Searching for Home and Peace
In the summer of 1961, Bob Browne, Huoi, and their four children left Saigon. Browne initially intended to take full advantage of their transpacific journey by making several stops along the way to see sights, visit friends, and slowly acclimate his family to the United States. Flying with three young children quickly changed his mind. Mai, Alexi, and Marshall were all under the age of four. Huo, then eleven, was no doubt enlisted to help take care of her siblings, evening the odds. There was one older caregiver for every younger child. Even so, there were numerous stresses to be managed: luggage, long flights, unfamiliar airports, real or feared communication barriers, and the anticipation of arrival. Rather than prolonging their journey, Bob decided to expedite their travels so that he could introduce his new family to his mother and his home neighborhood on the South Side of Chicago.
As they entered the United States, the Browne family faced the exciting yet challenging prospect of adapting to a new society. Huoi had a particularly steep learning curve as she grappled with a new language, strange foods, unfamiliar cultural practices, and even novel household appliances. Bob also experienced a new America when he returned to Chicago. It was a nation led by the young, charismatic John F. Kennedy. The recently inaugurated president faced intense international pressure as the Cold War continued to escalate. In the spring of 1961, Kennedy ordered the Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba, which failed, and that summer, East Germany began constructing the Berlin Wall. Domestically, Kennedy confronted a moral crisis regarding race. Just the previous year, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formed and launched a more aggressive phase of the civil rights movement. These youths chose not to defer to the leadership of the NAACP, which prioritized legal strategies for integration, or to ministers like Martin Luther King Jr., who boycotted segregated facilities. Instead, they embarked on a series of sit-ins to integrate public facilities like Woolworth store lunch counters, libraries, theaters, and swimming pools. These young people and their supporters put their bodies and, at times, their lives on the line. They purposefully transgressed Jim Crow practices to draw public attention and compel the federal government to intervene and enforce desegregation laws in the South. The summer that Bob and his family came back, SNCC and the Congress of Racial Equality, a nonviolent direct action organization founded in Chicago, launched a series of “freedom rides” to integrate the interstate bus and railway system. Over a thousand volunteers, both black and white, participated. It was a far cry from the United States that Bob left in frustration nearly ten years earlier.
Over the course of the 1960s, Browne would discover his political voice and purpose. He was eager to support the civil rights movement and would eventually end the decade as a leading proponent of black power. For much of the 1960s, though, he primarily served as an ardent critic of U.S. diplomatic and military policies in Southeast Asia. Browne initially emerged as a public voice through a series of letters to the New York Times, written soon after his return to the United States in the early 1960s. Through his efforts to offer perspectives that were alternatives to those of the mainstream media and the U.S. government, he became part of a network of activists and intellectuals who were committed to peace and decolonization.
Browne’s activism could be understood in three primary ways. First, his main method of political engagement was through public debate. His avenues of persuasion—through speeches and writings—reveal his fundamental belief in the power of ideas to change society. In other words, he operated according to the ground rules of a democratic society and made efforts to engage in socially sanctioned political activism.
Second, given the geographical and cultural distance of Vietnam from the United States, Browne attempted to convey the human costs of American policies in Southeast Asia. To cultivate a sense of empathy that transcended national boundaries, he emphasized his personal connections to Vietnam. In addition to his work experience with ICA in Southeast Asia, his ties through marriage and family lent Bob an aura of authenticity and credibility. His private life, previously hidden from view during his tenure in Southeast Asia, served as a valuable symbol to promote a sense of interconnectedness between Americans and Asians. Ironically, as Bob publicly evoked the personal for political purposes, a gendered and cultural gap emerged within the Browne household. Huoi learned to cope with the challenges of immigration by defining her role as a traditional housewife whose primary responsibilities focused on caring for her children. Her concentration on the family was crucial as Bob became a leading political activist during the 1960s, whose commitments took him throughout North America, Europe, North Africa, and back to Asia as well. As Huoi embraced the maternal, Bob broadcast his role as the paternal head of a multiracial family to advocate for peace.
Finally, Browne bridged racial and religious differences by working with whites, blacks, and Asians as well as with Christians, Jews, and Buddhists. Scholar Simon Hall has noted the relative absence of African Americans within the peace movement, despite the fact that blacks were on the whole more dovish than the general public.1 His study tends to focus on recognized African American figures and leading black organizations. But Browne did not have the name recognition of Martin Luther King Jr. or Muhammad Ali. Browne also was not a spokesperson for organizations like SNCC or the NAACP. Nevertheless, he played a crucial, early, and visible role in the antiwar movement. Furthermore, Browne’s blackness was significant for his political impact. One the one hand, he helped authenticate the predominantly white peace movement through his racial presence. On the other hand, he fostered an African American constituency and articulated a racial critique against the U.S. war in Vietnam.
The basis for Browne’s political partnerships with both white and black activists was his embrace of Afro-Asian anticolonial solidarity and his efforts to introduce Vietnamese voices into American political debates. Studies of the U.S. antiwar movement have paid little attention to how Asian critics shaped the dialogue concerning American foreign policy.2 A significant part of Browne’s political legacy was his partnership with the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh. Together, they encouraged an end to the violence and suffering through the establishment of a democratic, peaceful society in South Vietnam that was not reliant on Washington, DC, or Hanoi. In essence, they promoted the possibility of a Bandung-like proposition, a “third solution” to the Cold War tragedy of the U.S. war in Vietnam.
Just as Browne’s blackness and familial status had political significance, Hanh’s identity as a Vietnamese Buddhist monk held symbolic value. In Jane Iwamura’s study of representations of Asian religions in Western popular culture, titled Virtual Orientalism, she notes the emergence of the “Oriental monk” figure during the post–World War II era.3 Characterized by “his spiritual commitment, his calm demeanor, his Asian face, his manner of dress, and—most obviously—his peculiar gendered character,” the iconic Oriental monk offers Asian wisdom and enlightenment to rejuvenate the West.4 This tendency to posit fundamental distinctions between the East and the West even while celebrating the possibilities of cross-cultural dialogue shaped the reception of Thich Nhat Hanh. In order to speak on behalf of Vietnamese people, he and his political allies had to persuade Americans of his cultural authenticity, his presumed differences from U.S. society. For both Browne and Hanh, their respective abilities to “speak” about peace for Vietnamese people were intricately connected to their perceived national and racial as well as gender identities. Browne’s paternal masculinity as an African American man and Hanh’s effeminate asexuality as an Asian monk contributed to their ability to communicate with audiences across cultural boundaries.
Bob and Huoi both went through a difficult period of adjustment after they arrived in the United States in the summer of 1961. As immigrants from Asia, Huoi and her children were anomalies. Asian people had been present in the United States since before the founding of the nation, when Filipino sailors aboard Spanish galleons abandoned their posts and settled with “natives” in what is now Louisiana. Large numbers of Asian immigrants only began arriving over the course of the mid-nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. Totaling approximately one million from such diverse countries as China, Japan, Korea, India, and the Philippines, these migrants primarily settled in California and Hawaii, where they built railroads, worked on plantations, farmed the land, canned salmon, established laundries, and worked as domestic servants. Although recruited and desired for their labor, Asian immigrants and their American-born children aroused the racial and class antagonism of whites who deemed them “cheap labor” and culturally alien. Beginning in the mid- to late nineteenth century and continuing through 1934, the United States passed a series of exclusion laws and issued a series of court rulings banning Asians from entering the country and denying them the right to naturalized citizenship. Asian immigrants, with the exception of Filipinos, who were under American imperial rule, were legally deemed “aliens ineligible for citizenship.”5
The federal government eventually rescinded these laws because of the political necessities of World War II and the Cold War. Immigration and citizenship exclusion came to be at odds with U.S. needs to form alliances with Asian countries. Even so, the immigration quota allocated for Asian nations in the early 1960s was still miniscule and far below that of European countries. As Bob Browne noted in a 1961 publication, “One look at our immigration laws will reveal a broad field for improvement and rectification. Now that we are discovering that Orientals, too, are human, with ability to enrich or to destroy our happiness just as we can theirs, perhaps we will free ourselves from the self-imposed limitations of a less enlightened era. As presently constituted, our immigration quotas permit the annual entry of more than 149,000 persons from Europe as opposed to only 5,290 from Asia and Africa combined.”6 It was not until 1965, when the United States established the same quota for each nation in the world, that Asian immigrants began arriving again in large numbers. And it was not until the end of the Vietnam War that significant numbers of Vietnamese and other Southeast Asians, many of them refugees, entered the United States. In fact, three years after Huoi came to the United States, there were only 603 Vietnamese in America, most of whom were students, language teachers, or diplomats.7
Given the scarcity of Vietnamese and Asian people more generally in the United States, Huoi experienced cultural isolation and misrecognition. Wendelle, Bob Browne’s half sister, recalled that when Huoi first arrived in Chicago, she wore Vietnamese clothing, which was “comfortable for her”; “people would stop . . . and ask . . . was she Japanese? They always wanted to know, ‘Are you Japanese?’ ”8 Residents of Chicago probably presumed that Huoi was Japanese for two reasons. First, African American soldiers tended to be stationed in the Asian as opposed to the European theater during the Cold War. Those few who persisted in circumventing the obstacles to interracial unions were more likely to marry Japanese and sometimes Korean women.9 Second, there was an existing Japanese American community in the Windy City. Forced to leave their homes on the West Coast and to live in internment camps during World War II, approximately twenty thousand relocated to Chicago afterward. Being a despised and suspected group, some Japanese Americans worked with and lived alongside African Americans. At times, the two groups competed for jobs and housing. In fact, Japanese Americans established a residential niche on the South Side of Chicago, close to Bob’s family home.10
While Chicago residents found Huoi and her clothing fascinating, her youngest children were just as amused by their new surroundings and cultural practices. Their aunt, Wendelle, recalled that Mai, Alexi, and Marshall were particularly curious about women wearing pantyhose, a practice that was not prevalent in the tropical climate of Southeast Asia. The young children enjoyed running up to strange women and pulling their legs: “If it looked like it was a stocking they would die laughing.”11 The children’s amusement may have stemmed from the fact that stockings, which give the appearance of skin and skin color, could be removed and changed at will. Wearing them was a flexible practice at odds with the color of “real” skin.
