The Vietnam War, which lasted from 1954 - 1975, was a conflict between the Communist North Vietnam and U.S.-allied South Vietnam. U.S. forces assisted South Vietnam - also known at the Viet Cong - in their effort to fight against North Vietnam. The Vietnam War and its protest indelibly changed the culture of the United States, Vietnam, and the world as a whole. Millions of Vietnamese civilians and soldiers died due to the conflict, and over 58,000 U.S. soldiers died or were lost serving in it. Vietnam re-unified in 1975, ending the war.

The Vietnam War was the first racially integrated U.S. conflict. According to a Time Magazine article, "In 1964, American troops began arriving in Vietnam in large numbers following the Gulf of Tonkin incident, with the new integration policies a source of optimism. But many Black soldiers were immediately faced with discrimination and racism during basic training, which typically took place in the Jim Crow south. 'Although we're talking about an era after the Civil Rights Act, officers and soldiers had deep Southern racist roots,' [Professor Hasan Kwame] Jeffries says. 'The racism was there: it was real and felt between soldiers.' These structures persisted overseas, even if Black and white soldiers had to fight side-by-side." The overwhelming sense among Black soldiers was a resistence to serve the United States, a country that had done little to protect their civil rights and to quash systemic racism.