Draft Evasion Research Articles

Resisting the Blood Tax: Coercive Capacity, Railroads, and Draft Evasion in Colonial West Africa

Resisting the Blood Tax: Coercive Capacity, Railroads, and Draft Evasion in Colonial West Africa

Drafting the Great Army: The Political Economy of Conscription in Napoleonic France

Napoléon Bonaparte revolutionized the practice of war with his reliance on a mass national army and large-scale conscription. This system faced one major obstacle: draft evasion. This article discusses Napoléon’s response to widespread draft evasion. First, we show that draft dodging rates across France varied with geographic characteristics. Second, we provide evidence that the regime adopted a strategy of discriminatory conscription enforcement by setting a lower (higher) conscription rate for those regions where the enforcement of conscription was more (less) costly. Finally, we show that this strategy resulted in a rapid fall in draft dodging rates across France.

Draft Dodger, Soldier’s Wife: Trans Feminine Lives, Civic Duty, and World War II


 
 
 
 This article examines trans feminine lived experiences in the United States during the Second World War amid persecution amplified by the Selective Training and Service Act of 1940, the May Act of 1941, and heightened visibility through local and national news publications. This article contends that there is a longer and more complicated linked history between trans feminine Americans and the U.S. military than has been acknowledged by both scholarship and public discourse. Federal statutes like the STSA and the May Act lent authority to the state and its auxiliaries beyond the singular municipal or county jurisdiction. These factors aided the legal persecution of innumerable Americans with perjury, draft evasion, ‘moral’, and fraud charges. Through case studies of the disparate circumstances surrounding the ‘discovery of sex’ of three individuals, Sadie Acosta, Lucy Hicks Anderson, and Georgia Black, this study illuminates the role of various actors involved in investigating and policing their ‘moral’ crimes and gender variance in the 1940s and 1950s. In the post-war years, the figure of the ‘ex-G.I.’ woman is seen through numerous well-publicized cases in the U.S. and the U.K., showing that trans feminine experiences of World War II could be found both at home and abroad.
 
 
 

How changing discourses on borders and masculinity leads to the intensification of draft evasion

ABSTRACT This study explores the vast intensification of ‘draft-dodging’ by looking at changes in attitudes towards the border and masculinity. Based on interviews conducted in 2011 and content analysis of newspaper coverage of military service and ‘draft-dodging’ in Cyprus between 2011 and 2019, this study shows that draft-dodging can intensify in the context of changing discourses on borders and masculinity. In particular, the opening of internal borders, the enlargement of borders to the European Union, and the shifting of the locus point of the conflict from inland to the maritime boundaries are the three border changes in Cyprus that contributed to draft evasion. Moreover, the emerging ‘Euro-Cypriot’ hegemonic masculinity maintains a weak relationship with the military. Through the case study of Cyprus, this article illustrates that paying attention to changing notions of border-related security and the reconfigured hegemonic masculinity will shed light on the model of public security and offer implications for draft evasion. The findings from post-conflict Cyprus can help understand draft evasion in Western and post-conflict societies.

Draft Evasion Policy in the Republic of Cyprus

This article views military service through the lenses of legal and gender approaches. With the reinstatement of compulsory military service being debated in many Western countries, the factors contributing to draft evasion are relevant. This article explores policy aiming to address draft evasion through a case study of post-EU-accession Cyprus. It shows that in Cyprus, policy attempts to reinvigorate military values are flawed. Draft evasion points to social, political, and economic developments that call for the military ideology of the armed forces to be redesigned to render a fairer institution toward conscript soldiers. When the draft evasion phenomenon becomes intensified, armies should consider a fairer form of military service, such as “giving back” to soldiers for the time spent in the army through the development of skills and educational and professional qualifications.

Воодушевление российского воинства на завершающем этапе Первой мировой войны 1914-1918 гг. на примере создания памятника «Героям II Отечественной войны» в г. Вязьме в 1916 г.

