ID Number: 3545
Maker: Frazer Dougherty; Jon Hendricks; Irving Petlin; R. L. Haeberle; Artists Poster Committee of Art Workers Coalition
Technique: offset
Date Made: 1970
Place Made: United States: New York, New York
Measurements: 63.5 cm x 96.3 cm; 25 in x 37 15/16 in
Main Subject: Peace (Anti-War)
Materials: paper (fiber product)
Digitized: Y

Full Text:
Q. And Babies? A. And Babies. Art Workers Coalition/Peter Brandt/ From an interview with Paul Meadlow by Mike Wallace/Photograph © R.L. Haeberle

Acquisition Number: 1993-033

Copyright Status:
Under copyright; used by CSPG for educational and research purposes only. Distribution or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires the written permission of the copyright owners.

Exhibition Annotation:
On March 16, 1968 U.S. soldiers entered the South Vietnamese village of My Lai on a search and destroy mission, though there had been no report of opposing fire. The estimates on the actual number of casualties ranges from 343 to 567, mainly women, children, and the elderly. Public knowledge of the massacre was suppressed for more than a year by the U.S. government. Word of the massacre did not reach the American public until November 1969, in an article by journalist Seymour Hersh. The My Lai Massacre marked a turning point in the country's acceptance of the war once Ron Haeberle's photo was reproduced in the press and in this widely disseminated poster. The text comes from a televised CBS interview on “60 Minutes” about My Lai. When Mike Wallace asked Paul Meadlo, one of the soldiers who participated in the massacre, "And babies?" he responded, "and babies." The Wallace interview was then quoted in the New York Times. The typeface used on the poster was reproduced directly from the New York Times article. The poster was to be sponsored by the Art Workers’ Coalition and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. When the president of MoMA’s board of trustees rejected the project, the AWC raised the funds to print fifty-thousand copies of the poster, which were carried in anti-war protests around the globe. After MoMA declined to have anything to do with the artwork, the members of the AWC staged a demonstration at the museum, entering the room where Picasso’s Guernica was displayed to unfurl copies of the poster while reading statements against the Viet Nam War.