Hoa, then entering her teenage years, had a much more self-conscious transition to American society than her younger siblings. The Browne family eventually settled in Teaneck, New Jersey, to accommodate Bob’s professional interests. Similar to the family’s experiences in Chicago, Hoa recalled that they were the only Vietnamese people she knew. In New Jersey, they lived in a “mixed” community with white Jewish and black neighbors. None of them had even heard of Vietnam. As Bob recalled, when he explained that he had just returned from Vietnam, people would ask if it was located in East or West Africa. Hoa discovered that the children in the neighborhood were generally friendly but that they also laughed and made fun of her accent. Hoa may have stood out more than her younger siblings, not only because of language but also because of phenotype. Her siblings were multiracial and might have blended in better in their mixed neighborhood. Being young, though, Hoa eventually adapted to her surroundings.
In contrast, her mother had great difficulty, especially with learning English. Wendelle recalled that Bob tried “hard . . . to get [Huoi] into classes where she would at least get a knowledge of English,” but Huoi played “hooky all the time. She’d sign up, never show up. Never wanted to learn English or anything that she knew would get her out of what was familiar.”12 Huoi’s resistance to learning English stemmed from complex reasons. First, Huoi grew up with limited exposure to formal education and may have found the experience of learning a foreign language in a classroom rather daunting. Second, according to Wendelle, Huoi “had not wanted to leave” Asia. Although the decision was made for the benefit of their family, Huoi “was nervous and tense” about leaving behind her extended family and familiar surroundings. She had a very different temperament from Bob, who had a passion for exploring new worlds and meeting new people. Also, Huoi knew how to navigate Cambodian and Vietnamese societies. Unlike Bob, she spoke both Cambodian and Vietnamese. In Cambodia, she worked a variety of jobs and also had the support of her family and friends. In Vietnam, she and Bob employed servants to help take care of the kids and household.
In the United States, Huoi initially learned how to be a daughter-in-law in Chicago and then became the primary caregiver in a house filled with strange appliances and surrounded by a bewildering world. Bob recalled that in this initial period
the most mundane aspects of American living were often perceived by my wife as sheer magic. This was especially true of the laundry equipment and the dishwasher, conveniences which we had not needed in Vietnam because it had been better for the local economy, as well as cheaper for me, to hire local manpower to assist us with the household chores. Television was new for my wife, and the scale of almost everything—of the city, of the traffic, of the markets and the shopping malls, of the office towers, of the bewildering choice of products of all sorts—was initially overwhelming.13
Even the home and family became sites of cultural battlegrounds. While in Chicago, Bob played mediator between his wife and his mother. Both women were well meaning but nevertheless encountered cultural and linguistic obstacles. Bob recalled:
My homecoming had an almost fictional quality about it, dripping with drama. Each of the three adult players were under terrible strain and torn by emotion. There was my poor mother, anxiously waiting to meet her daughter-in-law and grandchildren and so very eager to please everyone. There was her prodigal son, returning home after a prolonged absence and presenting her with an instant daughter-in-law and four children, with none of whom she could have normal verbal communication. And finally, there was my wife. For her, the situation was probably the most bewildering, for she was being thrust into both a new family hierarchy and a new and strange culture. . . . The circus-like atmosphere which prevailed was highlighted at our first meal. I had taken pains to alert my mother that rice was our dietary staple, which certainly presented no problem to her inasmuch as she was herself a South Carolinian. . . . My mother proudly placed a bowl of rice in the center of the table and went back to the kitchen to fetch a platter of meat. She returned just in time to see my wife daintily lifting the bowl of rice and placing it in the center of her plate, assuming it to be her portion. The look of horror which swept across my mother’s face was unforgettable. . . . There were, of course, many other “moments of adaptation,” some of them becoming quite loud, owing to the lamentable human tendency to respond to another’s lack of comprehension by serially repeating oneself in ever rising decibels on the mistaken assumption that the listener has a hearing problem.14
To expedite Huoi’s linguistic adaptation, Bob, who knew little Vietnamese, decided to stop speaking French at home. Although Huoi’s French was limited, it was a language that she had in common with her husband. The strategy did not work as he had hoped. Huoi eventually developed a partial ability to communicate in English. With the exception of Hoa, none of her immediate family, including her three younger children, could speak to her in Vietnamese, the language in which she felt most comfortable expressing herself.
The cultural isolation that Huoi experienced parallels the experiences of other Asian women married to Americans. During the period between World War II and 1965, thousands of so-called military war brides arrived in the United States from Asia. They had met and married U.S. military personnel stationed in China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and eventually Vietnam. These Asian women even had their own immigration category as Congress passed legislation to exempt them, initially from the racially exclusive immigration laws and eventually from the discriminatory quotas in place against other Asian migrants. Most of these women crossed not only national boundaries but also racial and cultural ones as well. Like Huoi, they arrived in the United States and learned to adapt to their husbands’ language, culture, and families. Because of the enormous strain involved, many of these relationships did not last.15 Huoi and Bob eventually found a way to navigate these challenges. They held season tickets to the “Metropolitan and never miss[ed] a performance.”16 Their shared love of opera stemmed partly from a cultural and linguistic disconnect between them. As Bob explained, “It’s the only form of entertainment we have where my wife isn’t handicapped by the language. Neither one of us understand Italian.”17
To adapt to the United States, Huoi embraced conventional gender norms and established her sphere of influence firmly in the home and neighborhood. Wendelle recalled that Huoi was “most secure in her home environment.”18 Perhaps it was because Huoi was a “very talented” cook. Seemingly unfamiliar with Western foods like bread and milk, she nevertheless quickly “learned to make American and Western dishes superbly.” In fact, she became “better than anybody who lived” in the United States, in Wendelle’s opinion. Even Bob’s mother, “who could cook like a dream, said, ‘I showed Huoi how to make hard rolls once, or how to make something once and the first time she was perfect.”19 Perhaps due to language differences, Bob’s family underestimated Huoi’s cultural exposure to Western foods. After all, she had worked as a chef in a French household in Cambodia. Also, over the eighty-some years of colonial rule, French food left an imprint on Southeast Asian cuisine. Even so, Huoi had not only a talent for cooking but also a wonderful memory. Perhaps due to her limited formal education, she never wrote down the recipes that she was learning. Yet she could reproduce the dishes perfectly. They “would look real pretty and she knew her own dishes too.”20 Despite his demands for linguistic assimilation, Bob appreciated Huoi’s culinary diversity. He regularly escorted his wife, who never learned how to drive, to New York’s Chinatown so she could purchase rice and other familiar foods. Huoi also became an avid gardener, seamstress, and embroiderer. These projects allowed her to use her creativity to care for her family and house. Huoi’s abilities also alleviated some of her dependence on the outside world, since she could grow her own food and make her own clothes. She also found ways, despite her limited English, to connect with both Bob’s family and friends in Chicago and their new neighbors in Teaneck. She learned new skills from these individuals and in turn shared the fruits of her labor with them.
While Huoi established herself in the private realm of family and home, Bob embarked on a quest in the public realm of work and politics. Having worked abroad in Southeast Asia for the previous six years in locations considered “hardship posts,” Browne had accumulated substantial savings that allowed him the luxury of time to search for a position in keeping with his aspirations. After a summer-long visit with his mother in Chicago, he decided to return to the New York area because of his continued interest in international affairs. With his savings, he purchased the house in Teaneck. The establishment of a nuclear household might have helped Huoi by giving her a greater sense of security and authority.
Although Bob resigned from his post with ICA in Vietnam, he discovered that the agency continued to cast a shadow on his employment prospects. Despite his eagerness to acclimate his family to the United States, Browne’s qualifications made him an attractive candidate for development positions abroad, this time in Africa. He pursued these opportunities, one with the Africa-American Institute (described by Bob as a “semi-government organization”) and the other with the United Nations. These jobs required security clearances though, and Browne’s application was repeatedly delayed. He suspected the ICA and its successor, the Agency for International Development, of blocking his opportunities. Browne wrote a series of letters to the State Department, the attorney general, and even to his senator, protesting this treatment:
A year ago I was a solvent, well-qualified, multi-lingual person, eager to put my talents to good use and optimistic about my future. . . . During the past year, however, I have been the victim of such inconsiderate treatment on the part of the government that I can hardly believe that it is happening—and although it may well be unintentional and unpremeditated, this possibility serves rather to intensify than to assuage my rage, and in no way ameliorates the desperate economic straits to which I have been reduced. The operation (or lack thereof) of this loyalty board has cost me two jobs—the product of more than a year’s searching.21
Browne suspected that the delay in the security clearance had to do with his public participation in political issues. As he detailed to the attorney general:
In all honesty I can imagine no grounds for my being even suspected of any disloyalty unless it is for my outspoken criticisms, on the radio and in the New York Times, of certain administration policies in Southeast Asia . . . or for my activities on behalf of freedom riders and sit in movements. . . . If such activities lead to charges of disloyalty, then I want to be confronted with the charges so that they can be fought. I cannot, however, acquiesce in this niggling technique of “inaction” as a means to thwart my obtaining work in my professional field.22
Browne did not raise the suggestion that his marriage to a Vietnamese woman without receiving proper bureaucratic approval might have been a factor in delaying his security clearance. Despite his passionate pleas, he received no satisfactory response.
Unable to go abroad himself, Browne settled instead for working for the Phelps Stokes Fund, an agency based in New York City that sought to promote the involvement of African Americans in foreign service. As part of his responsibilities, he spoke regularly at historically black colleges and universities, many of them in the South, to recruit students for international careers.23 Browne also decided to pursue his intellectual ambitions by enrolling in a PhD program in economics at the City University of New York. With his developing academic credentials and with previous experience teaching economics at Dillard University, he secured an assistant professorship at Fairleigh Dickinson University, located close to his home in New Jersey. Most of his energies from 1962 to 1968 were, in his words, “devoted . . . not to study, not to earning a living or teaching, but to the anti-war movement.”24
Browne clearly aspired to be an active citizen, someone who participated regularly in political affairs by contributing to public debates. Even before he departed from Saigon, he had authored a booklet that was eventually published just as he arrived back in the States under the title of Race Relations in International Affairs (1961). In this work, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the underlying racial, as opposed to the overtly Cold War, dynamics of the post–World War II era. He characterized the anticolonial movements as the effort of “the colored peoples’ wrenching of control over the world from the hands of the white man.”25 By drawing attention to these efforts for national liberation within the Third World, Browne highlighted the need to recognize and address racial aspirations and divisions. It is a theme that he would echo in his critiques of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia.
