American Catholic priest Philip Berrigan led a protest against the Vietnam War by pouring blood over Selective Service records in Baltimore, Maryland.

Philip Francis “Phil” Berrigan was an American peace activist and Catholic priest with the Josephites. He engaged in nonviolent, civil disobedience in the cause of peace and nuclear disarmament and was often arrested.

The Vietnam War was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam and their allies. North Vietnam was supported by the Soviet Union and China, while South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other anti-communist nations. The conflict was the second of the Indochina wars and a proxy war of the Cold War between the Soviet Union and US. The Vietnam War was one of the postcolonial wars of national liberation, a theater in the Cold War, and a civil war, with civil warfare a defining feature from the outset. Direct US military involvement escalated from 1965 until its withdrawal in 1973. The fighting spilled into the Laotian and Cambodian Civil Wars, which ended with all three countries becoming communist in 1975.

The Selective Service System (SSS) is an independent agency of the United States government that maintains a database of registered male U.S. citizens and other U.S. residents potentially subject to military conscription.

Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. It is the 30th-most populous U.S. city with a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, while the Baltimore metropolitan area at 2.86 million residents is the 22nd-largest metropolitan area in the nation. The city is also part of the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area, which had a population of 9.97 million in 2020. Baltimore was designated as an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851. Though not located under the jurisdiction of any county in the state, it forms part of the Central Maryland region together with the surrounding county that shares its name.