The article attemts to reconstruct history and considerations of construction of the only Russian monument to the soldiers of the First World War. By summer 1916, Russia had been fighting on the fronts of the First World War for nearly two years. After rebuilding national economy on a war footing, negative phenomena developed in the socio-political structure of the state, which eventually would result in a nationwide crisis. No less dangerous was the situation in the multi-million Russian army. Having abandoned significant territories, suffering severe military setbacks in 1914–15, the army was losing its morale. There was great war-weariness, prospects for early victory looked vague. N.N. Golovin accurately called it the “broken spirit of the country.” These phenomena in the army found expression in desertion, draft evasion, unwillingness to “fight heroically” and endure hardships. Thus, patriotic initiative of the inhabitants of Vyazma to build a Second Patriotic War monument seems quite remarkable. It is even more peculiar, as monuments were not built until the end of the direct hostilities. Moreover, the public offered to erect the monument at its expense. The construction itself was a grassroots initiative and could have been picked up by other Russian cities, contributing to a revival of public support for the army and raising the troops morale. The project took into account the communal psychology of the Russian peasant, dressed in overcoat and fighting at the front. Names of fellow countrymen recipients of the Order of St George were to be incribed on the monument, providing an incentive for heroism at the front. Also, the heroes’ names of were to be included in special lists in rural schools. Information on the opening of the monument and proposed forms of perpetuating countrymen was sent to the fronts. A three-minute film was made about the monument in Vyazma. However, despite its clearly patriotic orientation and prospects, the Vyazma initiative was not supported nationwide. The analysis of Russian press in summer 1916 has showed that most popular newspapers and magazines did not publish information on this event. The Second Patriotic War monument in Vyazma is the first and only monument dedicated to the First World War in Russia. The methods of perpetuating heroes were, most likely, never implemented, and the empire itself lasted less than a year. In 1918 the monument was destroyed.

Vietnam's Prodigal Heroes: American Deserters, International Protest, European Exile, and Amnesty

In 1967, the first American deserters began to step out and explain their reasons. Paul Benedikt Glatz's Vietnam's Prodigal Heroes offers a historical analysis of the domestic and international ramifications of U.S. deserters-turned-exiles. This thoroughly researched monograph argues the importance of placing deserters in the historiography for a deeper understanding of the Vietnam War and the politics of the 1960s and 1970s.The monograph rests on three arguments. The first is that desertion was a protest against war, much like draft evasion and refusal. Glatz insists that desertion was the only choice for those who could not utilize legal options. War opponents in the United States and abroad “organized to support oppositional servicemen, to mobilize further protest, and to assist absentees and resisters, either in legal defense or in escaping the military authorities” (xvi). Further, AWOL servicemen became the links between civilian and GI antiwar movements. Deserters received sympathy from Europe and Japan, which offered the American GIs a haven. Sweden, France, and Canada organized to help deserters and draft-age men. Antiwar activists across the globe “organized a support network to assist dissenting American servicemen to escape the military authorities and find sanctuaries” (52). The Intrepid Four, Navy seamen that deserted the USS Intrepid in Japan, became the first symbol of Vietnam deserters. Glatz contends that these four individuals changed notions of desertion. They “challenged the prevailing image of the deserter from coward to social misfit” (xiii). The Soviet Union agreed to help the four young men, which caused U.S. media to misunderstand the motives of the deserters. The Cold War logic of Americans made them see deserters as “the ultimate transgression of the Cold War consensus” (53).Glatz's second argument claims desertion was part of the broader conflicts of youths in the 1960s and 1970s. He argues that solders’ dissent was the “military variant of the broader phenomena of youth protest” (xvii). For examples, Black soldiers became politically radicalized against institutionalized racism and “subverted military discipline by forming solidarity groups, using Black Power salutes, modifying uniforms, and growing their hair or going AWOL” (xviii–xix). The global revolutionary year of 1968 was also a crucial moment for deserters. Over 50,000 cases of desertion in 1968 alone led to harsh political ramifications for these now exiled Americans. The formation of many solidarity committees was key. These organizations helped them “to cope with their new life situation, to respond to increased public interest, and not least to help the young refusers to make sense of their action and its consequences” (122). Still, Americans disapproved of deserters despite Europe's continued support and endorsement. Glatz argues that those making the decisions were from the World War II generation who felt “patriotism, civic duty, manliness, and honor” were at stake (124).Glatz's final argument asserts that desertion during Vietnam was a high point of international discussions on the individual in armed conflict. The ongoing Cold War and the liberation movements in the Third World intensified the discourse. The debate on war protests and desertions “questioned the idealized image of the United States in the Second World War and alluded to the ongoing debate on amnesty for Vietnam War refusers” (xxi). Debates turned to the political asylum for American deserters, especially in Sweden. American deserters received special status in Sweden, but this soon became a debate on dissidence, human rights, Swedish neutrality, and U.S. conscription. Proponents for political asylum highlighted the discrimination within the U.S. draft system. Further, Sweden's decision not to offer political refugee status “maintained that young Americans from underprivileged ethnic and social groups would generally face difficulties abroad” (197). The American exiles turned to the counterculture to voice their frustrations and solidarity.With the end of the Vietnam War, American deserters and exiles became a talking point in American politics. Glatz argues that the critical issue was “whether desertion had been legitimate action or at least a condonable one in the context of the Vietnam War” (295). At first, there were conditioned solutions, which many exiles refused to take part in. Yet, when returnees entered the United States, their voice in the public discourse promoted observers to “take note of their plight” (296). President Jimmy Carter issued a blanket pardon for draft dodgers while leaving deserters to the military authorities. Glatz concludes that Carter's decision “failed to resolve substantial conflicts and fault lines in American society and within the Vietnam generation” (297).Overall, Glatz does an excellent job of juggling a wide variety of archival sources and stories of deserters and exiles. However, this can also prove to be a downside for the monograph. At times, the narrative and the argument can be hard to follow. Despite this, Glatz's scholarship is integral to expanding our understanding of Vietnam, U.S. politics, and transnational solidarity committees.