Because Browne’s booklet sold sparsely, he found other avenues to air his views. Soon after his return to the United States, he wrote a series of letters to the editor of the New York Times and to various politicians. His critiques of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia centered on two main themes. First, he argued that America’s “single-minded” tendency to view international politics through the lens of the Cold War led diplomats to misunderstand developments in Third World countries and to overlook valuable opportunities to gain the trust of these potential allies. In fact, U.S. policies actually resulted in cultivating anti-American and procommunist sentiment. In both Cambodia and Vietnam in the mid-1950s through the early 1960s, Browne believed that there were windows of opportunity for fostering pro-American opinion. However, U.S. “State Department single-mindedness led us into the same old ‘you got to be for us or agin us’ posture.”26 In Cambodia, this encouraged Prince/Prime Minister Sihanouk to pursue foreign aid funds from the Eastern bloc to deter U.S. influence on his country. In Vietnam, the United States staunchly supported the anticommunist but totalitarian and corrupt President Diem.27 As a result, “the Vietnamese masses have made clear their indifference to an American victory by their ever-increasing support of the Viet Cong. The Vietnamese leadership, however, identifies its interest with American policy rather than with the wishes of the mass of Vietnamese people, who want peace—even if it means communism. . . . Paradoxically, our costly efforts to maintain a pro-western beachhead in Indo-China have had exactly the reverse of the desired effect.”28
Browne never strongly endorsed the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, nor communism. Even so, he recognized the appeal that these forces had for the South Vietnamese populace, because they represented a nationalist alternative to U.S. interference. He recalled, “my tenure in Vietnam, government officials commonly refer[red] to the war as ‘your war’ (meaning the Americans’ war).”29 It is significant that this sentiment was expressed during the late 1950s and early 1960s, under the Eisenhower presidency and before presidents Kennedy and Johnson escalated financial and military commitment to Southeast Asia. In addition, the comment was made by a South, not North, Vietnamese government official, that is, from an ally, not a Cold War enemy.
Browne’s second critique of U.S. conduct in Southeast Asia focused on race, a theme that he also developed in Race Relations in International Affairs. He argued that the ingrained American mentality of “white superiority” prevented politicians and mainstream Americans from recognizing the desire for self-determination among Third World people. As he subsequently pointed out in letters to the New York Times, the “white press” contributed to this racial arrogance by its “apparent inability . . . to resist detracting from the stature of any colored statesman by publicizing, with a subtle distastefulness, any unconventional trait which he may have in western eyes, whether it be of diet or religion, of fashion, of family, or other aspect. . . . It is one other example of our self-defeating prejudice, a luxury which America clings to at an excruciating price.”30
In contrast to white America’s inability to recognize the humanity and dignity of nonwhite individuals, Brown emphasized the racial bond between people of Asian and African ancestry. In another letter to the New York Times, he shared his sense of “racial brotherliness” which he experienced in his travels in Asia and Africa: “I have encountered a similar sentiment of kinship from non-white peoples in all portions of the world where colored people predominate. In Asia the basis seems to be more of a feeling of shared oppression at the hands of the whites whereas in Africa this sentiment is augmented by a feeling of common ancestry, but in both cases the bond’s existence is undeniable.”31
Browne began as an early and almost lone voice, but his consistent efforts to contribute to public discourse soon involved him in a broader network of political activists and organizations. His earliest and some of his most significant connections were made with predominantly white pacifist groups, such as SANE (the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy), Women Strike for Peace (WSP), Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), American Friends Services Committee (AFSC), and the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF). These organizations tended to draw membership from the middle class and the middle aged. Cora Weiss, for example, was a key organizer within WSP. Some of the organizations, most notably FOR, AFSC, and WILPF, had developed their pacifist missions in the context of World War I and tended to have an elderly constituency. Others, like SANE and WSP, were created in the midst of the Cold War to promote dialogue and cooperation rather than escalation and annihilation; these groups attracted a younger but still relatively mature membership. While by no means richly endowed, these relatively established groups possessed institutional and economic resources to facilitate political mobilization. They monitored U.S.–Southeast Asian relations during the early part of the 1960s. They held public forums and congressional hearings. They also sponsored petitions among community members, religious leaders, and intellectuals. In addition, the groups published ads in the New York Times and the Washington Post to promote public understanding about U.S. policy and to advocate peaceful measures to diffuse the escalating tensions in Southeast Asia.
They recruited Browne to be part of their efforts, which intensified during the summer of 1964. In August of that year, an alleged attack by the North Vietnamese on a U.S. ship in the Gulf of Tonkin provided justification for President Lyndon Johnson to receive congressional approval to retaliate against enemy fire. Through Browne’s connections with SANE, he was invited as one of three academics to present a petition bearing five thousand signatures to the 1964 Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Taking place just a few weeks after the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Browne argued the necessity of a nonmilitary solution to the political developments in Southeast Asia.
The 1964 Democratic National Convention has received historical attention because of the efforts of Fannie Lou Hamer and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to unseat the all-white delegates of the regular segregated Democratic Party in the South. The presence of Hamer and the MFDP in Atlantic City represented the culmination of a summer-long and arguably lifelong campaign to challenge racial terrorism in Mississippi and throughout the South. Like Hamer’s demands for justice, Browne’s appeals similarly fell upon deaf ears.
Even as Browne tapped into existing organizations, he also helped to create new political partnerships. Given his academic credentials, he was well situated to play a leadership role among intellectuals and students. He helped inaugurate the teach-in movement on American college campuses in the spring of 1965 as President Johnson ordered the implementation of Rolling Thunder, a massive bombing campaign against North Vietnam. In fact, Browne often served as the lead-off speaker and shared the stage with prominent antiwar activists such as Professor Staughton Lynd and Doctor Benjamin Spock, as well as Students for a Democratic Society leaders Tom Hayden and Carl Oglesby. He traveled around the nation, giving talks at places like Michigan, Columbia, Berkeley, and other schools, including his alma maters, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. To sustain and develop the teach-in movement, Browne helped to create and promote the Inter-University Committee for Debate on Foreign Policy. The committee, which consisted mostly of faculty but also included graduate students, was dedicated to promoting public dialogue about political issues.
A second significant political network that Browne fostered was among African American students, intellectuals, community members, and political leaders. By the mid-1960s, black leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and other civil rights activists had become widely regarded as the moral conscience of American society among their supporters. Consequently, the federal government and various mainstream political leaders exerted enormous pressures on black leaders not to speak out about foreign affairs.32 As a counterbalance, white pacifist religious leaders, who also tended to support the civil rights movement, attempted to enlist the public support of King for the cause of peace. One of his closest African American advisers, Bayard Rustin, was a pacifist and a member of FOR. However, King would not make his famous condemnation of the Vietnam War at New York City’s Riverside Church until April 1967.33 Even SNCC, which tended to eschew establishment politics, did not criticize the war until the beginning of 1966. In contrast, Browne was an early and prominent critic of U.S. foreign policy.
Browne’s credentials as an African American peace activist made him a highly desired spokesperson within both white and black political circles. Because white antiwar leaders and organizers were conscious of the relative absence of blackness within their movement, they were invested in featuring African Americans. For example, Alfred Hassler, the executive secretary of FOR from 1960 to 1974, organized a 1965 delegation of clergy to South Vietnam to learn about the war. In recruiting participants for this tour, Hassler expressed his desire to include prominent black leaders: “Our first choice . . . would be Martin Luther King, Jr”; if he was unable to accept, “we want at least one Negro participant.”34 King did not attend, but African American civil rights leader James Lawson, who was a member of both FOR and its offshoot Congress of Racial Equality, apparently filled the “black” slot. In addition, Bob Browne was asked to serve as a consultant for this delegation, which traveled to South Vietnam just as the United States introduced ground troops there.
Given this propensity toward including black representation, which bordered on tokenism, Browne’s relationships with white pacifists were not always smooth. FOR had a policy of noncooperation with communists that originated during World War II. Browne was not necessarily a supporter of communism. However, to facilitate the conclusion of the U.S. war, he was interested in establishing dialogue with the National Liberation Front (NLF) of South Vietnam, with the North Vietnamese if it could be done outside of North Vietnam, and with Third World independence movements more broadly. While Hassler wanted to send Browne to Saigon well before the arrival of the clergy delegation to establish political contacts, Browne insisted on traveling to Algiers to attend an Asian-African conference that was envisioned as a follow-up to Bandung. Although the meeting was eventually postponed due to the political instability following the Algerian Revolution, Browne also wanted to open lines of communication with the NLF and the North Vietnamese, both of whom had bases in North Africa.35 Browne’s “blackness” was a political asset to Hassler given the reluctance of mainstream civil rights leaders to support the peace movement. Yet Browne’s political investment in Third World liberation in some ways marked him as “too black” for the FOR.
