25-04-2025
‘Black April' to triumph: Boston's Vietnamese community to celebrate its history
For Ngoc-Tran Vu, the fall of Saigon, the pivotal event, concluding on April 30, 1975, that finally marked the end of the bloody quagmire that was the Vietnam War, is more than just history.
It's her family's story.
For Vu and the scores of other Vietnamese people who call Boston's Dorchester neighborhood home, that turning point in world history lives eternally in their memory.
And on Saturday, hundreds of people will converge on Boston College High School for the first of four days' worth of events commemorating what's become known as 'Black April,' and the Vietnamese diaspora that followed it.
'It's really momentous,' Vu, a visual artist, an event organizer and the director of '1975: A Vietnamese Diaspora Commemoration Initiative,' told MassLive this week.
'It's a chance for us to come together as an intergenerational community to honor the resiliency of the diaspora community,' Vu, whose father fought in the war and was imprisoned by the North Vietnamese, said.
The family eventually found their way to the United States as refugees, settling in Boston in 1992. The city was home to some 53,700 Vietnamese people as of 2018.
Dorchester's Little Saigon, centered in Fields Corner, is the heart of that community.
If you've never been to Fields Corner, it's tough to overstate how integrated the neighborhood's Vietnamese residents are in the life of an ever-more diverse city.
Shops selling bánh mì sandwiches, which fuse a French baguette with local ingredients, line Dorchester Avenue. There is also a profusion of noodle shops and seafood restaurants.
Further down Dorchester Avenue, other businesses offer travel and financial services, along with dentists, doctors and markets. Keep walking, and you'll hear Vietnamese spoken in conversation.
'I think people know that there is a Vietnamese presence, but they don't understand how large [it is],' Vu said. It's one of the biggest in New England. It's definitely a dominant force in Dorchester."
To that end, Dorchester's Vietnamese community is seeking the city's permission to place a permanent memorial at Town Field Park on Park Street in Fields Corner.
The park is set for renovation, and Vu and her allies want the memorial incorporated into it.
Vu and other supporters of the project made their pitch during an appearance before the Dorchester Civic Association in February, according to the local Dorchester Reporter newspaper.
The group is selling commemorative bricks, priced at $500, $1,000, and $2,000, to raise money for the effort. A petition in support of it has already garnered 1,000 signatures, Vu said.
'We're getting a lot of momentum and support for this,' Linh-Phong Vu, one of the organizers, told the Dorchester Reporter.
'It's not a fun project,' she continued. 'It's a memorial to remember. The community has been here for 50 years, and we don't have a memorial for the Vietnamese diaspora community here. That's an issue and a need and we're looking forward to making this happen.'
Boston City Councilmember John FitzGerald, who represents Dorchester and a swath of the South End, called the memorial a 'great idea.'
'It's an appropriate offering and a way to memorialize and commemorate the Vietnamese diaspora,' the Democratic pol told MassLive. 'The Vietnamese community is an identity in Dorchester ... and the role it plays in giving back and diversifying the community as a whole, it's awesome.'
However, the memorial still has to clear some bureaucratic and fundraising hurdles before it can become a reality.
That includes '[finding] the exact right site' amid the planned renovations for Town Field Park, and raising the money that'll be needed for its planning and construction.
'What it represents is great, but it's not cheap,' he allowed, adding that once those hurdles are crossed, the real work on the memorial can start moving through the city's bureaucracy.
For this weekend's observances, events start at 3 p.m. Saturday with the kickoff at Boston College High School on Morrissey Boulevard. It will include reflections from community leaders, elected officials, and cultural bearers on the importance of Black April, organizers said.
The Saturday event will also be livestreamed.
On Sunday, at 2 p.m., at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum on the campus of UMass Boston, there's a bilingual panel discussion and a screening of the documentary "On Healing Land, Birds Perch."
The film tells the story of one of the most harrowing and iconic images of the war: the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of South Vietnamese General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan shooting Việt Cộng Captain Nguyễn Văn Lém in 1968.
On Tuesday, flag-raising ceremonies on City Hall Plaza in Boston and the Dorchester Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Morrissey Boulevard offer what organizers describe as a solemn commemoration of the 'lives lost and the enduring strength of Vietnamese refugees who rebuilt new lives in Boston and beyond.'
For Ngoc-Tran Vu, the memorial and the coming Black April observances are an appropriate — and overdue — addition to a city built on the contributions of immigrants.
'It's not just a Vietnamese project, but an addition to the city's landscape,' she said of the memorial. 'With Boston being a city of immigrants, we really wanted to honor that.'
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Read the original article on MassLive.