How to Study Early Popular Engagement with Nationalism: Sources, Strategies, Research Traditions

The article combines methodological considerations with an overview of the literature on early popular nationalism, in which studies on Central and Eastern Europe occupy pride of place. Within these thematic confines, my aim is to give a broad sense of the methodological challenges of writing history from below. After a brief sketch of the problem area, I pass to the question of demarcating and contextualizing modern nationalism and discuss a few conventionally used indicators of national allegiances (tax discipline, draft evasion, turnout at national festivals, abidance by linguistic standards). Subsequently, the major part of the paper is organized according to the source types that historians have utilized to explore the relationship of the lower classes to the national paradigm: archival sources, folklore and ethnographic material, various kinds of egodocuments, press reportage, readers’ columns, and non-narrative sources. I address the interpretive issues that each source type raises, citing abundant examples from the literature, including my own research.

Problems of regulatory uncertainty on partial mobilization and responsibility for draft evasion

Problems of regulatory uncertainty on partial mobilization and responsibility for draft evasion

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State

Emigrant Draft Evasion in the First World War: Decision-Making and Emotional Consequences in the Transatlantic Italian family

In 1911, Italians living abroad constituted one-sixth of Italy’s population, numbering roughly five million people. During the First World War, approximately 300,000 men returned from the Americas and other European countries to answer the call to arms and complete their military service. However, this number constitutes only 13 per cent of those men living abroad who were liable for conscription. Thus, this article will examine the larger phenomenon of draft evasion among emigrant Italians across the Atlantic, where most evaders resided. I will begin by analysing evasion in the context of Italian mobilization and the factors influencing emigrants’ decision-making. I argue that the decision was a joint one, negotiated between family members on both sides of the ocean. I will thus also explore the impact of this decision on personal relationships, through three case studies of familial separation initially caused by emigration and then compounded by draft evasion: a husband in California and his wife in Liguria; a son in the Dominican Republic and his mother in Calabria; and a woman in Argentina whose husband had evaded the draft, and her sister in Liguria, exploring the emotional toll this decision took on them and their loved ones.

