Back to gallery

Sympathizers Deliver Food to Detention Camp: Mayday 1971

Under the watchful eye of the National Guard and police, sympathizers deliver food to those swept up in mass arrests at the makeshift detention facility at a practice field near RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. on May 3, 1971.

 

At a press conference Rennie Davis mentioned the “American prisoner of war camp in Washington.”

 

“Reporters raced to RFK Memorial Stadium and there, to their astonishment, they saw a thousand people gathered behind wire fences, on an open field, where in happier time, the Redskins scrimmage.”

 

“They were hungry, angry and cold. They jeered when the police drove off sympathetic onlookers from an adjoining hill. ‘You are prisoners of war,’ they cried.”—The Evening Star 5/4/1971.

 

The Mayday Tribe, a loose knit group of individuals, collectives and affinity groups, organized an attempt to shut down the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. in protest of the continued war in Indochina May 3-5, 1971 through the use of non violence civil disobedience.

 

For more information and additional images, see

 

May 1: flic.kr/s/aHsk5GV1JM

May 2: flic.kr/s/aHsk5CKtKq

May 3: flic.kr/s/aHsk5bjYqk

May 4: flic.kr/s/aHsk64GugT

May 5: flic.kr/s/aHsk8e3sU3

 

Photo by Walter Oates. Courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

 

4,098 views
5 faves
0 comments
Uploaded on October 31, 2014
Taken on May 3, 1971