This page is about the story of Tom Lewis. Draft Cards are for Burning, a feature-length documentary about the life of Tom Lewis, is currently in production. The Worcester Historical Museum is working in collaboration with the filmmakers to archive and document material relevant to the life of Tom Lewis. To donate to the documentary to fund its completion, please see the following link: https://filmmakerscollabinc.networkforgood.com/projects/227269-draft-cards-are-for-burning
Tom Lewis was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, on March 17, 1940. The son of a regional manager for Nabisco, Lewis moved frequently throughout his childhood until his family finally settled in Baltimore, Maryland. Lewis had been interested in art from an early age and studied with Earl Hofmann and Joe Sheppard before pursuing a career as an artist after his service in the National Guard.
On October 27, 1967, Lewis, along with Catholic priest Philip Berrigan, writer David Eberhardt, and Reverend James L. Mengel, walked into the Baltimore Customs House and poured blood on Selective Service records. The group was dubbed by the media as the “Baltimore 4,” and their act of civil disobedience made national headlines.
While on bail for the Baltimore 4 action, Lewis, along with Philip Berrigan and seven others, walked into the draft office in Catonsville, Maryland, and took draft records into the parking lot, which they then burned with homemade napalm. The group was known as the Catonsville 9, and their actions gained international coverage, even being made into a stage play and then a film in which Lewis was played by Emmy winner and five-time Golden Globe Award nominee Peter Strauss. Lewis was sentenced to six years in federal prison for the Baltimore Four protest, and in November 1968, to another three and a half years for the Catonsville Nine action. He was ultimately released in 1971, serving out his sentence at Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary.
While in prison, Lewis continued to produce art, including over one hundred portraits of his fellow inmates. The culmination of his work there was a portfolio of etchings,The Trial and Prison, published to raise funds for the movement.
After his release from prison, Lewis relocated to the Worcester area, running printmaking workshops at the Worcester Art Museum and working as an art teacher at Anna Maria College.
Lewis would continue his involvement in high-profile acts of protest as the decades went by. On August 6, 1987, Lewis and two others sneaked onto the South Weymouth Naval Air Station base and poured blood on the bomb bay doors and bomb racks of a P-3 Orion nuclear-capable anti-submarine plane. Lewis was sentenced to six months’ probation and 100 hours of community service for this act. In 1991, Lewis was again part of a group who sneaked onto the USS Gettysburg while it was stationed at the Bath Iron Works in Bath, Maine. The group poured blood on the ship’s controls and stayed aboard for nearly two hours before turning themselves in to ship personnel. Prosecutors dropped the charges against the group the day before their trial was to begin.
In 1997, Lewis and six others once again sneaked into the Bath Iron Works and this time boarded the USS Sullivan. The group poured blood on control panels and unfurled a banner which stated, “Prince of Peace Plowshares: They shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”
Lewis would continue to be arrested for protests related to the anti-war movement while protesting the war in Iraq and genocide in Sudan. Meanwhile, he continued with his art career in Worcester and ran programs with local schools to lead children in painting murals in their neighborhoods.
On April 4, 2008, Lewis passed away in his sleep suddenly and unexpectedly at age 68, leaving behind a legacy that encompassed a generation. On the 10th anniversary of his death, in a final act of protest, a group of seven peace activists known as the Kings Bay Plowshares broke into the Naval Submarine Base in Kings Bay, Georgia, and poured Tom Lewis’s blood, which had been frozen before his death, on a nuclear missile in the most daring and successful protest of its type yet.
Draft Cards are for Burning, a feature-length documentary about the life of Tom Lewis, is currently in production. The Worcester Historical Museum is working in collaboration with the filmmakers to archive and document material relevant to the life of Tom Lewis. To donate to the documentary to fund its completion, please see the following link:
https://filmmakerscollabinc.networkforgood.com/projects/227269-draft-cards-are-for-burning
