A gritty, hand-held chronicle of Harlem’s anti-Vietnam War sentiments surrounding the April 15, 1967 Spring Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam march in New York, the documentary No Vietnamese Ever Called Me Nigger (1968)—screening as part of the Walker’s series The Legacy of ’68—was directed and produced by New York Times proofreader David Loeb Weiss and filmed by future Woodstock director Michael Wadleigh. The feature-length work was recently restored by the Earl W. and Amanda Stafford Center for African American Media Arts (CAAMA) at the National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) in partnership with Anthology Film Archives. The original film and sound elements were used in the preservation process and a new film print was made—along with a digital 4K digital restoration version. To put the film in context, we invited artist Jon-Sesrie Goff, Museum Specialist for Film at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture, to share his perspective.
1968 will live in infamy in the American consciousness. Perhaps it was foreshadowed in the drudge of the Civil Rights movements, whose cosmetic political advances infuriated some people who had grown restless with nonviolence as uprisings took place across the country. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated early in the spring, and Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated before spring ended. Franklin, the first African American character in the Peanuts comics strip, made his premiere in mid-summer. The world witnessed John Carlos and Tommie Smith protest the national anthem with a black-gloved, raised fist during their medal ceremony at the Olympics in Mexico City. Early in the year, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders released the Kerner Commission Report condemning racism as the primary causes of urban unrest. One of the recommendations of the report stated: “The news media must publish newspapers and produce programs that recognize the existence and activities of the Negro, both as a Negro and as part of the community. It would be a contribution of inestimable importance to race relations in the United States simply to treat ordinary news about Negroes as news of other groups is now treated.” As a result of the report, a number of television programs like Black Journal, Inside Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Mr. Soul! were produced to show the vitality of African American communities and culture.
“A lot of colored guys wouldn’t call a Vietnamese a ‘gook’ or a ‘slope,’ you know. The white guys would mainly do that because it’s a racial epithet, you know, like they’ll call us ‘nigger’ here…”
—Dalton James, US Army Veteran
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but racial epithets were meant to dehumanize people. The title of David Weiss’s documentary is charged with centuries of racialized symbolism. Although symbolically buried by the NAACP in 2007, the “n-word” continues to sting from beyond the grave. The word isn’t owned by a particular community; it’s a derivative of the Latin word for black. Its usage as a slur and the associated trauma is the inheritance of all Americans.
The visceral reaction people have to the word “nigger” is real. It carries the weight of racial terror, a living vestige of disengagement with the practices that enabled enslaved Africans to be regarded as less than human to justify the brutality of chattel slavery that built the
“There was a survey made in the Marine Corps, and they wanted to know what the Marines felt about the Vietnamese people, how they felt about them. And it surprised many of the officers that most of the men came back saying that they thought the Vietnamese weren’t human. And, because they don’t think the Vietnamese are human, then they treat them less than human.”
—Akmed Lorence, US Marine Corps Veteran
The phrase “No Vietnamese ever called me nigger” also nods to critiques of America’s ability to police the world as a standard bearer of morality. The irony of the film’s interviews with Vietnam War veterans taking place in an unemployment center should not be lost. As early as the American Revolution, service men and women of color served with the hope that our nation’s wars to protect freedom and liberty would result in a recognition of their own humanity. Soldiers returning the United States from the European theater of World War I were met with racial terror, some men being attacked for wearing their uniforms during the Red Summer of 1919. In subsequent wars, African American soldiers continued to return home to find themselves denied basic human rights.
In many ways, Weiss’s use of verité allowed African American voices to be documented in totality. Prior to 1968, it was primarily the images of civil unrest and the poor living conditions of rural and urban African American communities that dominated the footage that would contribute to our collective memory. Often the reportage was sanitized by narration and montage. Audiences didn’t always have full context for sound bites, they didn’t hear [Birmingham Commissioner of Public Safety] Bull Connor’s voice hurling slurs on the evening news as he ordered officers to arrest and assault civil rights protesters, and they couldn’t hear the voices of those shouting back. The participants
This preservation project encapsulates our mission at CAAMA: to focus on the role, meaning, and influence of images by and about African Americans and people of African descent as the museum tells the American experience through the African American lens. It’s exciting that new audiences will have the opportunity to see this film in cinemas across the country; to date there have been screenings in New York City, Oakland, Indiana, and Minneapolis. Viewing the film in a theater reinforces the communal spirit of the documentary—offering both the ability to hear the reactions of other movie-goers and the potential for further engagement and dialogue after the screening. The issues presented in the film are still very contemporary. It shows community mobilization around anti-war and anti-poverty activism, serving as a reminder of the ontological and intergenerational nature of citizens working to create meaningful social change.
Get Walker Reader in your inbox. Sign up to receive first word about our original videos, commissioned essays, curatorial perspectives, and artist interviews.
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)