In 1966, "Project 100,000" sent over 400,000 new soldiers to war in Vietnam. 40% of them were Black - including teenager Jimmie Childress, who’d been given the choice to go to prison for theft, or go to war.
Childress became one of the hundreds crammed into Long Binh Jail - a notorious military prison.
Black soldiers made up only 11% of soldiers in Vietnam overall but were more than HALF of those incarcerated at Long Binh. Like Childress, most got caught escaping to live underground.
Racial tensions boiled when Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Soldiers were held naked in 100-degree shipping containers.
"We were hot, and crazy, we were fed up," Childress remembered. "So we decided, we're going to tear this M***F*** down."
On August 29, 1968, incarcerated soldiers overthrew prison guards with makeshift weapons and bare hands. They lit records on fire, ate cake, and freed each other from cells. The military lied to reporters that the revolt was over, but it wasn't until late September that armed police stopped it for good.
"I was just trying to prove that I was a human being," said Childress.
This uprising reminds us that the military and criminal legal systems have ALWAYS dehumanized us. "Citizens," "foreigners," in the U.S. and abroad. And we have the right to liberate ourselves.