Scope and Contents

The collection consists of one poster depicting an image from a North Vietnamese stamp. On the back of the poster are Vietnamese resistance poems collected and translated by John Spragens, Jr. Also included is one copy of The Narrow Strip of Land by Tran Mai Nam. The materials are dated 1969 and 1971.

Biographical / Historical

John Brewer Spragens, Jr. was born in Fulton, MO in 1944. He graduated from Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College, St. Petersburg) in 1966 with a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities (philosophy and art).

During the Vietnam War, Spragens served as a conscientious objector in Vietnam. First, with International Voluntary Services, he taught high school in Tra Vinh in the Mekong Delta from 1966 to 1968. Next, from 1968 to 1969, he worked for the Committee of Responsibility, an organization tasked with connecting war-injured Vietnamese children with the medical care they needed in the United States. Between his departure from Vietnam in 1969 and the war's end, he put his skills as a photographer and journalist to use as a peace activist with the Indochina Mobile Education Project and the Indochina Resource Center.

On his return to the United States in 1975, Spragens worked primarily as a journalist and photographer with several newspapers across the country. From 1993 until his retirement in 2010, he earned his livelihood as a writer and editor in the computer software industry. Spragens passed away in February 2013.