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Haymarket Square

The Haymarket Square coffeehouse opened in August 1970, near Fort Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, North Carolina, remaining open until February 1972. Bragg was a key U.S. Army base during the Vietnam War. As early as 1966 it was sending division‐sized detachments to Southeast Asia and by 1968 it housed 57,840 soldiers, making it the largest military installation in the country. It's no surprise then that it became "one of the most active centers of the GI movement" and produced one of the longest lasting newspapers, Bragg Briefs. Much of the early GI antiwar activity at Fort Bragg was supported by and centered at the Quaker House in downtown Fayetteville, which was founded in May 1969 specifically to "help antiwar soldiers in Fayetteville." When in May 1970 the Quaker House was set on fire and forced to close, antiwar GIs regrouped and opened Haymarket Square in the heart of downtown Fayetteville before the end of the year. Arson investigators determined that two separate fires had been set under the Quaker House, "but no one was ever brought to justice" for the deliberate act.

At the grand opening of Haymarket Square, "[t]wo hundred G.I.s filled the building to capacity" to hear notorious antiwar Vietnam veterans Susan Schnall, ex-Navy nurse, and Donald Duncan, ex-Army Green Beret "blast the war and military hierarchy". GI's United was the main organization working out of the coffeehouse, but the location also supported and hosted a local chapter of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whose ranks included veterans and many active duty soldiers from Bragg, and a chapter of the Concerned Officers Movement, which met "each Tuesday night at the Haymarket". The Haymarket was forced to close in February 1972 when the local landlord "refused to renew the coffeehouse's lease". The local GI movement was able to shift it main base of operations back to the Quaker House, which had since reopened in a new location.