Among African Americans, Browne’s racial identity and his political commitment toward Vietnam made him a desirable resource. Courted by African American antiwar activists, Browne published essays, gave talks, and even filmed a three-part television show, sponsored by WCBS-TV and Columbia University, that provided a black perspective on the Vietnam War and U.S. foreign policy more broadly. In an influential 1965 essay, “The Freedom Movement and the War in Vietnam,” Browne again emphasized the connections between African Americans and Vietnamese people. He recalled that during his years in Vietnam, “Although I could never escape the obvious truth that I was a foreigner, the fact that I was a non-white, Vietnamese-speaking member of a Vietnamese family, frequently made me privy to conversations intended only for Vietnamese ears.”36 Following this statement, Browne indicated in brackets the comment, “Negro readers will readily understand what I mean.”37 Leaving aside his inflated claim to language fluency as well as his membership in a Vietnamese family, Browne’s commentary suggests that African Americans, who had a history of experiencing marginalization and exploitation in the United States, would have an intuitive understanding of the connection with other “oppressed” and colonized groups. In fact, Browne recounts that during his 1965 trip to South Vietnam, “[when I first met] the venerable Tri Quang, leader of the Vietnamese Buddhists, I was momentarily thunderstruck at his appearance for, with his hair clipped short in the traditional style of the Buddhist monk, he looked exactly like any Negro whom one might meet on 125th Street in Harlem.”38
The sense of commonality between African Americans and Vietnamese people led Browne to question why blacks were fighting in the U.S. war in Vietnam. African Americans tended to serve in the U.S. military in disproportionately high numbers throughout the Cold War. As historian Michael Cullen Green points out, participation in the military provided access to material benefits as well as symbolic recognition. These attractions were particularly compelling for African Americans who experienced economic, social, and educational disadvantages stateside.39 In addition, as historian James E. Westheider argues, African Americans were drafted in disproportionate numbers because of their lack of representation on draft boards, minimal political power, and limited access to educational deferments.40 Browne articulated critiques of the high representation of African Americans in the military and among those who suffered injuries from war. He kept track of this information by writing to American military and political leaders to acquire the data. He also publicized these findings by writing to mainstream as well as African American periodicals and journals about his racial concerns over the war. In addition, he gave public talks about this topic. In a speech titled “The Black Man and the War in Vietnam,” given at the Black Anti-Draft Conference in New York City in January 1967, Browne stated,
The tragic result today, so well known to us all, is that Black men comprise some 18 to 25% of the troops in Vietnam and some 20 to 29% of the casualties—a figure which should be compared not merely with our 11 or 12% official proportion of the U.S. population, but more significantly, with our actual economic and political stake in this country: less than 2% of the representation in the Congress . . . ; exactly 1% of the representation in the Senate; and not more than 1/20 of 1% of the nation’s purchasing power.41
Because of Browne’s concerns about African American troops in Vietnam, he welcomed the opportunity to converse with black members of the military during his 1967 return trip to South Vietnam. His primary purpose for this journey was to observe the first presidential elections held since Diem came to power. The elections did little to change the political status quo though, since the United States supported the existing leadership’s efforts to eliminate most of their opposition through questionable means.42 By then, the U.S. military had reached its peak of half a million soldiers stationed in Vietnam.
An unidentified officer gave one of the most famous quotes about the war when he explained an American military attack on a Vietnamese village by saying, “It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.”43 The quote encapsulates the tragic irony of U.S. strategy in South Vietnam. To save the country from communism, American politicians and the military destroyed the land and its people. In total, U.S. pilots dropped more than three times the amount of bombs on Vietnam than all the bombs used during World War II. In fact, twice as many bombs rained down in the South, America’s ally, than in the North, the designated enemy. The bombs were not just intended to destroy military targets, which included military sites or the manufacturing, transportation, and communication infrastructure. Despite U.S. government denials, eyewitness accounts by American travelers and international journalists indicate that residential areas, schools, hospitals, and dikes that could cause flooding and widespread famine were bombed repeatedly, either inadvertently through inaccuracy or consciously as targets. In addition, the U.S. military used cluster bombs, which did little to harm the physical environment but maximized human injury through the explosive dispersal of tiny bomb fragments that made extraction difficult.44 Americans also deployed chemical warfare, utilizing Agent Orange and napalm, to defoliate Vietnamese forests and to burn down villages and harm their inhabitants. These biological weapons have had long-lasting effects on both the ecology of Vietnam and the people exposed to them. Seeking to contain the NLF and its supporters, the U.S. military and the South Vietnamese government designated certain villages and their surrounding countryside as “free fire zones.” Any person living or working in these areas was considered a likely enemy. Residents were rounded up into “ ‘strategic hamlets,’ which the Vietnamese called concentration camps. These hamlets were surrounded by barbed wire and required passes for those leaving and entering.”45 As a result of these policies, an estimated four million people, approximately 25 percent of the South Vietnamese population, became refugees by the end of the war.46 Those who did not evacuate from targeted areas and even those who did relocate, including the very young, the elderly, and women, were at times tortured, brutalized, and killed by American soldiers in search and destroy missions.
During Browne’s 1967 visit, a U.S. security report was filed, alleging that he posted an inflammatory flier at the Tan Son Nhut Air Base.47 The image offered a racial critique of the military. At the top, it declared: “Uncle Sam needs YOU nigger.” The lower half featured the following commentary:
Become a member of the world’s highest paid black mercenary army!
Fight for Freedom . . . (In Viet Nam)
Support White Power—travel to Viet Nam, you might get a medal.
Receive valuable training in the skills of killing off other oppressed people!
(Die Nigger Die—you can’t die fast enough in the ghettos.)
So run to your nearest recruiting chamber!48
It is not clear if Browne actually posted the flier. The security report also indicated that he “married his Vietnamese housemaid who was allegedly a Viet Cong (VC) or from a VC-connected family. Source advised Brown had an entry visa for North Vietnam, and had departed Saigon for Phnom Penh, Cambodia, en route to Hanoi.” Neither of these latter allegations is substantiated. Huoi expressed little overt interest in politics, and Browne did not travel to Hanoi until after the U.S. war in Vietnam ended.
In 1966, Browne had carefully requested permission from the State Department to travel to the capital of North Vietnam. He explained this request by identifying himself as “a university teacher and an officer of an academic organization which encourages discussion, especially on university campuses, of foreign policy matters.”49 He did not hide his politics, which, he explained, “are quite critical of the Administration’s policy.” However, he offered to share his observations “with the White House” upon his return. He had participated in a similar debriefing when he traveled to Saigon in 1965. Although Browne did receive authorization from the State Department to travel to Hanoi, he also was warned that he would be “traveling at [his] own risk” and that “the Treasury Department prohibit [ed] all unlicensed transactions by Americans with North Viet-Nam or nationals thereof including payments for travel expenses, for accommodations, or for services.”50 In essence, the letter grudgingly gave Browne permission to travel to North Vietnam but warned that he could not legally pay for any transactions related to the trip. In the end, he did not make the journey.
Browne was certainly familiar with the content of the “Uncle Sam needs YOU nigger” poster as he retained a copy of it in the papers that he eventually donated to historical archives. Also, the sentiments expressed in the flier replicated his critiques of the war. As Browne stated in the speech given at the Black Anti-Draft Conference: “to me the racist character of this war is quite unmistakeable [sic]. . . . Firstly, in objective: I see the war as a preparation for all out war against the Chinese people, a war having the objective of restoring the white monopoly on nuclear weapons. . . . Secondly in technique: It is inconceivable to me that the U.S. would use, in Europe for example, the devilish weapons, gases and chemicals which it is using to deform and destroy the Vietnamese people. . . . Thirdly, in tactics,” specifically the overrepresentation of African Americans in the military.51 Consequently, he warned his audience, “We, dear Black brothers and sisters, are in the unhappy position of being caught right in the middle of this explosive juggernaut. The white man is using us as a major tool in his nefarious efforts to maintain and extend his control over these restless colored masses of humanity, and at the same time he is taking every step to insure that we are kept submerged and powerless here at home.”52
Browne shared sentiments similar to those of historian Vincent Harding, who sent Browne a personal copy of his poem titled “To the Gallant Black Men Now Dead.” In this work, Harding lamented the deaths of African American troops and questioned the reason for their sacrifice. He wrote:
I weep for you.
Hearing sounds of your death in the jungle
performing great deeds of gallant savagery,
I weep because. . . .
we have been deceived
again, black brothers,
again.53
Browne’s ability to play a significant role among white and black antiwar advocates was largely based on his access to a third political network, namely Vietnamese peace activists. His overall familiarity with Vietnam through his professional career, family ties, and political contacts served as crucial political assets. Collectively, they endowed him with authenticity and credibility.
The years that Browne spent living and working in Southeast Asia provided a valuable experiential base. Few Americans, particularly during the early part of the 1960s, had any firsthand contact with Vietnam or Vietnamese people. Browne’s audience members might have had some misgivings or distrust of mainstream media representations and government sources. However, to hear from someone who actually lived in Vietnam and worked on behalf of the United States was quite compelling. As he recalled, “Between 1962 and 1964 I was virtually the only American in the country who knew Vietnam firsthand and who was prepared to talk honestly about what was happening there.”54 He could speak with authority about the detrimental impact of U.S. involvement in South Vietnam. In a 1963 talk in New York City for a forum titled Vietnam Aflame: What Are the Issues, Browne detailed how America’s economic aid constituted “approximately $2 billion [since 1955]. This [came] to about $700,000 a day every day, including Saturdays and Sundays.”55 This vast amount of money did not create a more stable or democratic country. Instead, the wealth was horded by the existing elite, “Saigonese business men and high civil servants, including especially the President’s family.”56 As Browne described, “no visitor to Saigon would ever suspect that he was in a country which was virtually bankrupt and living on the largesse of another. Rakish new French, German and British sports cars are everywhere in evidence. Fine restaurants and well provisioned shops abound, boasting imported wines, cheese, and perfumes . . . all thanks to America aid.”57 Browne reminded his audience, “Needless to say most of the Vietnamese are not so fortunate as to be riding around in foreign sports cars and motor boats. . . . It certainly seems to me that during my several years’ residence in Indochina, the gap between the wealthy and the poor has actually widened rather than closed.”58 Such conditions generated dissatisfaction with the ruling elite and their American supporters. The disparity in wealth and repression of political reform fostered conditions for revolution.
When individuals who also claimed direct experience in Vietnam attacked American pacifist groups, these organizations turned to Browne to respond to criticism. In a 1964 letter to an American Air Force captain serving in Vietnam since 1961, Browne respectfully disagreed with the military officer’s assessment of the nature of U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia. Browne ended his correspondence by expressing, “My heart goes out to our many U.S. servicemen serving in Vietnam, to their families and to the families of those who have died there. I only regret to say, however, that these men are dying for no good purpose—and indeed they die with the blood of immorality on their hands. That these trustworthy and enthusiastic young men should be so callously sacrificed and so cynically misled is beyond being a national tragedy. It is a national disgrace.”59
It is particularly striking that Browne articulated this critique before the massive introduction of ground troops in 1965. Furthermore, he reminds the U.S. military officer that the tragedy is not just an American one: “Even more . . . does my heart bleed for the unnumbered thousands of Vietnamese who are being murdered and mutilated month after month, in part at least, because we insist that their country be a battleground for a struggle which we feel to be important. I suggest that it will be many years before America can wash the stains of this episode from our national face.”60
Browne’s ability to cite personal experiences of living and working in Vietnam, along with his skills as a public speaker, made him a powerful and persuasive antiwar orator. As one friend commented, “I was sitting in the next-to-last row at your Carnegie Hall appearance [in April 1965] lo these many years ago. You were very much the crowd pleaser of the night. The charisma came through like dynamite.”61
In addition to emphasizing the years that he spent in Southeast Asia, Browne always publicly identified himself as marrying into a Vietnamese family. The selection of words is rather telling. First, Browne privileged the Vietnamese and maternal side of Huoi’s ancestry. She could have been identified as Chinese due to her father’s ethnicity or as Cambodian by virtue of being born and raised there or as a multiethnic or multinational person. No doubt, Bob’s “ethnic choice” was made for strategic political purposes.62 Second, Bob’s often-repeated phrase contrasts with modern Western notions of marriage, which emphasize the union between two individuals and the husband’s legal and cultural coverture of his wife’s identity. Instead, Bob indicated that he became a member of Huoi’s Vietnamese family. He could be referring to the fact that by marrying Huoi, he also assumed responsibility for a stepdaughter, Hoa. It is also possible that Bob was referring to his membership in an extended Asian kinship network. When they lived in Cambodia, Huoi relied upon her grandmother to help provide child care. Hoa recalled that her adopted father was very generous with her mother’s relatives and attempted unsuccessfully to sponsor their migration to the United States.
