Continue on Second Street a block and a half to 67 East Second Street.

22.

One of the most incendiary protest campaigns against the Vietnam War had its source in a tenement apartment here, the secret arsenal and bomb factory of Sam Melville, leader of a group of activists and revolutionaries that also included Jane Alpert. Starting with the detonation on July 26, 1969, of two dynamite bombs on a pier on the Hudson, the group's campaign eventually included eight Manhattan targets and several in other cities. Not one of their many bombs caused a fatality.

The young white revolutionaries, fueled by the increasing stridency of the antiwar and radical movement of the time, and their own conviction that revolution was just around the corner, set to work in a tireless fashion. The U.S. Induction Center on Whitehall Street was taken out, and the group released a flamboyant communiqué - "This action was taken in support of the NLF, legalized marijuana, love, Cuba, legalized abortion, and all the American revolutionaries and GIs who are winning the war against the Pentagon. Nixon, surrender now!"

The group also hit the Marine Midland Bank on Broadway (evidently on a whim of Melville's, who was not a stable character, even for a bomber; justification for the act was concocted after the fact), the Criminal Courts Building at 100 Centre Street, and targets in Minneapolis, Milwaukee, and Chicago (although this last bomb failed to go off).

Then, the groups piece de resistance. On the night of November 11, 1969, bombs when off nearly simultaneously on the 19^th floor of the General Motors Building, the 20^th floor of the RCA building, and the 16^th floor of Chase Manhattan Bank. This stupendous run caused panic throughout the city and precipitated more than 200 bomb threats, but failed to produce a spontaneous uprising of the masses.

The very next evening, November 12, Sam Melville slung a knapsack of bombs over his shoulder and headed out from this building with accomplice George Demmerle.

His intention was to place explosives in the Army trucks parked outside the National Guard Armory at Lexington Avenue and 26^th Street. The trucks would be driven inside at night and the bombs would be perfectly placed for maximum damage to the state's property. However, George Demmerle turned out to be a FBI informer. Melville's intentions were known all along -he was arrested with his ticking bombs alongside the Armory.

Melville pleaded guilty to Federal bomb conspiracy and state arson charges, and was sentenced to 18 years. In September 1971, he was killed in the Attica Prison Uprising. Jane Alpert pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of conspiracy to destroy government property. Before sentencing, she went underground, reemerging on November 14, 1974, and eventually serving two years in prison. George Demmerle pocketed a $25,000 reward from Marine Midland Bank and disappeared.