstrations on March 1, 1971, via detonation of a bomb inside in the U.S. Capitol. Roberts sets the time line by describing events leading up to the incident, such as the Kent State shootings in May 1970 and the America's escalating presence in Vietnam. Using a variety of primary sources, Roberts highlights lesser-known players: activists Stew Albert and Judy Gumbo, lawyer Egil Krogh, Vietnam Veterans Against the War member John O'Connor, and educator Barbara Bowman, among others. He supplements these personal accounts with material from H. R. Haldeman's (White House Chief of Staff for Nixon) diaries and Richard Nixon's tapes. Roberts makes a compelling case of showing how 1970s anti-war activism was connected to class, ethnic, and racial conflicts, while noting that the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam was cross-generational, rather than primarily staffed by those most affected by the draft. VERDICT Roberts conveys the personal and political impact of a pivotal event in American history in a narrative that will engage readers of the time period and resonate with today's social justice activists.--Frederick J. Augustyn Jr., Lib. of Congress, Washington, DC

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February 1, 2020
A participant in a crucial anti-war demonstration recalls the tension and peril of the moment. In May 1971, investigative editor Roberts, then a 19-year-old college student, joined in a huge protest against the Vietnam War that resulted in the arrest of more than 12,000 people, the author included. Making his book debut, Roberts offers a perceptive, thoroughly researched accounting of the intense, often divisive movement that led to an event marking 10 years from the time John F. Kennedy sent "a few hundred soldiers and advisers to South Vietnam." By the time of the protest, more than 2 million Americans had served, and 275,000 still were deployed. Lyndon Johnson expanded the war, costing him the presidency, and Richard Nixon inherited the conflict, advised by his hawkish national security chief, Henry Kissinger. Protests, begun in 1965 with a teach-in at the University of Michigan, had grown year by year. By spring 1971, several organizations worked to strategize for "ambitious antiwar demonstrations": the People's Coalition for Peace and Justice, the Mayday Tribe, the National Peace Action Coalition, and Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The Nixon White House, the FBI, and Washington, D.C., police also needed to strategize, confronted with a conglomeration of "1930s-style radicals, back-to-the-land hippies, campus intellectuals, would-be revolutionaries, middle-class liberals, black-power evangelists," and young radicals known as Yippies. Because the groups had no designated leader, law enforcement agencies found it difficult to keep track of who was who, where they were, and what level of violence they endorsed. Drawing on government and private archives, news articles, and many interviews with participants, Roberts creates a tense, brisk narrative covering 10 weeks that began in March with a bomb explosion in the U.S. Capitol and ended with lawyers' efforts to free the thousands arrested. He offers sharply drawn portraits of key White House personnel and of many protestors, including Yippies Stew Albert and his girlfriend, Judy Gumbo; activists Rennie Davis and David Dellinger; and John Kerry, a prominent member of VVAW. A vivid history of passionate protest.

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March 1, 2020
The events culminating with the mass arrests of 12,000 people in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1971 have been curiously underreported in most histories of the Vietnam era. Roberts changes that with this compelling history of Mayday 1971. The story begins with the bombing of the Senate chambers a month or so before the demonstrations planned by the so-called Mayday Tribe. Along with recounting the events and the government's response, Roberts deftly integrates profiles of many individuals on all sides of the action (from committed Vietnam Veterans Against the War and their leader, John Kerry, to violence-inclined Weathermen, to pacifists like David Dellinger; from exuberant yippies like Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin to White House figures, including Egil Bud Krogh. Experienced Washington journalist (and then-participant) Roberts has contributed a dramatic, heavily detailed account one of the major actions of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the Mobe, as it was called). The mass arrest of 12,000 Mayday people in their abortive attempt to tie up the capital, and their eventual release, is the centerpiece of this compelling story.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)