While Bob announced his membership in a Vietnamese family as part of his political identity as an antiwar activist, Huoi herself was not engaged in these endeavors. She defined her primary responsibility as taking care of their children and household, especially since Bob traveled frequently for his political commitments. Some of his close political associates mention Huoi and their children in their correspondence, suggesting that she likely facilitated these relationships through acts of hospitality and personal friendship. She occasionally joined her husband in some functions connected with antiwar activities. There is no indication that she accepted the invitations of some women’s peace groups who specifically requested her participation in their events and protests. Huoi probably declined some of these opportunities because of her limited English and more reclusive personality. In addition, she may not have appreciated being a token celebrity and a political symbol.63 The publicity for one function, issued hastily, indicated that Robert Browne would be in attendance with “his Vietnamese wife.”64 Another organization asked that Huoi offer a few words of greeting in Vietnamese and also wear “a Vietnamese costume.”65 Initially misrecognized when she arrived in the United States, Huoi’s Vietnamese identity became a political goldmine during the antiwar movement.
Just as Bob’s years of living and working in Southeast Asia legitimated his views, his familial relationships also made him a more credible voice. A woman who served as the coordinator for the Martha’s Vineyard Peace Center wrote to Browne in 1965, “Since you were there on our government-sanctioned business, stayed there for 6 years and married a Vietnamese girl will, I am sure make the people feel you are an authentic source of information.”66 In essence, Browne and his supporters publicly proclaimed his kinship connections to legitimate his critiques of American foreign policy.
This political use of kinship ties counters the dynamics that scholar Christina Klein identified in an earlier phase of the Cold War. Klein emphasizes how U.S. middlebrow culture sought to elicit sympathies from mainstream American audiences so that they might “save” Asian children from the evils of communism.67 Instead, Browne suggests that true compassion should evoke the desire to save Asians from American political manipulation and militarism. In one of his speeches, he explicitly evokes the figure of a Vietnamese child in need of rescue. He begins with the statement: “I write of Indo-China more in sorrow than in anger—for rage cannot be sustained at a high intensity, but sorrow lingers long after the sun has set.” Following his reflections about his early experiences in Southeast Asia and the subsequent destruction that Vietnam experienced as a result of American military intervention, Browne concludes this talk by asking:
May I tell you about Thum? Thum is a little Vietnamese girl who came to live with us in New Jersey for a few weeks during 1968 and 1969. She had been brought to the U.S. by a group of concerned Americans as part of a program to rebuild the bodies of Vietnamese children who had suffered serious physical mutilation by the war. Thum, who was 8 years old when we first saw [her], had lost her nose, her upper lip, and part of her chest in an attack which had also killed much of her family. It was hard to look at her at first, because she was so grotesque—and even after her face had been largely rebuilt at a New York City hospital, she still looked pretty frightening. My family, of course, grew fond of her after a while (she came to us between each series of skin graftings because she could speak only in Vietnamese and needed companionship) but whenever we took her out with us she inevitably aroused curiosity, sympathy, and repulsion. Perhaps some sense of guilt also. She was only one child; the program which brought her over reaches perhaps 20 children a year. But it is conservatively estimated that upwards of 200,000 children desperately need such treatment, and the number grows with each day the U.S. continues its war on these hapless people.68
In response to queries about why he focused his critiques on American-induced atrocities in Indochina and not on North Vietnamese acts of violence, Browne reflected: “The question always struck me as singularly curious inasmuch as my audiences were always comprised of Americans, not of North Vietnamese. It must be remembered that most peace activists were not seeking to score debating points but are engaged in a very serious business of attempting to convince their fellow Americans to stop killing off the Vietnamese people. We have neither access to nor responsibility for the crimes of other nations; only for our own.”69 Browne’s depiction of Thum tended to emphasize her victimization, and his familial claims positioned him as a fatherly protector.
Browne also articulated the need for Americans to hear Vietnamese voices and to respect Vietnamese political agency. In a 1965 letter concerning a documentary on Vietnam produced by the Columbia Broadcasting Service, Browne wrote to the president of the company, John A. Schneider, “I applaud your effort. . . . I am, however, concerned lest your program, like most TV documentaries and discussion programs on this topic, fail to provide the public an honest presentation of the cogent reasons why our present policy is inadequate and the realistic alternatives open to us. As a member of a Vietnamese family myself I am also dismayed with the infrequency with which the Vietnamese people’s views are included in the picture.”70
Browne’s primary efforts to help broadcast Vietnamese perspectives about the U.S. war in Southeast Asia revolved around his relationship with Nguyen Xuan Bao, who became better known as Thich Nhat Hanh. Bao was born in Hue, in the central part of Vietnam, in 1926, just two years later than Browne. Bao decided to become a Buddhist monk at a relatively young age. Even in Vietnam, he was open to ideas and influences beyond his native land. Initially educated under the French colonial system, he learned Western philosophy and religion as part of his Buddhist training. Bao eventually became part of a reform movement that promoted an “engaged” form of Buddhism, which adapted religious beliefs and practices to address contemporary worldly issues. During the First Indochina War, Bao supported the cause for national independence and became a public religious leader following the signing of the Geneva Peace Accords in 1954. Bao’s reform efforts, which attracted a significant youth following, met with opposition from within the Buddhist religious establishment. When offered a fellowship from Princeton University, Bao came to the United States to study comparative religion and eventually became an instructor at Columbia University. In fact, Bao arrived in the United States in 1961, the same year that the Browne family left Saigon. Like Huoi, he falls outside of the established waves of Asian immigration. Bao was part of the Cold War migration of intellectuals, which has yet to receive substantial scholarly attention. He arrived before the 1965 Immigration Act, which opened America’s gates to Asia. And he came to the United States before the entry of refugees from Southeast Asia in the mid- to late 1970s. In fact, Bao was the only representative of his faith from Vietnam in the United States when Thich Quang Duc (who previously resided at the same temple as Bao) deliberately set himself afire in Saigon on 11 June 1963 to protest the repression of Buddhism.71
The famous image of Thich Quang Duc’s self-immolation sparked worldwide attention on South Vietnam. Duc’s act followed an escalation of political conflict between Buddhists and the U.S.-backed and Catholic president of the Republic of Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem. Under his administration, Buddhism, which had the most pervasive religious influence on Vietnam, with an estimated following of 70–90 percent of the population, was officially designated an “interest group” rather than a state-recognized religion, like Catholicism. This bureaucratic differentiation had implications for a variety of political, civil, and economic rights for Buddhist sects and for their leaders, temples, and adherents.
Furthermore, Catholics tended to receive preferential treatment, so much so that non-Catholics were pressured to either convert or follow Catholic practices. Browne discovered this himself during his time in South Vietnam. He recalled one conversation with “a particularly dear South Vietnamese friend of mine, a Buddhist and bachelor.” Because “he always demonstrated great interest in American customs, I thought to invite him to stop in late on Christmas eve to watch us decorate the tree.” His friend’s response surprised Browne:
The scowl which swept across his face dripped with hatred.
“I can’t make it at that time,” he muttered acridly. “I’ve got a command performance with Big Brother.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Mid-night mass,” he grunted. “Every Christmas eve Diem holds midnight mass at the palace, didn’t you know it?”
“Yes, I do remember that there was a lot of ballyhoo about it last year. But you’re a Buddhist. How does it affect you?”
“I’m a Buddhist all right. But I’m also chief of my bureau. All bureau chiefs, department heads, commissioners—well, the top man in every major office of the government, is obliged to go to these masses. It doesn’t matter whether he’s Catholic, Protestant, Buddhist, or something else. Of course, most of the chiefs are Catholics and are proud to go. The rest of us go because we want to keep our jobs. This is the way Diem’s democracy works.”72
In contrast to the state mandate for Catholicism, Buddhism faced outright repression.73 In 1963, tensions between Buddhists and the Diem government ignited. In May of that year, on the occasion of Vesak—the birthday of Buddha—a ban against the flying of Buddhist flags was enforced in Hue, a stronghold of Buddhist leadership. In contrast, Vatican flags were flown regularly at government-sponsored celebrations, including one held earlier that spring for the older brother of President Diem, Archbishop Ngo Dinh Thuc, the highest-ranking Catholic leader in Vietnam, who was also based in Hue. On Vesak, tensions between Buddhist supporters and the government escalated as protesters gathered in large numbers to demand equal recognition and rights for their religion. Blaming these public disturbances on the Vietcong, the military and police responded by opening fire, using bullets, grenades, and chemical weapons. Eight died following a demonstration on 8 May. The persistence of government repression, which included arrests and disappearances of Buddhist leaders, eventually led Thich Quang Duc and other Buddhist monks and nuns to conduct their very painful and very public acts of self-sacrifice.
