Stories

A look at the process behind the portraits in the "Becoming Texans, Becoming Americans" project. Byrd Williams IV discusses his cameras, vision, and process for creating these portraits of Vietnamese refugees in North Texas.

Dr. Betsy Brody presents an overview of the "Becoming Texans, Becoming Americans" Oral History Project as part of the Baylor University Libraries "Pictures, Portraits, and Snapshots: Glimpses into Baylor's Special Libraries" Virtual Event in October 2020.

In the decades since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, and the fall of the Khmer Rogue’s genocidal regime in Cambodia in 1979, an estimated 1.5 million Vietnamese and Cambodians immigrated to the United States. Many made harrowing escapes in the immediate aftermath of the region’s conflicts. North Central Texas became home for much of the Vietnamese diaspora According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington area had the third-largest Vietnamese population in the country, with about 72,000 residing here. Vietnamese immigration, and the story of the local Vietnamese community, were the focus of a panel discussion, “Are You Good People? The Vietnam War, Refugees, and the Politics of Asylum.” The discussion recounts some of the stories of these Vietnamese immigrants, how they reached American shores, the welcome they received from their American neighbors, the challenges of being an immigrant in the United States, and the politics surrounding refugees and asylum from the 1970s to the present day. The panel includes Dr. Walter H. Nguyen, who escaped from Vietnam after the war and now serves as the Executive Director of Mosaic Family Services (an agency that provides mental health and other services to refugees) and Yen Tran, J.D., who fled Vietnam as a child, and is now a pro bono immigration lawyer. Also participating are Dr. Betsy Brody, a political scientist, who shares highlights of her recent oral history project on the Vietnamese community in Dallas-Fort Worth, Dr. Michael Phillips, a historian and author of "White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001," and Bill Holston, executive director of the Human Rights Initiative.