Biography
Arlo De Vere Tatum was an Iowa-born pacifist and draft-registration resister. Quaker testimony documents an initial Sandstone imprisonment and a second term in Springfield, Missouri after the 1948 draft law. The Daily Iowan in April 1969 independently reported two imprisonments for draft opposition. He later led the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, as confirmed by its archive, and held senior roles in War Resisters’ International. WRI records his death on April 2, 2014. His later residence in Britain is not represented as exile.
The Daily Iowan identifies Tatum as the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors’ executive secretary and reports that he had been imprisoned twice for draft opposition. This retrospective count supports the two earlier episodes already recorded, but supplies no additional arrest, exact endpoints or measured duration. Source: https://dailyiowan.lib.uiowa.edu/DI/1969/di1969-04-19.pdf#page=3
Photograph: “Law School - Arlo Tatum,” Emory University Office of Alumni Publications Photographs, dated broadly 1950–1980. Held by the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, Emory University; public catalog image supplied by the Digital Library of Georgia. Photographer unidentified. Original archival record.
On October 10, 1972, the Supreme Court denied the motion to withdraw its opinion in Laird v. Tatum, No. 71-288. Justice William Rehnquist denied a motion asking him to recuse himself retroactively and published a memorandum explaining his decision in light of his earlier Justice Department role and statements about military surveillance. This civil-liberties litigation is distinct from Tatum's earlier draft-resistance imprisonments.
Original source, PDF pages 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38.
Britain Yearly Meeting’s 2017 testimony identifies Federal Correctional Institution, Sandstone, as the prison for Arlo Tatum’s first draft-registration refusal. It reports an imposed three-and-a-half-year sentence and parole in 1944; these do not establish an exact admission date or actual sentence duration.
