They surged into Washington by the tens of thousands in spring 1971. Fiery radicals, flower children, and militant vets gathered for the most audacious act in a years-long movement to end America’s war in Vietnam: a blockade of the nation’s capital. And at the White House, an increasingly paranoid Richard Nixon was determined to stop it.
Washington journalist Lawrence Roberts, drawing on dozens of interviews, unexplored archives, and newfound White House transcripts, recreates these forgotten events through the eyes of dueling characters. There are cameos by John Kerry, Jane Fonda, and Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, and new information about an unsolved bombing inside the U.S. Capitol. To prevent the Mayday Tribe’s guerrilla-style traffic blockade, Nixon mustered the military. Riot squads swept through the city, arresting more than 12,000 people. A young female lawyer led a thrilling legal battle to free the detainees. Nixon and his men took their first steps down the road to the Watergate scandal and the implosion of the presidency.
MAYDAY 1971 is the ultimately inspiring story of a season when our democracy faced grave danger, and survived.
Reviews & Praise
“Award-winning investigative reporter Lawrence Roberts tells the story superbly from start to finish… With a talent for research and an eye for colorful detail, Mr. Roberts presents a lot of new and overlooked material… Mayday has been paid less attention than other protests of the period, and its significance overlooked. Mr. Roberts’ first-rate book redresses that imbalance.”
—Wall Street Journal
“A deeply researched narrative of Nixon’s mass arrest of the thousands of protesters who flooded the capital in the darkest days of the Vietnam War.”
—New York Times Book Review
“Roberts is a careful observer and he deftly organizes a complex, multifaceted series of events into a coherent, fast moving, and fascinating story... Thanks to Roberts, we now have a better picture of what those long-ago protesters really accomplished.”
—Christian Science Monitor
“Fascinating… It’s impossible to read Mayday 1971 without thinking of our own recent summer of unrest — and the autumn of discontent we face.”
—John Kelly, Washington Post
“A great read on this remarkable event.”
—Philadelphia Inquirer
Among 2020’s “Most Anticipated Debut Books”
—Library Journal
“A riveting history crafted from first hand-testimonies of a pivotal time in our democracy. Roberts has unearthed compelling new dimensions of this important story.”
—Lynn Novick, director with Ken Burns of The Vietnam War and Hemingway
“Illuminating, ambitious and rigorously researched, Mayday 1971 recovers the remarkable story of the largest number of mass arrests in U.S. history. Every chapter resounds with scenes that could be pulled from today’s headlines. Lawrence Roberts calls his history ‘largely forgotten.’ It will certainly be new and revelatory for anyone, young or old, who wants to truly understand the depths of the divide that fractured the country during the Vietnam War.”
—Steve Luxenberg, author of Separate: The Story of Plessy v. Ferguson, and America’s Journey from Slavery to Segregation
“Vivid and deeply sourced . . . Roberts convincingly argues that the White House’s authoritarian attitudes and actions foreshadowed the Watergate scandal.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A masterful piece of history, story-telling, synthesis and investigative journalism.”
—Jeff Leen, assistant managing editor Washington Post, and author of Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds, and the Making of an American Legend
“Kiff VandenHeuvel narrates this intense reexamination of Mayday 1971’s mass protests in Washington, DC, as if he were reporting on a current event. His voice sounds charged, his pace is quick, and the result creates a dramatic audiobook. This is as it should be for a retelling of the highest number of mass arrests (12,000) in our nation’s history.”
—AudioFile Magazine
“Roberts was a college student at the time and one of the 12,000 people arrested during these events. If his youthful personal experience meant he would not forget what happened all those years ago, his extraordinary skills as an investigative journalist and gifts as a writer have provided us with a page-turning narrative and a convincing argument about Mayday’s historical significance.
—Peace & Change journal
“In Mayday 1971, author Lawrence Roberts . . . relates the shameful story of what happened that year like a mystery writer.”
—Washington Independent Review of Books
“A masterful chronicle . . . panoramic . . . stirring . . . Such a book has been a long time coming.”
—CounterPunch
“Does a sterling job of both reporting the many and varied aspects of the demonstrations and analyzing their impact on the prosecution of the war and the fate of the Nixon administration.”
—The VVA Veteran
“This unraveling of the Mayday saga is not just history at its most illuminating, and top-drawer storytelling, but a narrative that resonates today, when our democracy is again being challenged.”
—Larry Tye, author of Demagogue: The Life and Long Shadow of Senator Joe McCarthy
“The Common Ground of the Vietnam antiwar movement.”
—Laurel Leff, author of Well Worth Saving: American Universities’ Life-and-Death Decisions on Refugees from Nazi Europe
“At a time when American democracy is under threat from an unscrupulous president, this fine account of an earlier such time is highly relevant. As a participant in the movement against the Vietnam War, I was moved by the way Lawrence Roberts so eloquently brings to life a crucial episode in that struggle. And to be reminded that, in the long run, we won.”
—Adam Hochschild, author of Rebel Cinderella and King Leopold’s Ghost
“Roberts conveys the personal and political impact of a pivotal event in American history in a narrative that will engage readers of the time period and resonate with today’s social justice activists.”
—Library Journal
“Perceptive, thoroughly researched . . . Roberts creates a tense, brisk narrative . . . [and] offers sharply drawn portraits of key White House personnel and of many protestors . . . A vivid history of passionate protest.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“A brilliant investigation of the tense days when war, democracy and law collided on the streets of Washington, Mayday 1971 brings it all back in vivid detail and riveting story-telling. Here is a real-life thriller that shows the strength of our society and our system, important lessons for today’s turmoil.”
—David E. Hoffman, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Dead Hand: The Untold Story of the Cold War Arms Race and Its Dangerous Legacy and The Billion Dollar Spy: A True Story of Cold War Espionage and Betrayal
“The events culminating with the mass arrests of 12,000 people in Washington, D.C., in the spring of 1971 have been curiously underreported in most histories of the Vietnam era. Roberts changes that with this compelling history of Mayday 1971. ”
—Booklist
“Roberts shows that Nixon and others in the White House were even more cynical in handling the arrests and the aftermath than the demonstrators imagined.”
—New York Journal of Books
“Lawrence Roberts’ book is an absolutely riveting account of all the action. He has a journalist’s eye for fascinating details, and the extensive referencing and original interviews show he has done his research… there is plenty to interest peace activists working today… A real tour de force.”
—UK Peace News