Scanned from The Vietnam Photo Book, Mark Jury, 1971
Black Americans became increasingly bitter over their role in Vietnam as more and more brothers were drafted and sent to Southeast Asia. The idea of waging war on the Vietnamese people didn’t sit well with them, and they knew that if they did live through their year in ‘Nam, they still had to fight for their own freedom when they returned to the States. The military ignored the resentment until the infamous Long Binh stockade revolt, in which the brothers took over part of the stockade and GIs were killed and wounded in the melee. Then there was an incident at Da Nang’s China Beach that almost resulted in a shoot-out with automatic weapons.
Overnight, the military started to get with it. Afros were ‘in’ from then on, as were Black Power bracelets, short-timer sticks with a clenched fist, and more soul music in the clubs. But the brothers still stayed by themselves and were just as bitter about fighting a ‘white man’s war.’
The most common ‘Black is Beautiful’ display, after the Afro haircut, was the ‘dap’ – an intricate exercise of hand slapping, shaking, and gripping done by two brothers or sympathetic whites when they met. The military said, ‘The dap is O.K.’ and enterprising brothers expanded it to a loud, attention-getting performance. For many of the ‘old Army’ sergeants, black as well as white, watching the black Americans go through their rituals was devastating.