VCU news

In a new guest-curated exhibition at the Virginia Museum of History & Culture, historian and Virginia Commonwealth University professor Emilie Raymond presents the different perspectives and experiences of Virginians during the Vietnam War to bring out a more complete story of the era.

“Virginia & the Vietnam War,” which opened to the public on Nov. 23 and will run through July 6, 2025, brings together stories from Virginia veterans, diplomats, Vietnamese American refugees, military family members and pro- and anti-war activists. The exhibit has also been adapted into banners for a traveling exhibition as well as into a web exhibit on the museum’s website.

Fifty years since the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, which marked the end of the war, “so many in the American public just don’t know – or what they do know is so limited” – about the era, said Raymond, Ph.D., a professor in the Department of History in VCU’s College of Humanities and Sciences. She said letting the Vietnam War become a “forgotten war” is “one of the biggest fears of a number of the veterans I’ve talked to.”

While assembling the exhibition, Raymond followed a theme inspired by Tim O’Brien’s short story collection, “The Things They Carried.” In the collection, O’Brien, a Vietnam veteran, describes the physical items that soldiers carry as well as the emotional burdens and memories they tow.

The theme is presented through oral histories and personal objects, including a safe-conduct pass carried by an assault helicopter pilot, a flag used in an anti-war demonstration, a shirt from a refugee who escaped Vietnam in the 1970s with his family and a custom-made knife carried by a member of the Navy on his second tour of duty.

Raymond has also been working on an adjacent project with students, mapping all of the Vietnam War memorials in Virginia. With more than 70 sites documented on the map, Raymond’s students helped with the write-ups for each memorial, including a photograph, a blurb about when and how it was created and what visitors can expect. The memorial map will go live in December.

The stories behind the memorials can be just as interesting as the items on display in the museum exhibition.

“One woman whose son had been killed wanted to erect a memorial, and for whatever reason, the bureaucracy and the paperwork created too many obstacles for her to manage on her own,” Raymond said. “She got the local Vietnam veterans chapter to help her, and 20 years later, it finally went in.

“That really shows you how much it means to people – some [memorials] were erected by classmates, people who really, really care, and not just something a city does randomly,” she said. “It’s about people who really care.”