The Northern Home Front during the Civil War by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller

Reviewed by: The Northern Home Front during the Civil War by Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller Judith Giesberg The Northern Home Front during the Civil War. Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2017. ISBN 978-0-313-35290-4. 234 pp. cloth, $48.00. Paul Cimbala and Randall Miller are editors extraordinaire, having edited and coedited, by my estimate, twenty-four volumes between them—six of them together. [End Page 150] And, they also coauthor books, like this one, the latest in John David Smith's "Reflections on the Civil War Era" series. This volume makes clear that Cimbala and Miller have also read just about everything that has been published about the North in the Civil War for the past thirty years—including dozens of published letter collections. For proof, readers can turn to the fifteen-page bibliographic essay that accompanies the narrative. Northern Home Front mostly avoids the trap of trying to decide if the war did or did not change the North by instead highlighting how "Northern people engaged and understood the war" (xiii). Doing so allows Cimbala and Miller to conclude that in 1865 "most Northerners were happy to get on with their lives" (160). In this short volume, the authors provide ample evidence of how much the lives Northerners were eager to get on with were changed as well as the nation they inhabited. A synthesis of recent scholarship on the war, Northern Home Front also features original research that highlights how everyday Americans in Northern communities sought to make sense of a war that came into their homes and communities and stayed there too long. With its accessible prose and short length, this volume would work well in an undergraduate course on the Civil War, as an introduction to such issues as Northern labor relations, freedom of the press, war financing, draft evasion, dissent, and industrial development. Each topic is briefly and efficiently discussed. Among its many virtues, the book is full of useful statistics. Here are two examples that will make their way into my lectures: in one year (late 1863-early 1864), the US Army arrested 2,810 deserters and 3,743 draft evaders in eastern Pennsylvania (142); and 85,000 of the 133,000 men who were drafted in the first two federal drafts paid the commutation fee to avoid serving (138). Graduate student mentors will find the book useful in guiding their mentees to underexplored research topics, such as the aftershocks that rippled through Northern communities as a result of rapid industrial demobilization that left behind shuttered factories and, in some places, wrecked environments—and, of course, lingering resentment for the administration and the war's outcomes. I particularly appreciated the chapter titled "Incomplete Families," which, in addition to sketching out for readers the stakes for Northern families of the absence of male breadwinners, includes original analyses of the experience of stress and depression among women with absentee husbands and the best summary I have seen of various efforts to send soldier wages home to the families who needed the money. The book treats emancipation and the limitations of Northern racism fairly. And, throughout Northern Home Front the authors weave in welcome surprises. Some of the usual suspects appear, such as Chicago nurse memoirist Mary Livermore and Philadelphia diarist and Democrat Sidney Fisher but other more well-known figures are left out to make room for new voices. Readers will not miss [End Page 151] cranky and bigoted New York diarist George Templeton Strong, and although Northern governors and other politicos make appearances, the book takes readers beyond the statehouses and into the homes, churches, streets, and schoolhouses of the wartime North. There readers will be introduced to students at the University of Vermont writing home about how talk of war was making it impossible to study; New York journalist, George Lawrence Jr., suggesting that the secession crisis could be resolved by arming a band of African American irregular fighters; German and Luxembourgian draft resisters in Wisconsin; and residents of Belfast, Maine, who established a coast guard, mostly to protect citizens from rowdy and disruptive soldiers who passed through the town on their...

Единство, скрепленное доблестью: участие представителей этнических меньшинств в сражениях за Кубань и Крым (1941–1943)

