The keynote speaker at the annual meeting of the Cincinnati World Affairs Council in March, 1972, was Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird. The dinner was held in a cavernous banquet hall, with forty or fifty of Cincinnati's leading citizens seated in two tiers on a raised dais at one end. Midway through Laird's address a figure arose from the darkened audience and began working her way forward. Everyone, including Laird, pretended to ignore her steady progress toward the speaker's lectern. Arriving directly in front of the secretary, the woman unfurled a small white sign— "War Is Murder"—and pinned it to the front of the lectern. Someone then got up and quietly escorted her to the sidelines. It was one person's way of protesting the ongoing agony of the Vietnam war.