As the only Vietnamese Buddhist monk in the United States, Bao felt a responsibility to educate the American audience about the events in his homeland. He was a reclusive and contemplative person, someone who was not inclined toward politics. Seeking advice about how to gain a public hearing in the United States, Bao sought out Browne because of his outspoken critique of American policies in Southeast Asia. In one letter, Browne describes the beginning of his relationship with Bao: “There is a Vietnamese Buddhist monk here in New York—the only one in America—and since the self-immolation of Quang Duc he has felt a great need to contribute to the Buddhist protest against the religious persecutions of President Diem. The local Vietnamese community here, to whom he is a sort of spiritual father, has been urging him to make some dramatic gesture of protest (short of cremation I hope!) and he has been coming to me for guidance.”74
Over time, Browne and Bao became close political collaborators. Bao became a regular visitor at the Browne household and befriended Huoi as well as Bob. Using his contacts and communication skills, Bob found avenues for Bao to speak directly to the American people by arranging television and radio interviews. He also sought ways, not always successfully, to land Bao an audience with the Catholic President John F. Kennedy, his aides, and congressional representatives. Although Bao never met Kennedy, he had a brief audience with Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, who appeared rather disinterested. Even so, the Buddhist crisis of 1963 led the U.S. administration to withdraw support from Diem, eventually resulting in his assassination by military leaders seeking to take over the government. Not privy to these behind-the-scenes negotiations, Browne helped Bao and his associates to prepare an appeal to the United Nations to investigate human rights violations in South Vietnam. To sustain this transnational communication and political network between Buddhists in Vietnam and within the Vietnamese diaspora, Browne assisted in the creation of the Overseas Vietnamese Buddhist Association, which had branches in Europe and Asia as well as North America. Reflecting his political approach that sought to challenge American policy but within authorized constraints, Browne notified the Department of Justice of his work “on behalf of . . . foreigners” to ensure that his actions were legally defensible in the context of war.75
The summer of 1963 is perhaps best remembered for Martin Luther King’s famous “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on 28 August at the Lincoln Memorial. Browne boarded a bus from New Jersey to attend this historic event and was deeply moved by the experience. For Browne though, 1963 was even more profoundly associated with his involvement in supporting Bao and other Vietnamese Buddhists against Diem. As Browne expressed, “This has proved to be the summer of ‘Vietnam’ as well as of civil rights! I have been rather busy with the former.”76
Following Diem’s assassination in November 1963, Bao was summoned home to assist his Buddhist superiors to help rebuild their religious community. They had high hopes of genuine reform. Bao helped to establish Van Hanh Buddhist University in Saigon, and the School of Youth for Social Services. The school emphasized the philosophy of engaged Buddhism that Bao promoted. It did so by training monks, nuns, and laypeople to voluntarily enter peasant villages, the sites of military surveillance, conflict, and destruction, to assist these communities in educational, health, and economic projects. These support efforts were particularly difficult because Diem’s successors, a string of military-backed leaders, persisted in waging war rather than seeking solutions for peace. They also continued the general policy of treating domestic opposition as an indicator of communist subversion. Browne maintained regular contact with Bao even as they lived on opposite sides of the world. One typical letter from Browne began, “Dear Bao, You are in my thoughts every day. . . . I so wish that I could be with you.”77 In fact, it was at Bao’s request that Browne traveled to South Vietnam in 1965 and 1967.
The connections between Browne and Bao facilitated a transnational, cross-racial, and interfaith antiwar movement. The scholarship on the early 1960s tends to focus on either the black-white, Jewish-Christian coalitions of the civil rights era or the black separatist politics of groups like the Nation of Islam. Through his partnership with Bao, Browne expanded these political networks to include Vietnamese Buddhists based in North America, Southeast Asia, and France. As might be expected, the process of negotiating racial, national, and religious differences, which were also conceived in terms of gendered differences, was challenging as well as generative.
From Bao’s perspective, the difficulties of organizing within South Vietnam made cultivating connections with peace advocates abroad absolutely essential. Bao sought to bring worldwide attention to the political and military developments in South Vietnam, hoping that this awareness would mobilize international public pressure on both the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments. Bao also hoped that communication with peace activists from abroad could help Buddhist leaders in South Vietnam advocate more effectively for peace. From Browne’s perspective, the U.S. people and their government needed to hear Vietnamese voices to truly understand the human costs of their policies in Southeast Asia.
Bao, or Thich Nhat Hanh, was an ideal spokesperson for peace and in fact became the most recognizable Vietnamese voice in the West for this cause. As a religious leader dedicated to nonviolence, his outlook and goals were particularly attractive to Western Christian pacifists who were active in both the antiwar and civil rights movements. Browne facilitated the introduction between Hanh and the FOR during his 1965 summer trip to Vietnam. Founded in England in 1914 by Christian pacifists, the Fellowship of Reconciliation grew into an international organization that espoused interfaith cooperation. In fact, the FOR played a significant role in promoting Gandhian concepts of nonviolent resistance within the civil rights movement and had strong political connections to Martin Luther King Jr. As the United States engaged in war in Southeast Asia, FOR sought to use the moral authority of religious leaders both in the United States and internationally to condemn militarism and political repression. The organization cosponsored one of the earliest national protests against the U.S. war in Vietnam in December 1964 and initiated the formation of a Clergymen’s Emergency Committee during the following spring.78
Establishing a political relationship with Hanh and promoting him as a spokesperson for peace fit in with FOR’s practice of interfaith cooperation. In many ways, Hanh was groomed for Western recognition as a Vietnamese version of Gandhi. Both Asian male figures provided moral and spiritual guidance for Western audiences. The connections between FOR and Hanh were strengthened further when Browne arranged for the Vietnamese monk to visit the United States for a speaking engagement in 1966. The trip was a way to get Hanh out of the increasingly dangerous political environment of Saigon, when another round of Buddhist protest and persecution erupted that year. In contrast to 1963, the U.S. government firmly supported Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky. Buddhist leader Thich Tri Quang, whom Browne met the previous year, was placed under house arrest, and Hanh left South Vietnam for the United States. He had dared to publicly advocate for peace, a call regarded by the South Vietnamese government as pro-communist and hence treasonous.
Initially invited by Browne through the Inter-University Committee to speak at Cornell University, Hanh’s travels eventually came under the sponsorship of FOR. FOR executive secretary Hassler and his assistants organized a speaking tour for Hanh, not only in the United States but also in Europe and Asia. They even made arrangements for Hanh to have an audience with Pope Paul VI. It was during this 1966 visit to the United States that Browne and FOR also made arrangements for Hanh to meet Martin Luther King Jr.79 Hanh had expressed interest the previous year in making contact with the famous civil rights leader, asking Browne to deliver an open letter to King about the war. Their eventual face-to-face meeting made a deep impression on King as he subsequently decided to nominate Hanh for the Nobel Peace Prize. In his 1967 nomination letter King stated, “I do not personally know of anyone more worthy of the Nobel Peace Prize than this gentle Buddhist monk from Vietnam. . . . Here is an apostle of peace and non-violence.”80
Hanh was a particularly appealing figure among U.S. peace activists during this early phase of the war.81 He not only represented a religious pacifist tradition but also advocated a “third way” or “third solution” for the conflicts in Southeast Asia. He clearly indicated that he was neither pro-Washington nor pro-Hanoi. He explained how his approach was different from that of the U.S. government. In order to stop the Vietcong, American military forces were killing the “Viet,” the Vietnamese. The U.S. policy of “anti-commmunism mean[t] bombs, napalm, and wholesale destruction.”82 Instead, Hanh wanted to save the Viet and eliminate the “Cong” by deterring the appeal of communism. The solution that Hanh advocated was nationalist self-determination. He believed that if the United States discontinued its support for the South Vietnamese government, as it did in 1963, the Vietnamese people would replace the existing leaders with those genuinely interested in seeking peace. The Vietcong, Hanh believed, achieved success only because the people of South Vietnam regarded the United States as an imperialist force and the existing political regime as a dictatorial force. However, if those who had the faith and support of the majority of the people could replace the government, the Vietcong would not be able to continue its fight. He explained repeatedly in his talks, “Communists want to save us from colonialism and under-development, and anti-Communists want to save us from communism. The problem is that we are not being saved, we are being destroyed. Now we want to be saved from salvation.”83 To achieve salvation for themselves, Hanh pointedly argued for political autonomy: “The non-Communist Vietnamese do not want to be the victims of negotiations between America and the Communists. They want to be represented in the negotiations themselves.”84
Figure 3. Martin Luther King Jr., Thich Nhat Hanh, and Robert S. Browne. Personal collection of the Browne family.
In advocating for self-determination, Hanh occasionally had to negotiate with his white political partners with the assistance of Browne. Alfred Hassler increasingly assumed the role of a political “handler” for Thich Nhat Hanh. In presenting the Buddhist monk to American audiences, Hassler and the FOR balanced two conflicting goals. On the one hand, they sought to emphasize Hanh’s authenticity as the voice of the suffering South Vietnamese masses. They did so by highlighting the cultural and religious importance of Buddhism as well as Hanh’s close connections with Vietnamese peasants. On the other hand, Hassler had to reassure Western audiences that Hanh was not too Vietnamese, that is, too foreign and possibly incomprehensible or threatening to Americans.
In this balancing act between authenticity and accessibility, Hassler and the other white American FOR staff played a particularly crucial role in constructing Hanh’s public identity and even crafting some of his political statements. In a letter to one such staff member, Hassler discusses his responsibilities in accompanying Hanh on speaking tours: “In the trip in Europe . . . my own activities included a considerable amount more of public comment on political issues involved in Vietnam, and in drafting statements to be used by Nhat Hanh. . . . Moreover, of course, the person who accompanies him is not infrequently put in the position of trying to interpret what Nhat Hanh has to say, sometimes in a preliminary meeting with government or other officers, sometimes on other occasions, and this creates a fairly sensitive situation.”85 Not only did Hassler speak for Hanh, he also guided his itinerary and therefore the range of his political contacts. Hassler cautioned:
Very considerable astuteness and care are needed in dealing with Nhat Hanh, since we have here a man who both may be of some significance in the political configurations of southeast Asia, and one who is acutely vulnerable to a misstep. Examples of such possible missteps were the proposal we had from several sources that (1) he meet with representatives of the NLF in Paris, and (2) that he travel to some of the Communist countries in Europe during his trip. Such things cannot be seized on immediately because they are dramatic sounding but have to be evaluated very carefully in terms of what the total impact on Nhat Hanh and the Buddhist movement may be. In both these cases we concluded that the risk of damage was greater than any likely advantage would be and decided against them. Nhat Hanh himself is pretty wise on these things, but he can be influenced and we have to be extremely careful not to influence him in ways that are not carefully thought out beforehand.86
Even though Hassler and FOR publicly sought to promote Hanh as an autonomous alternative to both Hanoi and Saigon, these efforts to “influence” the Buddhist monk veered dangerously toward “control.” Hassler’s characterization of their relationship appeared to replicate the power that the U.S. government exerted over South Vietnam.
