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Ari Sesu Merretazon

Introduction

Existing in the margins of American history, Ari Sesu Merretazon has been known by many names — Haywood Thomas Kirkland, the namesake of his parents; nicknamed “The Kid” in Wallace Terry’s iconic oral history collection, Bloods; and perhaps most famously as Anthony Curtis, a character portrayed by Larenz Tate, in the 1995 film, Dead Presidents. Rejecting the name enslavers imposed upon his ancestors, he chose the name: Ari Sesu Merretazon. He is a Vietnam veteran, prison organizer, minister, advocate for justice, and activist for reparations.

In 1966, Merretazon was drafted under Project 100,000 and served in Vietnam as a recon infantry soldier. This program lowered draft eligibility standards to meet the demands of the escalating war in Vietnam. President Johnson and Robert McNamara believed that the program would uplift poor, semi-literate Black men out of poverty, but in actuality, it created a funnel from Jim Crow classrooms to combat. As historian Christian Appy writes, Project 100,000 sent “many poor, terribly confused, and woefully uneducated boys to risk death in Vietnam.”1 During the first years of the war, Black men were twice as likely to die in combat compared to whites.2

The realities of violence and experiences of racism in the military radicalized many Black soldiers, and Merretazon found solidarity with other "Bloods" in the field.3 Counting down the days of their tours in Vietnam like prison sentences, Black soldiers would often daydream about what they would do if they made it back to the "world." Merretazon planned to continue the fight for civil rights in his community.

A Nation of Fire

In April of 1968, when Ari Sesu Merretazon first came home from Vietnam, he returned to a nation on fire in the aftermath of the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

"It was traumatic because when I came home, D.C. was on fire, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, May 1968, and that's the month I came home. I couldn't handle it, to tell you the truth. I said 'look, Mom, look, Dad. Y’all are going to have to hole me up in here for another 30 days because I cannot deal with what I'm seeing out there. . . I need a place of peace. . . . Ever since I came home from Vietnam, I've been involved with Veterans Affairs. I've been an advocate for Veterans Affairs, a frontline advocate, and the record shows that I was there in terms of rights of Vietnam veterans, patients in terms of PTSD. That name wasn't even in the diagnostic manual [DSM] when I came home."

From Prison to the White House

After the war, he returned home to Washington, D.C., where he was later arrested and incarcerated for an armed robbery of armored vehicle transporting more than $300,000 in cash to be incinerated by the Treasury Department. Merretazon served five-and-a-half years at Lorton Reformatory, a federal prison with a 95% Black population.4 While incarcerated, he organized a group of incarcerated veterans and launched the first Veterans Affairs office inside a prison staffed entirely by incarcerated veterans, called the Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization. A self-help program, the IVAO helped veterans in prison file for disability rights.

These efforts drew national attention when the Washington Post published a news article in 1975. Ari Merretazon was invited to the White House to meet with then-President Jimmy Carter, who issued an executive directive to the Department of Justice to collect data on incarcerated veterans.5

Advocating for Incarcerated Veterans

"Bill Lawson . . . understood what veterans was facing, incarcerated veterans, I mean, that just piqued his interest. He started ... trying to get the recognition of my work in prison. . . He saw that what we was doing inside of prisons for veterans had never been done before, and it had such a great impact on families and communities and stuff of that nature. The individual veterans, who happened to be in prison, they finally got some resources. . . I think it was Bill Lawson out of President Carter's office that really understood the moment. . . and I think he may have facilitated that article that came out in the Washington Post... I really salute him even to this day. I think he's the one that did it all for me in terms of the White House. . . I was actually getting acknowledged by the president himself, over a handshake. In a very public environment event that they had at the White House for veterans. And so that's how it all started."

Once released on parole, Merretazon began visiting prisons across the United States and recreating the Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organizations in facilities. He enjoyed key support from Congressman Ronald V. Dellums -- a Korean War veteran, vocal critic of the Vietnam War, civil rights activist, member of the Congressional Black Caucus, and the first African American to serve on the Armed Services Committee.6 “We were able to move in and out of prisons,” said Merretazon. “People from the president's office came down to visit us. That gave us a lot more protection and freedom to move around within the administrative processes and procedures of the prisons.”

