The War in Vietnam : the view from a Southern community :
Brownsville, Haywood county, Tennessee
Voogt, J.
Citation
Voogt, J. (2005, May 24). The War in Vietnam : the view from a Southern community :
Brownsville, Haywood county, Tennessee. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/9756
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Not Applicable (or Unknown)
License:
Licence agreement concerning inclusion of doctoral thesis in the
Institutional Repository of the University of Leiden
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,1752'8&7,21
The objective of the present study is to try and establish the impact of the Vietnam War (1960-1973) on one specific area of the American South, Brownsville and Haywood County, Tennessee. This region is in many ways characteristic of the American South, as I hope my study will show. An important element in my choosing that particular region for my research is that I lived there in 1986 and 1987, teaching English at Haywood High School. I had at my disposal the records in the local Elma Ross Library where I also examined the relevant issues of the %URZQVYLOOH 6WDWHV*UDSKLFI met, and learned a great deal from, the members of the local community. This enabled me to conduct interviews with a considerable number of them. Many of my findings are based on these interviews.
My study focuses on three sets of questions. A first set of questions addresses the role played in the reception of the Vietnam War by the historic consciousness, by the Southernness of the inhabitants of Brownsville and Haywood County and, by extension, of the Southern region as a whole. To what extent is the perspective of this community and the Southern region on that war colored by the continued presence, by the living memory of the Civil War, the war that has refused to go away? Is there still a characteristically Southern perspective on American involvement in foreign wars?
A second series of questions concerns the impact the War in Vietnam has had on the continuity of the culture of the Brownsville community and the region to which it belongs. An important area of research here is in the local race relations. The War in Vietnam coincided partially with the civil rights movement. In Brownsville the history of the registration of black voters is well-documented, and though outright violence was avoided, there was a great deal of social tension that touched the whole fabric of the community. What role in all this was played by the Vietnam War?
INTRODUCTION 18
portrait of the past”.2 Applied to the Vietnam era this means that the experiences, memories, and opinions of the population of Brownsville and Haywood County, and of the soldiers from this community who fought in Vietnam, enrich our understanding of the Vietnam War era. Therefore, in a chapter called “Towards an Oral History”, I discuss a series of interviews with a cross section of the local community about the War in Vietnam and related subjects, such as the draft and deferments. Since the area where I conducted my research is situated in the South, I also discuss the culture and history of the region, to see whether against this background the War in Vietnam appears in a different light. I will adopt Ritchie’s argument that “oral history is appropriate not only for looking at the broad sweep of a community’s history but for examining it at a specific time . . .”.3
Both official history and oral history have their advantages, but there are drawbacks as well. For example, “oral history interviews”, Ritchie reminds us, “are often conducted years after the event, when memories have grown imprecise”.4 The interviewer, however, can interrupt the flow of memory whenever the need arises, to clarify a point or to get a more precise answer. Traditionally, it is assumed that archival documents are more reliable than a taped interview, but documents can be incomplete, inaccurate, and deceiving.5For example, the rather dramatic turn of events in Brownsville and Haywood County, Tennessee, in connection with the civil rights movement during the era of the Vietnam War, was reported in a rather circumspect way by the local %URZQVYLOOH 6WDWHV*UDSKLF. The private file of Mrs. Reese Moses, an experienced newspaper reporter, containing notes, drafts of articles, and an extensive collection of newspaper clippings, as well as my interviews with Mrs. Reese Moses, and Mr. Earl Rice, the vice principal of Haywood High School, have enabled me to provide a clearer picture of the struggle for civil rights in Brownsville and Haywood County. The most significant source of information, then, for my research, is to be found in the numerous interviews I conducted with Brownsville people. Having lived in Brownsville for a year, I encountered few problems in meeting interested white parties. Significantly, though, it was much harder to find black people willing to be interviewed.
Another important source for my research was the local newspaper, the%URZQVYLOOH6WDWHV*UDSKLF. Its coverage of the War in Vietnam and of the racial tension before and during the era of the civil rights movement was of great interest to my attempt to analyze the nature of the continuity or discontinuity of the community’s culture. In this respect the articles, editorials, and columns about the Civil War, also published in the local newspaper during the Vietnam War era, were important. They demonstrate that traditional printed historical sources sustain and support the oral histories, at least in terms of broad themes.
reflected in particular in literature. Therefore, yet another source of information is provided by American literature on the Vietnam War. I have considered how Southern culture is reflected in American literature and also how the Vietnam War experience found its way into American literature. In my examination of Vietnam War literature I have distinguished between Southern and non-Southern writers. The distinction is necessary to determine the precise nature of the legacy of the War in Vietnam on Southern culture of which Southern literature is an integral part.
In the decades following the American withdrawal from Vietnam, there have been many novels, an even larger number of biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, and oral histories, as well as an increasing number of scholarly books and articles about the War in Vietnam. A large number of courses is taught on a wide range of subjects connected with the War in Vietnam in many colleges and universities.6 Taken together these phenomena point to the permanent hold that the memory of the conflict in Southeast Asia has on the American nation. It is beyond the scope of the present study to examine the whole field critically. Information related to it can be found in the(QF\FORSHGLDRIWKH9LHWQDP :DU, a major scholarly achievement.7
As shown above, the cultural artifacts bearing witness today to the impact of the Vietnam War are impressive, especially when we realize that it belongs to the recent past. How dramatic, then, were the repercussions of the War in Vietnam compared to the Civil War for Brownsville and Haywood County, and the South? Does the Civil War still cast a longer shadow in the communities of the South, as, for example, in West Tennessee? Is any possible dissimilarity between the South and other American regions as regards the War in Vietnam reflected in American literature? The non-Southern writer Philip Caputo has called the Vietnam War the only war “we have ever lost”. Do Southern writers look upon the Vietnam War in a similar way?
INTRODUCTION 20
the Vietnam War and the racial issues of the civil rights era. Finally, I discuss the editorials of the 1960-1973 period.
