Biography
Catherine Melville, a former Roman Catholic nun and wife of former Maryknoll priest Arthur Melville, was one of the D.C. Nine who entered Dow Chemical’s Washington offices in March 1969 to protest napalm manufacture. A contemporary report names all nine participants and says they fasted in jail for a week before posting bond. Her later disposition and any additional imprisonment are recorded separately.
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The April 22, 1969 Daily Iowan reproduced a College Press Service report identifying all nine Dow Chemical protesters individually, including Catherine Melville and Bernard Meyer. It states that the nine began a fast in jail rather than post bond, ended the fast a week later, and then posted bond. This documents a one-week pretrial stay for the whole named group; it contradicts a blanket claim that only two participants ever spent time in jail. The week is a known pretrial subtotal, not a measure of any later sentence. The article gives no exact release day; no release date is inferred by adding seven days to the existing arrest date.