Hanh was not merely a pawn for Hassler and FOR. He asserted his ability to speak independently and directly to a Western audience. For example, Hassler worked closely with Hanh to author a book on Vietnam, Buddhism, and the war. Hassler read drafts of the manuscript, offered detailed advice about revisions, and negotiated with various presses for its release. Hill and Wang, the eventual publisher for Vietnam: Lotus in a Sea of Fire, sought to emphasize both the authenticity of Hanh’s text and its accessibility. In a letter to Hanh, Hassler passed along the publisher’s advice: “There must be some indication that the book had been written in Vietnamese and not in English. [The publisher’s] first suggestion was that I [Hassler] be listed as translator.”87 Although Hassler indicated that he protested this description of himself, since it would imply that he knew Vietnamese, he agreed to a compromise that the book should be described as “translated by Alfred Hassler with the collaboration of the author.”88 This indication would legitimate the Vietnamese identity of the original author. In addition, the description also would bolster the credibility and accessibility of the ideas in the book by associating Hassler’s cultural capital and in many ways his whiteness and Americanness with the work. Even though Hassler mentioned this detail as “one minor item,” Hanh strongly but politely disagreed with this suggestion: “I think we should not put your name as translator. It is not true. I translated by myself, and you helped me with the English. I do not want friends and readers to have wrong impression that the F.O.R. is using my name to write a book.”89 In other words, Hanh desired assistance and collaboration but not political manipulation and control.
Hanh occasionally challenged Hassler and FOR more directly by utilizing other political resources, like Robert Browne. In a letter marked “personal-confidential” to Hanh, Hassler expressed concern that Browne and an associate of Hanh’s, Tran Van Dinh, were drafting a public statement, a policy statement of the Buddhist Socialist Bloc in Vietnam, which indicated increasing Buddhist sympathies with the position of the NLF.90 Hassler described in his letter that over the course of his conversation with Dinh, Hassler was able to persuade Dinh to change his opinion about this statement. However, Browne was on his way to visit Hanh in Paris, and Hassler did not want Browne to know that he was reporting this information to Hanh. Hanh responded to Hassler, saying Browne had “been a close friend of mine since 1963 when we . . . worked together to put an end to the dictatorship of Pres. Diem.” Furthermore, the content of their political message came “from Paris” at Hanh’s request. Hanh explained to Hassler, “[He] did not tell you about that before, because we had wanted to give you a . . . surprise.”91 Hanh’s surprise for Hassler appeared to be the message that the Buddhist monk had a political will of his own and the ability to communicate these messages directly to an English-reading audience.
The racial, national, and political tensions among Hassler, Browne, and Hanh were reflected in the gender dynamics among the three men as well. All of them, in some ways, challenged traditional notions of masculinity. Hassler, a conscientious objector who rejected military service during World War II, stepped outside the accepted bounds of manhood and citizenship.92 Browne, as an African American man, was never accorded the same opportunities and privileges as a white man. In addition, he consistently broadcast his membership in his wife’s Vietnamese family. Finally, Hanh, as a slight man and a monk clothed in robes, reinforced the common perception of Asian men as deviating from the norms of white masculinity.93 Although all three men challenged traditional concepts of manhood, they also varied in their gender personas largely as a result of their race and nationality.
Their differential gender presentations were crystallized during a highly successful “Town Hall” meeting sponsored by FOR in honor of Thich Nhat Hanh. The event, which was held on 9 June 1966 at New York University, was moderated by Hassler and featured an array of literary and religious figures who paid tribute to Hanh. All the people who spoke at the event were male, a phenomenon that reflected the gendered nature of the political and public realm. Although women were actively engaged in promoting peace and were symbolically evoked for political purposes, the overall movement still tended to be dominated by men in the mid-1960s.94
Despite the overwhelming masculine presence onstage at the Town Hall, Hanh, as the only Asian individual, was clearly linked to the oversized figures of a Vietnamese Madonna and Child, displayed prominently in a photograph above the podium. The Asian mother figure looked utterly hopeless and forlorn as she held a baby in her arms. Because the photograph had been enlarged, she appeared even bigger than the people onstage. In this context, Hanh performed the role of spokesperson for the mother and child, the victims of war who were themselves too helpless to speak on their own behalf. Even though Hanh as a man shared the masculine political sphere of public oratory, his attire, Asianness, and belief in nonviolence all combined to feminize him. He both embodied and served as the surrogate voice for the victimized women and children of Vietnam. Hanh’s role was further reinforced by the circulation of an antiwar Christmas card during the winter of 1966 by the FOR. The card featured the same image of the Vietnamese Madonna and Child along with a poem and call for peace by Thich Nhat Hanh.
The stage also featured two other nonwhite individuals, both African Americans. Robert Browne, after reviewing the initial publicity for the program, offered to introduce Thich Nhat Hanh in order to highlight the role of the Inter-University Committee in bringing him to the United States.95 In addition, Browne’s presence onstage broadcasted his ties with the Buddhist monk, which began before Hassler and FOR. As the husband and father of a Vietnamese family, Browne also was connected to the image of the Asian woman and child. Unlike Hanh, Browne’s relationship to these representatives of Vietnam was not based on racial, national, and gendered commonality but rather on heteronormativity. In other words, Browne’s role as the political protector of his wife and children, and by extension of Vietnam, relied upon traditional conceptions of what it means to be a husband and a father.
Figure 4. A Vietnamese Madonna and Child. This image was displayed at the Town Hall meeting sponsored by the Fellowship of Reconciliation in honor of Thich Nhat Hanh on 9 June 1966 in New York City. It also circulated as a holiday card later that year and appeared on the cover of Memo, the newsletter for Women Strike for Peace, vol. 5, no. 4 (December 1966). Swarthmore College Peace Collection, Swarthmore, PA.
Browne’s presence also was linked to that of Ishmael Reed. Reed, an African American writer, read a selection of Thich Nhat Hanh’s poems as part of that evening’s program. Reed was a member of the black writers’ collective, Umbra. Key figures in this organization, including LeRoi Jones, also known as Amiri Baraka, would play an influential role in forming the Black Arts movement, which sought to develop a uniquely African American and African diasporic aesthetic.96 The movement emerged alongside a black power movement that rejected integration as a goal and called for self-determination for African Americans. Like Browne, Reed helped to legitimate the antiwar movement through his blackness. Reed’s presence was not associated with nonviolent civil rights leaders but rather gestured toward the black power movement, which emphasized the defiant reclamation of black manhood.97 By reading Hanh’s poetry, Reed symbolized the alliance between a black call for cultural nationalism and an Asian political and religious desire for self-determination. Along with Hanh, Browne and Reed visually symbolized an Afro-Asian antiwar alliance.
The black speakers, however, did not assume the same importance as the white male authorities on the program. Browne and Reed, perhaps as last-minute additions, were not listed in the brochure for the event and hence not officially commemorated. Instead, Hassler, along with Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan, Rabbi Abraham Heschel, poet Robert Lowell, playwright Arthur Miller, and John Oliver Nelson (the chairman of the executive committee of the FOR) constituted the recognizable political, religious, and literary figures in American society that authenticated Hanh’s political message. Like Hassler, these individuals deviated from traditional understandings of manhood through their rejection of violence and, in the case of Berrigan, for his vow of celibacy. Even so, their collective whiteness and hence more normative masculinity in relation to Hanh, Browne, and Reed reinforced their status as cultural authorities.
The triangulation of Asian, black, and white gradations of masculinity reveal the subtle and complex dynamics underlying interfaith, multiracial, and international peace movements of the 1960s. The combined efforts of Thich Nhat Hanh, Robert Browne, and Alfred Hassler communicated an alternative message about war. Yet their relationship to one another also contained seeds of disagreement. Their alliances, which contributed to building an international community devoted to peace, nevertheless depended upon essentialized projections of racial, national, and gender difference.
An anecdote by Hassler provides insight into their combined efforts to build commonality despite conflicts. In June 1966, Thich Nhat Hanh and Alfred Hassler flew from the United States to Stockholm as part of a global speaking tour calling for an end to war in Vietnam. Hassler recounted that the flight to Scandinavia was rather unremarkable, except for the fact that they encountered a retired American physician with “great sympathy . . . and a penetrating voice. By the time morning came she had joined the FOR, but also involved about a third of the plane in the discussion with Nhat Hanh about the burning by the monks, of which she disapproved heartily and said so repeatedly. We had a minor public meeting at the Oslo airport, and people gathered around attracted by her voice, for a discussion with him.”98 The American woman who encountered Hassler and Thich Nhat Hanh on the plane could not comprehend why Buddhists in South Vietnam would burn themselves as an act of protest. Yet she was still willing to join FOR. Her perspectives and actions mirrored the efforts of Hassler and FOR. They tried to make Hanh and Vietnam more comprehensible to Western audiences, but they did so in part by emphasizing an essentialized Asian difference from Western norms. These imperfections and gaps in cross-cultural understanding help to explain not only why political cleavages developed but also the significance of individuals joining together in common purpose in spite of these divisions. Hassler, Browne, Hanh, the loud American physician, and others all came together as an affirmative act of faith, even as they recognized and acknowledged the inequalities and incongruity inherent in their efforts.
Unfortunately, the U.S. government rejected the proposal of a third solution by the Buddhists just as it rejected the NLF’s advocacy for neutrality in the Cold War.99 Hanh’s public condemnation of the existing political leadership in South Vietnam and of the war there led to a life in exile. He decided not to stay in the United States because of the political implications of seeking refuge in the country that was mandating armed conflict in his home. Instead, he chose France as his base and continued to travel around the world, advocating for peace in Vietnam. Before he left the United States, though, Thich Nhat Hanh engaged in a dialogue, one of many, in which he was asked:
[INTERVIEWER]: In your heart of hearts, are you optimistic about the future of your country and your people?
NHAT HANH: I am not.
[INTERVIEWER]: Do you think the war is going to continue on its way until your country is literally a desert? Or . . .
NHAT HANH: I think that man has to hope, to have some hope in order to continue living.
