Artes recalls photo assignments in Vietnam, South Korea --Continued from page 7. ohnson might not be around to see this history coming to light if things went differently for him. He was an impressionable teen when he and his buddies fell under the charismatic spell of local Black Power activist David Rice, aka Mondo we Langa. Rice led a group of young people into the Omaha Civic Auditorium to protest Presidential candidate George C. Wallace in 1968. “I was holding a sign just below Wallace in front of the stage. We started chanting. Wallace walked out on stage. Then the police charged us with their Billy clubs,” Johnson says. “I remember Rice was hit, then stepped on over and over, before he crawled under the stage. The rest of us were beaten by police all the way from the stage down the middle aisle. Chairs were thrown on us by the angry crowd. We fell over each other through the doors. I still have a scar on my head,” Artes says. “We never trusted David again.” A couple of years later, Rice and Ed Poindexter were arrested and convicted for the 1970 boobytrap bomb death of Omaha police officer Larry Minard. Rice, who died in prison and Poindexter, who remains incarcerated, maintained their innocence. The melee inside and outside the arena eventually spread to North 24th Street, where a full-scale riot erupted. In those days, the Wesley House was a hub of positive Black community activity that Johnson frequented. Its executive director, Rodney Wead, helped Artes get a scholarship to Dana College. Though among very few Black students there, Johnson says his time at the Blair school was a good experience. “I still have friends from Dana College.”
J
Artes Johnson’s DeWitty, Neb. ancestors included (from left): Goldie, Baldwin, Fernella, and Beulah Walker, the chidren of William P. and Charlotte Walker.
rea. They liked my work,” Johnson says. “I was young and foolish and wanted to go where the action was, so I requested them to ask my commanders if l could go TDY (temporary duty) in Vietnam. In 1974, I got attached to a DASPO unit in Saigon. The typical assignment was to cover fighting up there. “I was eager to go. It was exciting to hitch a ride on a helicopter and fly in with troops, mortar shells following us down the landing strip.” Johnson would be the first to scramble off the chopper, his Arriflex camera rolling in hand, in order to capture the troops hitting the ground after him and unning toward the action. “When you’re filming, you have to think of a basic sequence of scenes to shoot. You need cutaway shots of people, explosions, etc. It’s all about storytelling. With our cameras you had two minutes and 46 seconds to roll film before you had to stop and reload. You had to be able to do all that under fire. My ith his scholarship money mind became a camera. I visualdepleted and the military ized what I was going to do with the draft looming, Johnson footage back in the studio when I enlisted in the Army and went to cut it together. photo school in Fort Monmouth, “There were days when the heliN. J. His first overseas assignment copter wouldn’t be able to return to was with the 8th Army in Yongsan, take us back and I’d stay overnight South Korea, where he worked at in the bush. Sometimes we were the Armed Forces Korea Network. attacked. A couple times we were “It was a military television staoverrun; the wires breached by Viet tion for Korea. There I was able to Cong. I had to set my camera down practice my trade-craft of being a and take the gun of a dead GI and motion picture photographer,” John- help with the defense. It was crazy.” son says. “Every day, we’d get up, Johnson covered the U.S. Emdo a story, and get back and edit our bassy evacuation in Saigon and got story for the six o’clock news. We out only days before the city fell in were also the crew for the newscast. 1975. He went back to Korea, where “I had the opportunity to work in 1976 his video camera captured with the CBS News crews when North Korean soldiers attacking two they came in. They were who I American Army officers who were wanted to be.” part of a work detail to cut down a He then made the brash decipoplar tree. sion to put himself in harm’s way. “I was inside the Panmunjom As U.S. ground forces pulled out conference room with the North of Vietnam, the Department of the Korean and American generals Army Special Photographic Office shooting (filming) out a window. (DASPO) came under the CIA’s The officers died in the frame of my jurisdiction. camera,” Artes says. “I first met them (CIA) in KoDecompressing back home from
W
Page 8
•
New Horizons
•
what he experienced in uniform proved difficult for Johnson. His PTSD went untreated. Triggers such as engines backfiring or dead animals in the road brought him back to the war. The sounds of incoming rounds and the smell of corpses remained vivid. “In ‘Nam there were situations when there were dead bodies in the road, and we rode over those bodies in our jeep or truck. You smell the stench of death. Things like that you just never forget. When you come home from the war you want to drink or smoke those things away, and it doesn’t go away. You have nightmares. Mood swings. It was hard for anyone to live with me.” Denial made it worse. “When I first came home, I slept with a broom and I wore my Army fatigues. I felt like I had something on that was going to rescue me because that ‘saved’ me in the trauma of that stuff. I wouldn’t take it off. It was still my protection. I never gave up that part of my identity.” His marriages ended when his wives told him they couldn’t deal with this. Artes didn’t recognize he was sick and kept his demons inside. “I didn’t talk about it. I’m talking about it now because it’s part of the healing process.” Johnson finally sought help at the encouragement of fellow vet and Midwest Film colleague John Turner. He knows but for the grace of God he could have died in Vietnam or ended up a homeless post-war casualty in the States.
in DeWitty. They held that land together to work and defend. Everybody was connected and close. The social living worked better that way. They cooperated during harvest time, they raised barns, (and) they celebrated holidays.” Then when the community finally failed, they moved again, to greener pastures around the nation. Imbued with his ancestors’ ambition and drive, Johnson dreams of bold new ways to share this story. His sister, Avis Roper, has written a lesson plan the family hopes becomes a statewide curriculum in public schools. Johnson is hopeful of one day getting selections from the family’s collection of photos portraying the DeWitty-Audacious legacy into the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C. Also in the works today are an interpretive kiosk and virtual tours that share the tale. “We just want people to know,” Artes says. He feels guided and supported by the strength his ancestors passed down to him. Johnson says the traits he’s inherited apply to many African Americans whose histories include slavery. He recites these survivals like a mantra: “Self-sufficiency. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. One people, one God. Believe in yourselves. By any means necessary.” Johnson is proud his ancestors hung on for 40-plus years. In doing so, they proved racial diversity doesn’t need to breed conflict. “People are just people,” he says, echoing his elders. “If we can get beyond these frailties human beings have, we will always be OK. We just have to rise to the occasion and do what we have to do. It’s a story we can learn from. It has helped me to know who I am, why I am, how I am. It’s an absolutely universal story we can all learn from. That’s why I want to keep the memory of this settlement alive. I want others to know this example of people lifting themselves up by their own self-will, drive, (and) determination to make their own way and be OK. That’s the bottom line.”
A
rtes only needs to look at the endurance of his ancestors to realize the source of his resilience. Just as he admires how his people traversed thousands of miles before settling in Nebraska, he admires how they never stopped yearning and searching for a better life once here. “When they were in Overton they were scattered, but these explorers formed a concentrated community
October 2020
Johnson said his ancestors proved racial diversity doesn’t have to breed conflict.