The artist and peace activist Tom Lewis has died at the age of sixty-nine. On May 17, 1968, Lewis and eight other peace activists made national news when they burned 600 draft records with homemade napalm in Catonsville, Maryland. He was sentenced to three years in jail. Others participating in the protest included Philip and Daniel Berrigan. They became known as the Catonsville Nine. The action was credited with helping to radicalize the antiwar movement. For the past four decades, Lewis remained active in the peace, anti-nuclear and anti-torture movements. In 2002, Tom Lewis appeared on Democracy Now! and talked about the Catonsville Nine action.

Tom Lewis: “We knew we were taking a risk, because draft resisters were being sent to prison, and people were being sent to prison for two years. We knew that there was a serious risk involved. We did not consider the risk as much as the importance of the witness, the importance of making a statement against the war in Vietnam. And we used a weapon of the army, in fact, to destroy the records. We used homemade napalm made from a special forces handbook to really illustrate the outrageousness of the use of napalm. Instead of using it on people, we used it on death certificates.”

A fortieth anniversary commemoration of the Catonsville Nine is scheduled for May 8th in Maryland.