Exhibition Review

"Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era." Senator John Heinz History Center in association with the Smithsonian Institution, Pittsburgh, Pa. http://www.heinzhistorycenter.org.      Temporary exhibition, Nov. 11, 2006–Nov. 12, 2007. 2,600 sq. ft. Traveling exhibition through 2010. Samuel W. Black, curator.
One of the most striking images in the exhibition "Soul Soldiers: African Americans and the Vietnam Era" is of Philippa Duke Schuyler. As a child Schuyler had been a famous musical prodigy, but she later gave up her musical career to work as a journalist and traveled to Vietnam as a war correspondent. Shortly before she drowned as a result of a helicopter crash in 1967, a photograph captured her in disguise as a Vietnamese peasant, gazing out at the camera from below a wig and wearing a traditional dress.	1
At first glance, it looks as if Schuyler had "gone native," trading in her American identity for an international solidarity with the people of Vietnam. Indeed, while in Vietnam she spent much of her time trying to assist South Vietnamese children who had been orphaned by the war. The photograph of a disguised Schuyler seems to signal a turning away from pro-American sentiments to an internationalist, Third World perspective that became popular during the later, militant phases of the civil rights movement in the United States.	2
But, as is often the case, the story is not that simple. Schuyler, the daughter of a prominent African American journalist and a white mother from Texas, had been brought up by her parents in a utopian experiment to raise the perfect mixed-race daughter in America. Yet in her adulthood she sometimes avoided identifying with her American upbringing to pass as a Spanish woman named Filipa Monterro. Further complicating the story line, Schuyler took a conservative, pro-American position on the war in Vietnam. Though she had reservations about the militaristic and cultural imperialism of the United States, she advocated invading North Vietnam in the name of anticommunism. And she noted in her book Good Men Die (1969) that most African American officers in the U.S. military she encountered felt the same way. Though pictured as a Vietnamese peasant, Schuyler had not abandoned her American heritage so easily (Kimberly L. Phillips discusses Schuyler in her essay "'And Sing No More of War,'" which appears in the exhibition's accompanying book, Soul Soldiers, edited by Samuel W. Black, 2006).	3
Schuyler's photograph and her story point to what makes "Soul Soldiers" a fascinating exhibition: the exploration of what W. E. B. Du Bois famously called African American double consciousness. The exhibition veers between a story of inclusion and exclusion, of becoming American by fighting the nation's wars and rejecting America for another identity—a diasporic, postcolonial, African-based internationalism that opposed Cold War U.S. imperialism.	4
The exhibition "Soul Soldiers" displays a Vietnam War–era U.S. Navy recruiting poster addressed to young African American men and their parents that hints at the tension between patriotism and diasporic black nationalism and attempts to resolve it for African Americans contemplating military service. That tension is the unannounced theme of "Soul Soldiers." Courtesy Senator John Heinz History Center, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.   . . . There are about 1441 more words in this article. Please log in (or, if you are not yet an authorized user, please go to the User Setup page) to gain full access rights. Or if you're already logged in register your subscription.