Fort Hood Three
He also refused to sign the loyalty oath arguing that it was a violation of his Constitutional rights to be asked about organizational affiliations, but the Army insisted on taking him anyway.
He graduated from Bakersfield High School in California, spent time at Modesto Junior College, and was living in Chicago, IL when he was drafted.
They denounced the war as “immoral, illegal and unjust” Their statement read in part: We represent in our backgrounds a cross section of the Army and of America.
James Johnson is a Negro, David Samas is of Lithuanian and Italian parents, Dennis Mora is a Puerto Rican.
It further says that the only foreign power in Vietnam today is the United States and that the Vietcong is an indigenous force which has the support of most of the people and is in control of 80% of the country.
[5]Johnson directly tied his antiwar stance to racial discrimination at home: "When the Negro soldier returns, he still will not be able to ride in Mississippi or walk down a certain street in Alabama.
The antiwar activists, anticipating a reaction from the military, proceeded to form the Fort Hood Three Defense Committee and mobilized legal help for the Three.
The June 30 press conference where the Three presented their initial statement was attended by Stokely Carmichael, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Lincoln Lynch the public relations director of Congress of Racial Equality.
We’ve been told in training that in Vietnam we must fight; And we may have to kill women and children, and that is quite all right; We say this war’s illegal, immoral, and unjust; We’re taking legal action, just the three of us.
[14] The court cases of the Fort Hood Three were among several early legal trials during the Vietnam War involving U.S. military personnel refusing orders and going to jail.
They argued in their suit and courts-martial that the war was illegal and immoral, while the military charged them with refusing direct orders to board a plane bound for Vietnam.
The suit, an application for a permanent injunction to bar the military from shipping them to Southeast Asia, was filed by their attorney, Stanley Faulkner.
The Three's attorney said "he believed the Army carefully maneuvered his clients into a court-martial situation", probably preferring to avoid the legal issues around free speech.
The judge cut off the Three's attorney in mid-argument and read from a prepared opinion, "it is not the function of the judiciary to entertain such litigation which challenges the validity, the wisdom or the propriety of the Commander in Chief of our armed forces".
They all cited the Nuremberg Code as precedent and Samas said, “The way I was brought up was to judge things with my conscience, and that is what I did.” The men were defended as "counterpoints to Adolf Eichmann", the infamous Nazi who justified his war crimes by saying he was just following orders.
"[3][22] Further, as they made clear in their initial statements, their opposition to the war was connected to their recognition of racial disparities in the military and the country as a whole.
