Ammon Hennacy

In 1919, he became the common law husband of Selma Melms. They were blessed with two children. But unfortunately the couple got divorced in 1964.

In 1965, he married Joan Thomas. The same year, he officially abandoned the Catholic Church, although he continued to consider himself a Christian.

In 1970, he suffered a heart attack while protesting the execution of two convicted murderers and died three days later on January 14, 1970 at Salt Lake City, Utah.

He was born on July 24, 1893 in Negley, Ohio to Quaker parents, Benjamin Franklin Hennacy and Eliza Eunice Fitz Randolph.

He was raised as a Baptist by his parents. But in 1909, when he heard the popular evangelist Billy Sunday preach, he became an atheist.

Shortly afterwards, he became a socialist and an ‘Industrial Workers of the World’ member.

In 1913, he attended Hiram College in Ohio for one year. Then, he attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1914.

In 1915, he became a student of Ohio State University for a year, marking the end of his formal education.

In 1917, he was sentenced to two years of imprisonment in Atlanta, Georgia because of his refusal to register with his local draft board, in protest of World War I.

While in prison, he was allowed only one book, The Bible. Reading the Bible changed the outlook of the hitherto atheist and made him a Christian pacifist. He led a hunger strike which resulted in his solitary confinement for eight months.

He read the Bible repeatedly during his solitary confinement and concluded that the only way to follow Jesus' advice was to become a ‘Christian anarchist’ and launch a one man revolution.

After coming out of prison, he and his first wife traveled to all of the 48 contiguous states in 1921.

In 1925, he deliberately worked as a common-day laborer – picking cotton or other such field work because poverty was a way to avoid paying taxes. He felt that taxes funded the war efforts which he so strongly disapproved.

He was a conscientious objector to both World War I and World War II, providing inspiration and courage to others who wished to do the same.

Through his work with the ‘Catholic Writer’ newspaper, he was profoundly influential in the Catholic Worker movement, which believed that the worth of every human being is guaranteed by God.

His work with homeless people in Salt Lake City, Utah, was a source of inspiration for social workers everywhere. In 1961, he founded the ‘Joe Hill House’ for the homeless and indigent.

He selflessly participated in numerous protests, pickets and fasts against the government and all war and violence, refusing even to defend himself.