With support at the highest levels of political office, Merretazon began building a network of incarcerated veterans across the United States and gathering evidence that he would present to Congress in 1979. During that time, they discovered at “almost every prison in the United States, they had like 20-25 percent Vietnam veterans.” Merretazon engaged with prison administrators at other institutions and attempted to replicate the model first established at Lorton Reformatory with VA offices staffed entirely by incarcerated veterans. He would advocate for this model before Congress as a way to redress the inadequate VA outreach efforts to prisons at the time.

In July 1979, Congress held hearings on incarcerated Vietnam veterans before the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, highlighting key issues and structural barriers they faced.7

The complete lack of information and reliable estimates on the actual number of incarcerated veterans seriously limited any efforts to provide VA services to veterans in prison. Based on Government Accountability Office (GAO) studies, VA records, and direct access to prisons, Ari Sesu Merretazon estimated, “We got over 500,000 Vietnam era veterans in prison, jail, on parole, or awaiting sentence . . . Over half of them are Black.”8 A GAO report estimated that 60,000 veterans were incarcerated in federal and state prisons, and that 50 percent incarcerated in federal prison were convicted of armed robbery or drug-related offenses. Chairman of the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Alan Cranston noted that “educationally disadvantaged veterans constitute a large segment of the incarcerated prison population.” Many veterans also believed they automatically lost disability benefits in prison. An estimated 40 percent were ineligible due to less than honorable discharge status. According to the GAO, 44,000 incarcerated veterans were denied disability benefits in 1975. By 1978, another study found that over half of incarcerated veterans had received less-than-honorable discharges, and half of them were Black Vietnam veterans.9

After testifying before Congress, Merretazon moved to Little Rock, Arkansas to help start a Vet Center. He earned a law degree from Antioch School of Law in 1980 and decided to take his knowledge where it would be more useful. He explained, “I didn't want to stay in the major cities because they have so much more resources. I felt that, based on my experience inside of prisons, . . . that the worst conditions for veterans to exist was in the Southern prisons: Angola, Arkansas State Prison, and Parchman Farm in Mississippi.” But he came into conflict with a psychiatrist at the Little Rock Vet Center. Merretazon lamented, “I went there with expectations that I could continue to work with veterans in prison. . . He refused to allow me to go into the prisons and assist veterans.”

In 1984, he helped revitalize the Arkansas State Press, a historically Black newspaper that had not published an issue since 1959. At the newspaper, he worked with Daisy Bates, a long-time serving president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, who helped integrate Little Rock Central High. JET magazine ran a featured story on Merretazon and Daisy Bates in April 1984.

Throughout his life, Merretazon has advocated tirelessly for incarcerated veterans, for education, and for reparations. His organizing undoubtedly played a pivotal role in incarcerated veterans becoming a priority for national veterans organizations. Beginning in the summer of 1979, the Vietnam Veterans of America, a national organization made up of and dedicated to the needs of Vietnam veterans, began to raise awareness to PTSD, and in 1983, it established a legal services program for veterans in the criminal justice system.

Legacies

Today, Merretazon is an advocate for justice, for veterans in his community, and for reparations. Recently, he filed a lawsuit against the City of Philadelphia because, although it is required by state law, there was no director of Veterans Affairs for the city of Philadelphia. His story has been told in Bloods, an oral history collection of Black Vietnam veterans, by Wallace Terry, and the tale of his armed robbery was imaginatively adapted in the 1995 film Dead Presidents. But these accounts only tell a partial story.

Merretazon is perhaps the single most influential advocate for incarcerated veterans in American history.

Dive more deeply into Merretazon's story or view the full, 4-part series of oral history interviews below, or navigate to the next page on Richard Brookshire and the Black Veterans Project.

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