In 1970, in the throes of the Vietnam War, artist, activist, and physician Mark Podwal produced this striking anti-Vietnam War poster. Podwal completed medical school at New York University (NYU) in 1970, and was active in the anti-war movement. He illustrated and published several anti-war posters, including this one, and, in 1971, published a collection of the political cartoons he drew while in medical school entitled The Decline and Fall of the American Empire.
For this poster, Podwal constructed his persuasive map of the United States out of familiar symbols of America, including a bald eagle, Civil War soldiers (both Union and Confederate), and most prominently, a thirteen-star flag emblazoned with “1776,” harkening back to America’s founding and the Declaration of Independence. The flag is surrounded by ghostly, haunting, and disturbing images as well as racist quotes drawn from contemporary news sources in the 1960s, referencing the notorious 1968 massacre at My Lai, during the Vietnam War, in which American soldiers raped and murdered hundreds of unarmed civilians. A quote from Myrtle Meadlo, mother of Paul Meadlo, one of the perpetrators of My Lai, is featured prominently in Podwal’s poster. She lamented, “I sent them a good boy, and they made him a murderer.”
With his map of America, Podwal points to American racism as a catalyst for the massacre with jarring quotes such as: “We should blow up all those slant-eyed bastards.” The juxtaposition of the 1776 flag with these quotes underscores the vast gap between Revolutionary rhetoric and American actions abroad.
The map also incorporates Indigenous figures and imagery (a teepee, arrows, feathers, a medicine wheel), drawing attention to another contradiction in American history: that the founding of a nation committed to liberty simultaneously and violently dispossessed Native peoples of their lands. Podwal’s inclusion of Indigenous symbolism in this map alongside the inhumane treatment of Vietnamese people highlights a longer pattern of violence and dehumanization that runs through American history, from the ruthless treatment of Indigenous people to the brutality of the Vietnam War.
Invoking Revolutionary symbols and the spirit of 1776, Podwal’s map, like many items on display in this exhibition, including the WWI and WWII posters, reminds us of the enduring power of the American Revolution as a touchstone. The same ideals that were used to rally colonists, persuade citizens to purchase war bonds, and cultivate patriotism were also used by marginalized groups and dissenters to demand accountability and to powerfully point to the disparity between America’s lofty aspirations and its bleak realities.