Involvement in the Vietnam War resistance movement and the “Boston Five”
While a doctoral student in English at Harvard University, Ferber grew increasingly involved in the movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam, and came to feel he should no longer cooperate with the Selective Service System. In fall 1967 he helped organize and publicize a ceremony at the Arlington Street Church, Boston, where draft-age men were to turn in their draft cards and pledge to refuse induction and go to prison. That was the strategy proposed by a group of California students calling themselves "The Resistance," whose main spokesperson was David Harris. Ferber gave a short sermon at the ceremony on Oct. 16 ("A Time to Say No") and joined some 200 men who turned over their cards to several dozen ministers and priests; he then took the cards to Washington where they were added to hundreds more from around the country and given to the Attorney General.
On January 5, 1968, Ferber was indicted with four older men, Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, and Marcus Raskin, for conspiracy to aid, abet, and counsel others to violate the draft law. Though they had made a point not to urge or counsel anyone to take so serious an act as to dispose of his draft cards (itself punishable by five years in prison), they readily admitted to aiding and abetting (receiving draft cards). In order to have their day in court, the defendants pleaded not guilty, but judge Francis Ford, then 83, ruled out any arguments about the war, the draft itself, or the constitutionality of their speech. Ferber and all the others but Raskin were convicted, sentenced to two years in prison, and released on personal recognizance, pending appeal. A year later the appellate court threw out the case on largely procedural grounds. The government did not appeal the reversal of conviction, and the case was dropped. No defendant served time, and they all became well-known organizers in the anti-war movement.
Ferber was drafted the same day he was indicted for conspiracy, but the federal case took precedence. Several months after his acquittal on appeal he was drafted again. He declined to appear at the induction center, and not long after that, for reasons he never learned, his draft order was cancelled.