Ammon Hennacy

Ammon Hennacy was a pacifist and “Christian anarchist” whose activism emphasized nonviolence, personal responsibility, and direct aid to the poor, becoming closely associated with the Catholic Worker Movement. His first major imprisonment came during World War I, when he was arrested for refusing draft registration and imprisoned in Atlanta; during that incarceration he led a hunger strike and spent significant time in solitary confinement, later describing the experience as pivotal to his religious and political transformation (including intensive reading of the Bible). In the postwar decades he continued a pattern of civil disobedience—such as organizing resistance to compulsory civil-defense drills alongside figures including Dorothy Day in New York City—with repeated arrests and short jailings; he later moved to Salt Lake City and established the Joe Hill House of Hospitality as part of his ongoing antiwar and hospitality work. (Recorded as Ammon Hennacy Hennacy)

Ammon A. Hennesey, from Columbus, Ohio, was sentenced to nine months in prison for refusing to register for the draft. He served that prison term in a Delaware jail. He was also convicted of distributing literature against the draft and received a two-year prison sentence for this offense, serving between July 13, 1917, and February 18, 1919. He was an "Irish American Socialist." Hennesey remained a radical activist throughout his life.