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• 1 media/Ari S. Merretazon mic set up.jpeg media/Bloods.jpg media/Ari Sesu Merretazon photo.jpeg 2023-01-19T15:43:46+00:00 Ari Sesu Merretazon 135 Incarcerated Veterans in American History image_header 139 2026-01-26T01:38:05+00:00

  Introducing Ari Sesu Merretazon

  Existing in the margins of American history, he 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. 

  Nation on 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. 

   

   

• 1 media/Bloods.jpg media/Dead Presidents.jpg 2023-07-19T15:34:36+00:00 Coming Home to a Nation on Fire 50 Ari Sesu Merretazon part 2 image_header 139 2026-01-25T23:06:12+00:00

  Part 2

  The second interview focuses on Merretazon's experiences coming home from Vietnam in the summer of 1968. He plotted the robbery of an armored vehicle transporting more than $300,000 in outdated currency that would be incinerated by the Department of the Treasury. Although no one was injured, Merretazon was sentenced to life at Lorton Reformatory, a federal prison outside of Washington D.C. Reports indicated that Lorton Reformatory consisted of more than 95% Black men.1 But during this time, he found a calling — advocacy for veterans. He organized for education opportunities and self-care programs for incarcerated people and founded the Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization. Staffed entirely by incarcerated veterans, the IVAO became the first Veterans Affairs office inside a prison. Their efforts organizing for disability rights and veterans benefits captured the attention of the Washington Post in 1975 and eventually the White House.2 Merretazon met with President Jimmy Carter and later testified on issues facing incarcerated veterans before Congress in 1979.

  Coming Home in the Summer of 1968

  Higgins: I'm curious about how did the killing of an icon of nonviolence, of civil disobedience -- He was an anti-war activist. He was an organizer against poverty — how did that affect your own ideas about the United States?
  
  Merretazon: Well, you have to go back to the short bit of time, my last six months in the war. That's when the Black soldiers really came together. We really understood, we had a common bond, and we understood what was happening in Vietnam in terms of Black-white relationships. We always received the bad end of the deal. The worst jobs. The last to be promoted. Even in combat, when clearly, it can be seen that you made some heroic act that should have been acknowledged and they just don't do it. They'd give you a little commendation medal and stuff like that, but it had to be very obvious and the Black soldier had to totally put his life on line for the whole period of that particular battle. Look, the Black soldier in Vietnam was very heroic. Don't let anybody tell you that they were not. Some of these . . . Vietnam movies showed them in a cowardly mode, like Platoon. . .
  
  Coming home had that traumatic effect. I understood that DC was on fire. Martin Luther King had got assassinated. Other cities on fire. I knew I needed to take a step back, and I stayed with my mom and dad for 30 days. Then I went and enrolled myself into a computer operating course that flim-flammed me, took my money and ran off. . . 

  Disconnected after the War

  We actually disconnected because nobody was talking to me. It was just me and my readjustment issues, which was anger. Anger was not at anybody -- but at the federal government. My anger was because I had to fight two wars in Vietnam. One against the Vietnamese . . . and the racism in the military in Vietnam — All the soldiers who ended up in the stockade in Vietnam at Long Binh Jail. 95 percent of the Long Binh Jail population was Black soldiers. Now, there's something wrong with that. We all knew what was wrong with that. It was the racism in the military. You get the wrong end of the stick. You get the bad end of the deal.
  
  I came home understanding. . . We were going to come back and help our communities out. We used to talk about that. We used to reinforce each other about that. When I saw an opportunity to do that, that's what I did. I got back involved in my community, all the culture — being a descendant of African slaves in the United States. I went to work for the Post Office for a while, and during that dynamic year . . . In my reconnecting with my culture and the community, I saw an opportunity to bring some resources into the community level, that was the Dead Presidents [film] piece.

  
  An Act of Repair

  Higgins: I want to talk about that a little bit more because in Bloods, it talks about you donated some of the, I think it was $320,000 total that was robbed. What specific organizations did you donate that money to?
  
  Merretazon: Well, there was a Student Medical Center at Howard university. We gave them some money. We gave the Tip of Blackness also money. We gave the Capital East Business Management Associates some money. We was doing those types of things with the resources we had, and then there was just one of the participants decided to just start throwing money anywhere. . . One of the actors on my side of the fence, he started passing money all out in DC, New York, California and all that type of stuff, and that's what led back to our capture and incarceration.
  
  Higgins: Because that's federal money and you're trying to give it back to the community, did you see it. at the time, as an act of reparations?
  
  Merretazon: Yeah. Absolutely. I saw it as an act of repair. The federal government is the major enslaver of descendants of Africans here in the United States. I always been clear about that. I always be in the clear about Blacks and white relationships in this country, and if you're not clear about why you're in the military, you'd never get clear. They promote that there's no races in the military, if it is, low and whatnot, don't believe that. Government developed a system around it where those below the command can still engage in those type of relationships. Denied promotion, denying of good jobs or in the military or what is it? MOS's and that type of thing, promotions.
  