В статье на основе исследований российских ученых, архивных документов, воспоминаний рассматривается слабо изученная в отечественной историографии проблема участия представителей этнических меньшинств в битвах за Кавказ и Крым в ходе Великой Отечественной войны. В качестве примера автором избраны этнические общности курдов и корейцев. Использованы историко-генетический, историко-биографический и системно-исторический методы. Изучены меры советского командования по формированию национальных воинских подразделений; реконструированы биографии героев войны – корейцев и курдов, участвовавших в освобождении Юга России и получивших боевые награды; прослежена их послевоенная судьба; рассмотрены репрессивные действия советского правительства по отношению к военнослужащим некоторых национальностей. Автор заключает, что представители разных народов СССР, столкнувшись с врагом, проявили стремление к единству и добровольное желание выступить на защиту государства, которое они избрали своей Родиной. The aim of the article is to reconstruct the biographies of participants in the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945), who belonged to ethnic minorities and fought for the liberation of the Caucasus and Crimea from Nazi invaders. As an example, the author selected ethnic communities of Kurds and Koreans. The study was conducted on the basis of research by Russian scholars, archival documents, and memoirs of direct participants in the events. The historical-genetic, historical-biographical and system-historical methods were used. The measures of the Soviet command for the formation of national military units were studied, the biographies of war heroes, Koreans and Kurds who participated in the liberation of the South of Russia and received military awards (including the title Hero of the Soviet Union) were reconstructed. The author describes in detail the military clashes during which these fighters showed military prowess, presents their photographs, and traces their further military path, post-war fate and forms of their memory perpetuation. Quotations from the war veterans’ front-line letters and their relatives’ memoirs are given. The repressive actions of the Soviet government towards the military personnel of certain nationalities, who after the demobilization received the status of “special settlers” and lost their military tickets and award sheets, are also considered. The author emphasizes that the fight against the enemy was a test of strength for the unity of the peoples living in the Caucasus and Crimea. Examples of civic solidarity in the fight against the enemy shown by ethnic minorities in the early days of the war (mass enrollment in volunteers, holding civil rallies) are given. It is noted that representatives of local ethnic communities became the basis of 12 military units that were at the forefront of the defenders of the Caucasus. The paradoxical nature of the situation in which USSR citizens were repressed for various (often far-fetched) reasons is stated; however, during the war they still heroically fought against Nazism with arms in their hands. The author connects the repressions against members of the ethnic minorities with the ethnosocial policy pursued by the Soviet state, as well as the spread of desertion and draft evasion in the North Caucasus and Crimea. It is concluded that representatives of ethnic minorities living in the USSR, faced with the enemy, showed a desire for unity and a voluntary desire to defend the state, which they chose as their homeland.

Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State by Garrett Felber

Reviewed by: Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State by Garrett Felber Jimmy Butts (bio) Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State. By Garrett Felber. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2020. Pp. 272. $90.00 cloth; $22.95 paper; $12.99 ebook) Aiming to correct the narrative about the Nation of Islam (NOI), Garrett Felber demonstrates the significant role the group played in the Black freedom struggle as they challenged the carceral state. To put the NOI in its proper historical context, Felber makes use of newspapers, trial transcripts, speeches, telegrams, FBI files, and other sources. Moreover, the chronological structure of the book lends itself to identifying the presence of the NOI at every stage of the civil rights movement. [End Page 661] The author traces how two popularized depictions of the NOI negatively influenced the perception of the group among the public. The 1959 documentary entitled "The Hate That Hate Produced" situated the NOI as a hate group calling for "Black supremacy" (pp. 18, 36). Furthermore, the 1961 publishing of the book The Black Muslims in America by C. Eric Lincoln caused the religious validity of the NOI to be questioned (pp. 18–19). These two sources assisted what Felber describes as "epistemic violence" against the group by the state. In particular, the state "created ways of knowing the Nation of Islam that distorted our understanding of its politics to this day" (p. 14). Thus, carceral officers accused the Nation of reverse racism and argued the incompatibility of "Blackness" with true Islam. Felber offers a useful theoretical conception he calls the "dialectics of discipline." This theory suggests interplay between NOI's responses to "state repression and the paradoxical acceleration of the expansion of the carceral state through new technologies of violence" (p. 2). For example, in the New York prison system, the state obtained control by prison transfers, religious literature confiscation, solitary confinement, and the loss of good time. In response, Muslim prisoners performed hunger strikes, filled solitary confinement, and filed complaints. Having laid out this theoretical tool, Felber then concentrates on various aspects of the civil rights movement to emphasize the significant ways the NOI participated. The author introduces diverse ways that the NOI challenged the carceral state both inside and outside of prison. In response to the draft during WWII, members of the NOI refused to fight in a war for what they perceived as a white supremacist nation. As a result, by 1945 nearly two hundred men from the NOI served time for draft evasion. These conscientious objectors came ready to challenge Jim Crow in prison. Because the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution relegated imprisoned people to slaves, the government followed a hands-off approach to how prison officials treated them. Therefore, although prison officials sought to suppress the NOI, the litigation and organizing of Muslims resulted in the 1961 Supreme [End Page 662] Court ruling that the federal government can intervene based on the denial of an individual's Fourteenth Amendment rights by the state and protect the rights of the incarcerated. The state used similar tactics to suppress the NOI outside prison. In response to police brutality, the NOI worked to create a Black united front across religious affiliation. The NOI endured police violence, home and mosque invasions, and racial profiling. However, they responded by using the courtroom as a political battleground to build Black unity against police violence. Thus, both inside and outside of prison the NOI played a significant role in Black resistance to state aggression. Whether one points to the Watts or Attica uprisings, members of the NOI played an instrumental role in these expressions of resistance. The state also responded to these acts with increasing surveillance and violence. This reflects the dialectics of discipline. Although this work helps to broaden the historiography on the NOI, it would benefit from a more critical analysis of the claims of religious authenticity made by the NOI. Felber highlights the eventual validation of the group's religious legitimacy by the courts and some "orthodox" Muslims (pp. 30–34...

