Oral history interview with Robert Reiss, 2000

Biographical Note

Robert Reiss was an anti-war protester and the last American to be jailed for refusing to register for the draft during the Vietnam War. Reiss served a six month sentence in Allenwood Federal Correctional Institution. Later in his life, Reiss became a professional magician, wrote and performed a play titled Dry Rain about his prison experience, and became a devoted activist in the Occupy Wall Street movement

Scope and Contents

In this interview, Reiss begins by discussing his family background, particularly his family's history of liberal political views, activism, and social movement involvement. He shares his own development of his political and social conscience, including his first encounters and awareness of racism and injustice. He includes a story about his participation in a boycott of the New York City Public School System while in grade school. Students abstained from attending class and their parents sent them to temporary Freedom Schools instead. Reiss talks about how this experience led him to seek involvement with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) at the age of twelve, and later to volunteer to be transferred to a newly integrated school in Harlem. His church, a Unitarian Universalist congregation, also brought him into contact with various civil rights leaders and groups, including the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and Bayard Rustin. He talks about his anti-war protests and his time as a draft counselor at the Greenwich Village Peace Center. Reiss also discusses why he felt he could not register for the draft, even as a conscientious objector. Reiss was indicted in 1972 for draft evasion and sentenced to six months in prison. He discusses his trial and time in prison, including work details, the inhumanity of solitary confinement, the books he read, and the people he met. He recalls the slowness of time while in prison, why he was denied parole, and a memory of watching the Watergate hearings while in prison

Subjects

• Civil rights demonstrations--United States.
• Civil rights movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Congress of Racial Equality.
• Draft resisters.
• Imprisonment--United States.
• Interviews.
• Michaels, Sheila, 1939-2017, interviewer.
• Oral histories.
• Peace movements--United States--History--20th century.
• Reiss, Robert--Interviews.
• United States--Race relations--History--20th century.