Born: Crisp County, Georgia, 1946
Served in Vietnam, U.S. Army
1st Battalion, 503d Infantry Regiment, 173d Airborne Brigade
Bien Hoa
Infantry Light Weapons Specialist, 1965-66

From the Artist:

After I got home and began to paint, I wrote about the war as I had experienced it through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old black man:

Vietnam is a painter's illusion, a nightmare; a dream without an ending, forcing upon young men and women death and destruction.

Vietnam is a black man screaming in a strange world, fighting for a freedom he is yet to have.

Vietnam is a loss of dignity, identity, and pride. It becomes a struggle from within from the hunting of human lives.

Vietnam is America, for in America black men continue to lose their lives. Bang!

Now I work with children who struggle each day to find comfort, friendship, and love. The Vietnam of yesterday is my tomorrow: to give hope to helplessness and meaning to determination. From a place where I was trained to take a life, today I try to save one. Vietnam is a dream deferred, a place where I found and lost myself and my friends. It is a place I have learned to forgive and to forget.