К вопросу о борьбе с дезертирством и уклонением от службы в Красной армии в Тюменской губернии на заключительном этапе Гражданской войны

К вопросу о борьбе с дезертирством и уклонением от службы в Красной армии в Тюменской губернии на заключительном этапе Гражданской войны

‘Where Cassius Clay Ends, Muhammad Ali Begins’: Sportspeople, Political Activism, and Methodology

Muhammad Ali’s refusal to be drafted into the United States Army in June 1967 led to a conviction for draft evasion, exile from boxing, and a complex response from the newspaper press. Although press reactions to Ali’s draft resistance were overwhelmingly negative, his refusal to fight in Vietnam sowed the seeds for journalists to celebrate him as a hero upon his return to the ring four years later. Press reactions to Ali’s two names (Cassius Clay and Muhammad Ali) act as a lens for scrutinizing this attitudinal shift. This investigation involved macro and micro analyses of 12 United States newspapers. First, distant reading techniques were used to reveal distinct temporal patterns in the usage of both names. In September 1967, journalists from these publications began to use Ali’s two names far more interchangeably than they previously had. By March 1971, they had fully embraced Ali’s Muslim name over his birth name. Close reading then revealed how and why these patterns developed: changes to Ali’s persona, as well as broader cultural and political forces, prompted newspaper journalists to accept his chosen name and identity in early 1971.

¿Es sostenible una ética de la inmanencia discursiva en Foucault?

En este artículo nos proponemos exponer, a partir de los límites conceptuales encontrados a los planteamientos arqueo-genealógicos de Michel Foucault, la posibilidad de plantear, en dos momentos –arqueo-genealógico y gubernamental–, una “ética de la insubordinación reflexiva”. Es decir, una “ética de la libertad inmanente” al débil que al decir su palabra, denuncia y al denunciar cuestiona al tirano y su mundo al habar y actuar con –y por– los otros. Esta ética de la intersubjetividad planteada como una ética de la insumisión concertada, crítica y deliberada, pensamos, puede derivar de ciertas “condiciones enunciativas” encontradas en las dos últimas investigaciones concernientes al “decir veraz” o el “hablar franco” expuestos en El gobierno de sí y de los otros (1982-1983) y El coraje de la verdad (1983-1984).

