Biography
Bradford Lyttle is an American pacifist organizer whose arrests span more than half a century, from draft refusal in the early 1950s to a nuclear weapons plant in 2010. He first went to prison in 1954, serving nine months at the United States Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri for refusing to cooperate with Selective Service. In 1959 he organized Omaha Action, the nonviolent campaign against the intercontinental ballistic missile base at Mead, Nebraska; arrested on July 8 and bailed, he was sentenced on July 13 to six months and a $500 fine for trespassing and disregarding a court order. He coordinated the Quebec-to-Guantanamo peace walk of 1963 and 1964, which carried the pacifist movement into the segregated South and was jailed repeatedly along the way — at Macon, Georgia in November 1963, and twice at Albany, Georgia, where the walkers insisted on marching integrated through the downtown business district and spent the turn of 1964 in jail. He was arrested at the Times Square antiwar sit-down in February 1966, and that April he and five other American pacifists were seized in Saigon while trying to demonstrate near the United States Embassy and deported to Hong Kong within hours. Arrests followed at the Pentagon in 1967 and in the Mayday actions of 1971. He remained active for decades afterwards, arrested with David Dellinger at the 1996 Democratic National Convention protest in Chicago, acquitted by directed verdict after a 2005 Chicago demonstration against the Iraq war when the court found police had not allowed adequate time to disperse, and arrested again at the Y-12 nuclear weapons complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee in July 2010, at the age of eighty-two. The Militant individually identifies this participant in the integrated Quebec–Washington–Guantanamo peace walk among those arrested and taken to jail in Griffin, Georgia on November 9, 1963. Its account alleges police use of electric cattle prods against walkers and reports the group’s release after negotiations over permission to continue. It does not establish a complete individual custody duration. The separate November 19 Macon arrests are a collective report and are not assigned to every Griffin participant. The Militant, November 25, 1963, vol.27 no.42, original PDF page 3. Source: https://www.themilitant.com/1963/2742/MIL2742.pdf#page=3
The contemporary CNVA bulletin individually names this walker among those arrested December 23, 1963 and reports confinement at Albany City Jail. This adds the jail location without changing the existing custody dates.
The anthology dates Lyttle’s Cook County Jail confinement from June 7 to June 24, 1954, followed by transfer to the federal medical center in Springfield. June 24 was a transfer, not release to freedom.
The January 27, 2011 account and reproduced Las Vegas Sun report individually identify this participant among the Creech 14 arrested on April 9, 2009. Judge William Jansen found all fourteen guilty of trespass and imposed time served on January 27, 2011. The statements below the article carry an inconsistent July 27, 2010 heading; the dated report and reproduced contemporary news account establish the January 2011 disposition. Time served is the imposed disposition, without a measured number of days or a claim of continuous custody from arrest to sentencing. Contemporary source.
Contemporary reports of the May 11, 2011 Y-12 trial describe a federal jury trespass conviction arising from the July 5, 2010 action in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Judge Bruce Guyton presided, and Jeff Theodore and Melissa Milliken acted for the prosecution. This account does not place Bradford Lyttle among the seven newly remanded defendants. In his testimony Lyttle also recalled two months jailed after an integrated march through Albany, Georgia; the report does not supply exact dates for that earlier stay.
Sources: The Nuclear Resister, report 886; The Nuclear Resister, report 887; The Nuclear Resister, report 889.
