Biography
David Hartsough was a Quaker organizer and longtime AFSC director of the Nonviolent Movement Building Program. Helped form both the Pledge of Resistance and the Nuremberg Action Group blockading Concord Naval Weapons Station. Arrested more than 150 times across his career, beginning with a 1960 lunch-counter sit-in. Co-founded Nonviolent Peaceforce (2002) and World Beyond War (2014). Died March 2025 at age 84 — final arrest weeks before his death at Travis Air Force Base.
Separate Nevada Test Site imprisonment in June 1986
In Speaking Truth to Power, Friends Journal, August 1/15, 1986, pages 16-17, David Hartsough describes his own Nevada Test Site arrest, trespass conviction, six-day sentence and six days spent in jail with fellow protesters. Complete original pages were visually inspected to distinguish his article from Johanna Sibbett's adjacent account; her Tonopah detention is not assigned to him. Contemporary AP reporting dates the matching 149-person arrest to June 2, 1986. Jail entry is recorded only as June 1986; June 1 is a storage placeholder, not an actual day. Exact admission and release days remain unverified. The six-day account is preserved in words rather than presented as a verified final day counter. This nuclear-test protest is a separate episode, not a date for the undated Central America/Pledge of Resistance entry.
The October 30, 2012 report names David Hartsough among nine people arrested and charged with trespass after blocking two gates at Beale Air Force Base. The four-hour gate closure measures the protest, not a jail stay. The report gives no individual jail admission, release day, trial outcome or imposed sentence.
Mildred B. Young’s July 1, 1962 report names David Hartsough and Cecil Thomas as arrested during the White House nuclear-test vigil on June 1. Neither was called before a judge after a ruling concerning the meaning of congregating with others. Later that day they were arrested again with Helen Corson, who was distributing leaflets; the report says there was no prosecution. No jail admission, physical release day or completed custody duration is established.
