14 January marks that day that Ammon Hennacy died in 1970. Ammon Hennacy was an Irish-American, Christian Anarchist Pacifist activist. He was born into a Quaker family in Ohio, and attended the UW-Madison in 1914. During the First World War he was incarcerated in Federal Prison in Atlanta for resisting conscription. While behind bars, the only book he was allowed was the Christian Bible.
Upon his release he hiked through all 48 contiguous states and became a social worker and union organizer in Milwaukee. He would be Baptized a Catholic in 1952 and take part in the ‘Catholic Worker Movement’. He would lead numerous protests, including a 40 day fast in 1958 in opposition to nuclear weapons testing.
Hennacy never paid federal income taxes believing they benefited the military and war. He lived a life of voluntary simplicity and believed in what he called his “One-Man Revolution” against violence, sin, and coercion.