William Sloane Coffin

William Sloane Coffin Jr. was an American clergyman and one of the most prominent liberal religious voices of the postwar era. Born in New York City, he served in the Army in the Second World War, spent three years in the CIA, and in 1958 became chaplain of Yale University. In May 1961 he organized a group of professors, chaplains and students who rode an interstate bus from Atlanta into Montgomery, Alabama as Freedom Riders days after a mob had beaten the first riders there. Arrested at the Montgomery Greyhound terminal on May 25, 1961 when the group asked for service at the lunch counter, Coffin and his companions were charged with breach of the peace and jailed overnight, released the next day on $1,000 cash bonds; the convictions were later overturned on appeal. In January 1968 he was indicted in Boston with Dr. Benjamin Spock, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber and Marcus Raskin — the Boston Five — for conspiracy to counsel, aid and abet draft resistance, after championing the statement A Call to Resist Illegitimate Authority and accepting draft cards from resisters. Convicted on June 14, 1968 and sentenced to two years, he remained free pending appeal; the First Circuit reversed the conviction on July 11, 1969 and the government abandoned the case, so he served no prison time. He went on to lead Riverside Church in New York and the nuclear-freeze movement as president of SANE/Freeze. He died on April 12, 2006.