The Resurrection: Atlanta, Racial Politics, and the Return of Muhammad Ali

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again. --William Cullen Bryant, Battle Field (1839) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The wait was over. On October 25, 1970, on eve of Muhammad Ali's first professional boxing match in forty-three months, African Americans flooded streets of Atlanta, anxiously anticipating what Ali called his day of judgment. They came from all over: Birmingham, Chicago, Detroit, Harlem, Miami, and Philadelphia. Peachtree Street had never been more colorful. Rows of chrome covered cars, gold limos, and purple Cadillacs lined road. One fan, a slender man smoking a foot-long pipe, wore an ankle-length mink coat matched with a tall mink hat. Another man who washed dishes for a living told a reporter that he had saved for months so he could buy a puce suit and bet one thousand dollars on Ali. Women dressed up like it was New Year's Eve, sporting bouffant Afros, fake eyelashes, and sleek sequined mini skirts. The fight attracted a wide assortment of people, politicians and celebrities, hustlers and gangsters. The biggest names in black America were in town: Bill Cosby, Sidney Poitier, Hank Aaron, Harry Belafonte, Curtis Mayfield, Diana Ross, Coretta Scott King, Whitney Young, Ralph Abernathy, Andrew Young, and Julian Bond. It was, Sports Illustrated observed, the most startling assembly of black power and black money ever displayed. (1) That evening, Ali strutted down Atlanta's thoroughfare with a loud, laughing entourage following closely behind. fans shouted his name as he passed corner newsstands, clubs, hotels, theaters, and restaurants. Crowds swarmed him. In Atlanta, nothing else seemed to matter with champ in town. He owned city. It was a powerful scene, playwright Jack Richardson wrote, sheer black, street-corner ebullience out for a Sunday evening promenade. When Ali's fans spilled out onto streets of Atlanta one knew that there was a new tempo in town that was much more devastating to Old South rhythms than gospel cadence of a freedom march. (2) His fans last saw him in ring on March 22,1967, when he knocked out Zora Folley in seventh round at Madison Square Garden. About a month later in Houston, as war in Vietnam intensified and draft calls escalated, Ali refused induction into United States Army on religious grounds, claiming that he objected to wars not declared by Allah. Many Americans already despised him for his membership in Nation of Islam, a separatist Muslim sect framed by mainstream media as a subversive cult. Excoriated as an insincere, unpatriotic draft-dodger, Ali polarized country. Immediately after he refused induction--before he had even been charged with a crime--the New York State Athletic Commission (NYSAC) suspended his boxing license and withdrew his heavyweight championship title for conduct detrimental to best interests of Athletic commissions across country followed New York's example, leading critics to predict slow death of boxing. On June 20, 1967, a federal court convicted him of draft evasion and sentenced him to maximum five-year imprisonment and $10,000 fine. For next three and a half years, free while his case worked its way through courts' appeals process, Ali waited to learn his fate. (3) Never before was his widespread support in black community more evident than when he returned to boxing in Atlanta, a rapidly changing metropolis and Black Mecca of postwar New South. During civil rights era, white moderates and black elites envisioned a harmonious city, proudly proclaiming Atlanta as City Too Busy to Hate. Atlanta's culture of racial moderation and influence of Leroy Johnson, a black state senator who wielded significant political power, made Ali's return to boxing possible. For over three years, promoters and politicians in dozens of cities had failed to arrange an Ali match, but Johnson leveraged his unique connections with black and white municipal politicians to secure a boxing license for former champ. …

Beyond Mystification: Hegemony, Resistance, and Ethical Responsibility in Israel

This article reevaluates the usefulness of the theoretical continuum between hegemony and resistance in light of recent Israeli experiences. Specifically, through the comparison of “conscientious objection” and “draft evasion,” I find that the breakdown of hegemonic consciousness is not sufficient to understand why some disillusioned Israeli soldiers choose public resistance against the state, while others choose evasive tactics. I argue that the space between ideological discontent and resistance is fraught with social and ethical considerations. The source of political discontent for disillusioned soldiers is problematization of their military service as an ethical dilemma, though the ethical concerns of these soldiers extend well beyond the overtly political sphere. I contend that this presents a challenge to the opposition of hegemony and resistance, but also to many accounts in political anthropology that implicitly privilege the political sphere as a natural site of self-fulfillment. Many accounts of hegemony and resistance isolate political consciousness from the broader ethical life in which people engage, and thus do not recognize that rejecting public action can be based on prioritizing other values, not only mystification. I find that one’s readiness to resist the state is dependent on the degree of “metonymization” of the individual with the state project, and that cynicism is one way that people articulate the differentiation of their interests from those of the state.