[INTERVIEWER]: You haven’t lost your hope, then?
NHAT HANH: No . . . I am still living, but it does not mean that I am optimistic. The majority of the Vietnamese people have no hope for peace through a military factory for either side. That means that only the United States can open the door for peace. That must be our hope.100
By the late 1960s, Browne had started to give up his hopes to end the war and shifted his political energies toward the black power movement. But he never stopped caring about the plight of Vietnam. In fact, Browne reconnected with Hanh in 1968, when Browne traveled to Paris as part of a delegation that included playwright Arthur Miller. This group, which had little political authority, attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate terms for peace with the NLF. Browne eventually left the antiwar movement out of frustration, because despite his tireless efforts, the conflict did not appear to have an end in sight. Instead, he redirected his political organizing skills and economic training to promote the emerging black power movement.
One of the turning points for Browne appeared to be the 1966 James Meredith March for Freedom in Mississippi. Martin Luther King Jr. had invited Browne to participate in this protest after the two had met through the occasion of Hanh’s visit. The 1966 March for Freedom is best known for the introduction of the slogan “black power” by Stokely Carmichael and other SNCC organizers, who openly criticized the limitations of nonviolence as a strategy and integration as a goal. Instead, they advocated armed self-defense as well as black autonomy and control over their communities and their lives. Browne appeared to have some sympathies with these younger radicals, even as he tried to maintain his belief in pacifism. In a letter to Hassler on 30 June 1966, Browne explained:
I have just returned from a couple of days of marching with the James Meredith Freedom March in Mississippi. It was an altogether disturbing experience in many ways. What concerns me most, however, is what I learned about myself and it is about that which I write you. . . . On last Thursday night, under the leadership of Dr. King, I was part of the group engaged in pitching a tent on the McNeil school yard in Canton, Mississippi. This tent was to become the local headquarters for the marchers on their stopover in Canton. At a given signal, a phalanx of state troopers fired tear and riot gas at us, the most recent in a series of provocations to which the marchers had been subjected. In that moment of truth my impulses and reactions were not of the non-violent type which I feel is demanded of a pacifist. I realize with sorrow how unworthy I am to bear the label of pacifist at this time. For this reason, I refrained from volunteering for the Philadelphia, Miss. Confrontation on the folloint [sic] day, for it had been specifically requested that only those who could be sure of their commitment to non-violence should participate.101
Although Browne advocated for an end to U.S. violence in Vietnam, his personal encounter with the battlefields of the American South left his faith in pacifism and his personal capacity for nonviolent protest rather shaken. And, as the urban communities of Los Angeles, Detroit, and Newark, NJ, erupted in a series of racial riots, Browne discovered that he could play a leadership role in creating an economic and political agenda for black self-determination.
Browne’s decision to commit himself more to the African American community at the expense of his antiwar activism also may have resulted from an aborted attempt to run for the Senate in 1966. Browne had not intended to campaign as a serious political candidate. The Democratic Council of New Jersey wanted to support a peace candidate for a Senate seat held by Republican Clifford P. Chase. The peace Democrats decided to nominate David Frost, a professor of biology at Rutgers University, for the party primary. The Democratic Council also asked Browne to run as an independent candidate in case Frost lost. Browne only committed to this plan on the condition that he would not run as a traditional candidate. He did not want to spend his time raising campaign funds or creating a political network to mobilize votes. Rather, he wanted to use the opportunity “to convert New Jersey in to a giant classroom and to lead a mammoth teach-in.”102 Before this plan could be put into effect, Browne felt pulled in different directions based on his antiwar politics and his racial affinities. Frost’s nomination by the New Jersey Democratic Council came at the expense of an African American labor activist, Clarence Coggins. When Coggins lost the nomination, “he and about 30 follower[s] stormed out of the convention. . . . They shouted that the Council had killed the peace movement and lost the Negro vote.”103 The controversy shocked Browne. When publicly asked to run as a backup independent candidate, he “did not immediately accept the assignment. [Instead, he said,] ‘I’d like your indulgence to postpone my acceptance speech for a few days until my thinking is a little clearer.’ . . . He noted there were only three Negroes, including himself, left in the room after the Coggins Vanguard Democrats had left.”104 After some deliberation, Browne agreed to run for the Senate seat after Frost lost the primary to a pro-war Democrat. In the end, though, Browne decided to pull out of the elections. He publicly cited the lack of time and resources to truly pull off the “mammoth teach-in” through his campaign. Privately, he deplored the political factionalism within the antiwar movement.
Although Browne shifted his energies from Vietnam to black power, his commitment to both causes revealed a continuity in values. In the 1965 essay “The Freedom Movement and the War in Vietnam,” written before his experience with the Meredith march or the Senate campaign, Browne argues that African American awareness of the importance of Vietnam could “introduce . . . a new and potentially revolutionary dimension into the civil rights movement. . . . Traditionally, the American Negro has been single-minded to a fault. . . . He has bestirred himself solely about problems directly involving his welfare as a Negro. Issues involving him only as a citizen.”105 This quote overstates the U.S. orientation of black politics. However, Browne goes on to argue that for the most part, African Americans of the Vietnam era felt a sense of kinship with
wars of liberation. . . . American Negroes inescapably feel a pull toward this mass of colored people, even as they attempt simultaneously to win acceptance into American society, for they know that America will forever be a white society, and they are instinctively skeptical that their full acceptance into it can ever be achieved. Fearing that a move to Africa may demand too great an adjustment of them, but doubtful about achieving a satisfactory role in American society, Negroes are already groping toward some new cosmopolitan political arrangements which would relieve them of their dilemma.106
For Browne and others of the 1960s and 1970s, the struggles in Vietnam brought into relief the difficulties of self-determination and national liberation for Third World people not only in Asia but also in the United States.
Although Browne eventually chose to leave the antiwar movement and direct his political energies instead toward the black power movement, his activism was important. His advocacy for peace transformed him into a public figure. In addition, Browne illuminated the connections between the familial and the political as well as between people of diverse racial, national, and religious backgrounds. To do so, he and his political partners negotiated complex cultural assumptions regarding blackness, Asianness, whiteness, and manhood. In the end, Browne’s efforts did not lead to a fundamental change in government policy. However, he helped to expand the range of political ideas in U.S. society and to shrink the emotional distance between Americans and Vietnamese people. Although Browne went on to make important contributions in other arenas, he believed, “there is no question that any success which I may have had in opening the public’s eyes to our ill-advised policies in Vietnam constitutes the jewel in my crown, the activity of my life of which I am the most proud.”107
American Studies scholar Daryl Maeda has provocatively argued that Asian American political and cultural activists during the late 1960s and 1970s, particularly Asian American men, performed black masculinity in order to formulate their own identities as racialized and resistant subjects.108 The activism of Robert S. Browne and Thich Nhat Hanh during the early to mid-1960s poses an alternative way to understand multiracial political alliances and identity formation. First, Browne assumed and others projected onto him the responsibility of representing the experiences and desires of Vietnamese people to an American audience. In other words, his ties to Asia and Asian people provided political inspiration and legitimation for a global critique of American racism. While his own experiences as an African American predisposed Browne to understand white supremacy, both at home and abroad, Vietnam and its people served as a catalyst to launch his public political career. Most likely due to Browne’s kinship ties as well as his advocacy to promote Vietnamese voices in Western civic debate, Tran Van Dinh, who worked as the American and Canadian affiliate for the Overseas Vietnamese Buddhist Association, said of Browne, “You are a Vietnamese as much as myself.”109
Furthermore, as a member of a generation that was older than many of the activists of the mid- to late 1960s, Browne modeled a different type of masculinity than the image of the militant, lumpen proletariat epitomized by groups like the Black Panthers. Instead, his manhood and identity as an activist were based upon his status as an intellectual and social scientist as well as his roles as husband and father. While Browne’s personal familial relationships appeared to replicate “traditional” gender patterns, he nevertheless performed a more humane version of paternal privilege and responsibility. He served as the political advocate for his “Vietnamese” wife, children, and by extension their symbolic kin in Southeast Asia.
Browne’s political partner, Thich Nhat Hanh, also sheds new insight on Asian and Asian American activism. Hanh could best be characterized as a diasporic figure. He had political connections to the United States and consistently traveled to and from this country. Hahn was not making claims as a subject who had been excluded from political or cultural citizenship in the U.S. nation. Rather, he was advocating that Americans acknowledge and be accountable for their global dominance. Hahn represented a subject of U.S. empire who wanted autonomy from American militarization and neocolonialism.
Second, Hahn’s pacifist politics are not in vogue with more recent efforts to recover Asian American radicalism. The early scholarship on the Asian American movement tended to posit a simplistic binary between good reformers inspired by the civil rights movement versus fractious radicals who turned toward Third World socialist ideologies.110 More recent anthologies and scholars have highlighted significant individuals and groups who were influenced by revolutionary ideologies that originated both within the United States, such as the black power movement, and from the Third World, particularly socialist Asia.111
Thich Nhat Hanh partly fits in with this effort to reach beyond the U.S. nation. His identity as a diasporic subject and his engagement with the U.S. war in Vietnam shed light on how international developments inspired activism among people of Asian descent in the United States. In particular, his plea to stop the killing of Asian people and also his call for national self-determination resonated with the politics of the Asian American antiwar movement that would emerge in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Thich Nhat Hanh’s political career also signals the importance of black freedom struggles for Asian American activism. His close collaborator, Robert Browne, and also Martin Luther King Jr. helped to launch Hanh as a significant public figure.
However, Thich Nhat Hanh’s politics of peace, particularly his call for a third solution, challenges the identification that many Asian American radicals would eventually make with Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tung, and socialist Asia more broadly. As an anticommunist, pro-nationalist, and nonviolent spokesperson, Hanh’s outlook and goals were more attractive to Christian pacifists. His gender persona as a monk clothed in robes was a far cry from the gun-toting, leather-and-beret-wearing Black Panthers. Hanh’s politics and embodiment modeled an alternative to the hypermasculinity associated with racial, nationalist, and internationalist defiance.
Together, Robert Browne and Thich Nhat Hanh crossed geographical, cultural, racial, and religious borders to communicate a message for peace, humanitarianism, and self-determination. As the African American father of a Vietnamese family and as a Buddhist monk, their Afro-Asian alliance utilized racial, national, and gendered differences to collaboratively make a call for peace.