Video: ‘Nixon Protest Featuring the Ray Conniff Singers | This is the President’

(Friday, January 28, 1972, 10:50 p.m. EST; during the Vietnam War, part of the Indochina Wars and the Cold War) — A young woman in a singing group caused an embarrassed moment at a formal White House dinner tonight when she waved a placard and called to President Richard Nixon to stop the bombing in Vietnam.

The incident occurred as the dinner guests, assembled to pay honor to Mr. and Mrs. DeWitt Wallace, founders of the Reader’s Digest, went into the East Room and sat down for some entertainment.

Video: ‘The Richard Nixon – Ray Conniff Incident’

As the Ray Conniff Singers prepared for their first number, Carole Feraci of Los Angeles, a native of Toronto, waved a placard reading “Stop the Killing.”

At the same time she called out to Nixon, seated with his wife in the first row. “You go to church on Sunday and pray to Jesus Christ,” she said. “If Jesus Christ were in this room tonight you would not dare to drop another bomb. Bless the Berrigans and Daniel Ellsberg,” she added, referring to two Catholic priests then in jail for destroying draft records and the whistle-blower who leaked the Pentagon Papers.

Video: ‘Rebel Without Applause: The Anti-War Protestor Who Left Nixon and the White House Speechless’

After the group sang its first number, Ray Conniff told the discomfited audience “the beginning of this program was as much a surprise to me as everybody.”

At that the audience shuffled and there were additional groans, boos and the shout: “You ought to throw her out.”

Coniff told Miss Feraci it would be better if she left, and she did.