The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance by Richard A. Sauers, Peter Tomasak (review)

Reviewed by: The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance by Richard A. Sauers, Peter Tomasak Robert Sandow (bio) The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance. By Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak. (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2013. Pp. 240. Cloth, $35.00.) In The Fishing Creek Confederacy: A Story of Civil War Draft Resistance, Richard A. Sauers and Peter Tomasak take a microhistorical approach to northern wartime dissent and its suppression. While focused on rural communities in north-central Pennsylvania, the narrative illustrates broader patterns of protest across the Union. Republican editors coined the term “Fishing Creek Confederacy” to exaggerate and vilify antiwar sentiment in northern Columbia County. The label suggested both an organized anti-government conspiracy and prosouthern sympathies—concepts associated with “Copperhead” Democrats. Previous scholarship frequently echoes Democratic rhetoric, depicting men arrested by the government as martyrs of civil liberty. Consequently, military authorities appear villainous and authoritarian. Tomasak and Sauers seek to present “the truth behind the draft resistance in Columbia County” (xiii). Scholars of the Union home front have long documented the internal discord that arose. As early as 1928, Ella Lonn lifted the veil of northern patriotism to expose widespread opposition in Desertion during the Civil War. By 1960, Frank L. Klement’s The Copperheads in the Middle West anchored an expanding genre of midwestern political studies tracing Democratic resistance to ideological and economic roots. The theme is also central to Jennifer L. Weber’s more broadly focused Copperheads: The Rise and Fall of Lincoln’s Opponents in the North (2006). Additionally, studies published in the shadow of Vietnam link opposition to the inequities of the draft, including Eugene C. Murdock’s One Million Men: The Civil War Draft in the North (1971) and James W. Geary’s more highly analytical We Need Men: The Union Draft in the Civil War (1991). Most recently, Mark E. Neely Jr. has done much to frame the debate over wartime civil-military relations as well as the impact of partisan politics. His landmark The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties (1991) largely absolves Lincoln’s military of partisan influence in administering flawed conscription and civil liberties policies. Yet in The Union Divided: Party Conflict in the Civil War North (2002), Neely argues that intense partisanship hindered the war effort and heightened fears of “treason.” In explaining Columbia County’s draft resistance, Sauers and Tomasak offer an orthodox view. They point to military failures and controversial policies of emancipation, the suspension of civil liberties, and especially conscription. They stress that political partisanship nourished discontent and resistance. The text generally sympathizes with soldiers and federal [End Page 316] officials enforcing unpopular draft laws. The authors find little evidence for abuse of power or political motivation. Republicans may have exaggerated the threat of Democratic opposition, but many believed the threat to be credible. As for opposition, the authors argue that organized resistance failed to materialize. Even the military expedition’s commanding officer declared the rumors “a grand farce” (56). Regardless, widespread grassroots dissent did exist. The book refers not just to heightened debate, confrontations, and informal meetings but to an amorphous “system of home defense” devised by local men to avoid the draft (119). As a form of material evidence, the authors conjecture that a ruined foundation atop North Mountain may have served as a “fort” for area deserters. More could be done to contextualize the nature, extent, and significance of draft resistance in Columbia County. The narrative suggests that Columbia County, while staunchly Democratic, was not a scene of widespread antidraft violence or above-average levels of draft evasion. Neither state nor federal conscription elicited significantly more than partisan condemnation. In July 1864, a veteran named James Robinson was shot leading a nighttime raid to arrest deserters and draft evaders. The authors conclude that he had no official capacity connected to the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau. His wounding (but not death, which came months later) along with “reports of widespread draft resistance” justified military operations (xii). It would be instructive to learn more about community-based politics and patterns of resistance. The Fishing Creek Confederacy has many strengths. It...