Bloods (book)
1984 book by Wallace Terry
Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans is a 1984 book by journalist Wallace Terry. An oral history consisting of 20 interviews conducted with African American veterans of the Vietnam War, Terry spent over a decade trying to get the book published. Upon publication by Random House in 1984, Bloods received wide acclaim and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. From its publication to 1990, Terry embarked on a tour discussing the book and his experiences in Vietnam. Bloods was a source of inspiration for the 1995 film Dead Presidents and the 2020 film Da 5 Bloods. The book has been included in educational curriculums on the Vietnam War.
Background
In 1967, American journalist Wallace Terry left for Vietnam, where he became TIME magazine's deputy bureau chief in Saigon and the first Black war correspondent on permanent duty. He authored the cover story “Democracy in the Foxhole”, documenting the experiences of Black soldiers and new racially integrated battalions in the war. During his two-year tour, he covered the Tet Offensive, flew scores of combat missions with American and South Vietnamese pilots, and joined assault troops in the Ashau Valley and on Hamburger Hill. He helped retrieve the bodies of four newsmen killed by the Viet Cong on May 5, 1968, during the Mini-Tet Offensive in Saigon.
“Bloods (book)” enters the record as 1984 book by Wallace Terry. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bloods, book and Wallace can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q140407927. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1984, 1990, 1995 and 2020.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bloods (book)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.