Roger Allen LaPorte

On March 16, 1965, 82-year-old pacifist Alice Herz immolated herself on a Detroit street corner in protest of the escalating Vietnam War. A man and his two boys were driving by and saw her burning and put out the flames. She died of her wounds ten days later. On November 2, 1965, Norman Morrison doused himself in kerosene and set himself on fire below Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara's Pentagon office.

The Morrison self-immolation at the Pentagon was front-page news as Catholic Workers gathered for an antiwar demonstration on Union Square in New York City on November 6, 1965, which LaPorte attended shortly after joining the Catholic Workers. Dorothy Day, the leader of the Catholic Workers, addressed the crowd. "I speak today as one who is old, and who must endorse the courage of the young who themselves are willing to give up their freedom," Day said. "This very struggle was begun by courage, even in martyrdom, which has been shared by the little children, in the struggle for full freedom and human dignity."

On June 11, 1963 Thích Quảng Đức, a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection. Thích Quảng Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's President Ngô Đình Diệm, a member of the Catholic minority. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime.

Born in Geneva, New York, LaPorte was active in public speaking and debate clubs, for which he won awards. His parents divorced after he graduated from high school. Before joining the Catholic Workers, he had attended a seminary in Vermont and hoped to become a monk. However, he withdrew from the seminary early and attended and graduated from Holy Ghost Academy, Tupper Lake, New York in 1961.

Catholic Worker Tom Cornell had become known in 1960 for burning his draft card at actions and had repeated the act several times, including for national television cameras during the 1962 Strike for Peace. In October 1965, another Catholic Worker, David Miller, became the first draft-card burner to be arrested under a new federal law banning the practice. Immediately following Day's speech on Union Square, Cornell and four others burned their draft cards on the platform. New York hecklers shouted, "Burn yourselves, not your cards."

Roger Allen LaPorte (July 16, 1943 – November 10, 1965) was a protester of the Vietnam War who set himself on fire in front of the United Nations building in New York City on November 9, 1965, to protest the United States involvement in the war. A former seminarian, he was a member of the Catholic Worker Movement at the time of his death.