  My whole thing was I'm ready to go back into the workplace now. I enrolled in school, got hired at the Post Office, and I'm socializing with people at the Post Office. I come to find out what's going on. I understood what was going on. I thought I could make it happen — get all the resources to come back to our community, and I did without putting anybody's life in danger. It had high social community notoriety about the crime. It was a lot of publicity. . . . Nobody's life was put in danger. The guard and the driver of the truck, they said they'd never feared anything.

  
  Hollywood Portrayal

  Higgins: It's been awhile since I've seen the Hollywood version of that story, but it doesn't seem to fit what you're talking.
  
  Merretazon: It doesn't fit. Look when I went out to Hollywood to the producer's premier, where all the producers come together and watch the movie and make comments, whatever, I stood up, I said, 'That's not my story.' I told him, it's not my story. They told me, 'we said it's loosely based on your story.' That's how it went down. I took my position on that and they took theirs, and we got along. I got paid. Obviously, they made a pay of $20 million off the movie and maybe more now because it's still out there.
  
  Higgins: For someone who's trying to understand the struggles of Black Vietnam veterans, how would you explain that difference between how Hollywood portrays it versus reality?
  
  Merretazon: Well, you see Hollywood usually, very rarely show and depict Blacks in leadership in the military in those movies. They either make a squad leader, some lower level like that, down on the ground type folks. Even there, there is really no real Black leadership is allowed.That type of thing just connected me with my readjustment problems because I came back home angry. I was angry when I came home. Based on what I understood was happening . . . and I said, 'I've got to do something.' I just didn't feel right, having that presence again in my community and not doing anything. Because in Vietnam, where we came out in the field, the Blacks talked about what we would do when he came home. I was committed to that, and I did something, and I was going to go out and let them know that did my piece. I did that to a certain degree in terms of connecting with a few of the veterans that came home with me.

  The Trial

  Higgins: Let's talk about from the trial until your incarceration. What was that experience like for you?
  
  Merretazon: Well, I tried, I didn't testify. I didn't get on the stand. None of us got on the stand and the law's basic issue was to distinguish what extra crime was committed, whether or not it was an armed robbery or just a mail robbery. Because the sentence structure is different for both. For mail robbery, which we actually did. . . That was a mandatory five years. You couldn't get no more than five, but you had to get five. They knew the crime got a lot of publicity . . .
  
  The courts decided they're going to make an example of us and gave me 10-30 years. . . . I realized that it was a losing battle for me to continue to go up against that system as one individual, because I protested and everything as an individual. I wasn't cooperating with none of the system. . . . I stayed in the hole [solitary confinement] for quite awhile, in and out. I wouldn't work. They finally decide and say, ' . . . this is a veteran and so we got to be a little sensitive with him."
  
  When I came back out of maximum security the last time, instead of putting me into one of their regular jobs . . . I was able to manipulate the situation where I end up just being a custodian around the main office of the prison. I would just sweep up . . . I loved that because it gave me all my independence. That took 30 minutes. My time was totally mine from that point on in that incarcerated environment. That's what every man in prison wants: being able to have his own independent space, and time, and not be hounded into working. . . There is no law that required us to work while incarcerated. At least it wasn't in DC. I say, 'look, I don't have to work.' Okay, I came here to do my time. That's the attitude I had for a while.

  Organizing Veterans in Prison

  Higgins: What prison were you incarcerated in?
  
  Merretazon: D.C. Department of Correction. It had a facility outside of D.C., about 26 miles outside of D.C. called Lorton Reformatory, the infamous Lorton Reformatory. It's no longer existing. It was crazy. . . It was like 26 miles from DC, and so it's closer to home than most prisons.
  
  The last time I went to the hole, it dawned on me my status of being an honorably-discharged veteran, and that I could use that to organize around, and they would have to respect my organizing. I organized around Veterans Affairs in prison . . . called Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization.
  
  Higgins: Quick a follow-up question, Ari. I'm really interested in the effects of solitary confinement on human beings. But it seems to me that if you're dealing with undiagnosed trauma, and PTSD, you had that stemmed from the Vietnam War, that would be especially hard to deal with. How did you survive or cope with a year-and-a-half in the hole?
  
  Merretazon: That's over different time frames of that five years. . . Total, a year-and-a-half in the hole. It's about 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. There was a rare amount. That's been about over the five years, probably about a year and a half in the hole. I realized I was working against myself.
  
  When I came back up to the general population, I realized there was other Vietnam veterans. Twenty-five percent of Lorton Reformatory were veterans. I decided to organize — and that's in my blood — and so I organized them into what we call the Incarcerated Veteran Assistance Organization, and it was approved by the VA. We had an office approved by the VA inside the prison. For that development, I was acknowledged at the White House by Jimmy Carter. . . That type of commitment to veterans that I had [was because] we went to war together. Anytime you go to war with somebody, and they're on your side, and you all survive, there's a very close blood, love, bond. That's what happened — That's what blood love is all about in the war. You're willing to die for the man next to you. Simple as that.

  Full Interview Part 2