"You Don't Belong Here": Elizabeth Becker Tells the Story of the Women Journalists of Vietnam

It’s not unusual now to see or hear or read reports from women correspondents who cover the news in combat zones and other perilous situations. They bring home the harsh and chaotic reality of fighting from war-torn places like Ukraine, Syria, the Middle East, and beyond. This new generation of reporters includes distinguished newswomen such as Clarissa Ward, Christiane Amanpour, Jane Ferguson, the late Marie Colvin, Holly Williams, and photojournalist Lynsey Addario.

But women reporters just a few decades ago during the bloody American military conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia were scarce at best and were often undermined, mocked, belittled, and even sabotaged. Only the most intrepid and resolute persevered to share the news and reshape public understanding of the cruelty and complexity of this foreign policy debacle. But these extraordinary women broke down barriers and created a new path for future generations of female reporters on the frontlines who courageously and routinely cover the terrible consequences of war.

A trailblazing war correspondent in her own right, celebrated journalist and author Elizabeth Becker pays homage to a trio of women reporters who covered the Vietnam War in her recent book You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War (Public Affairs). The book focuses on the lives of the daring French photojournalist Catherine Leroy, American intellectual and author Frances FitzGerald, and iconoclastic Australian war reporter Kate Webb. Each arrived in Vietnam without significant experience in reporting or international affairs, and each navigated the masculine world of war and loss and each suffered and sacrificed to bring their unique perspectives on the chaotic conflict to the world. They brought new approaches to covering war and its horrific human toll on combatants and civilians alike.

The book also provides a new view of the war as it blends the individual stories of these stalwart women within the historical context of the war. Ms. Becker adds her insights as a fellow reporter and veteran of the Southeast Asian wars. The riveting narrative is based on her meticulous research that included study of voluminous military and other official records as well as her special access to the personal letters, diaries, photographs, and other documents from the three heroines of the book as well as their colleagues and others.

In addition to stellar reviews, You Don’t Belong Here won Harvard’s Goldsmith Prize for the best book on politics, policy and journalism as well as the Sperber Prize for the best biography/memoir of a journalist. And Foreign Affairs named it the Best Military Book of the year.

Ms. Becker’s groundbreaking reporting from Cambodia during its war and the Khmer Rouge revolution is legendary. She covered the American bombing of Cambodia, the vicious combat there, and the genocidal violence of the Khmer Rouge revolution. She was the only western reporter to interview Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, and she escaped an assassination attempt by the Khmer Rouge.

When the War was Over, Ms. Becker’s acclaimed book on Cambodia, won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Book Award. That book was based on her first-hand war reporting and extensive subsequent research including her historic interviews with Pol Pot and other senior Khmer leaders. Her exhaustive six-year investigation of the historical and political roots of one of the 20th Century’s worst genocides remains in print more than three decades since its first publication and is relied on by historians and others for its exhaustive and definitive research.  The New York Times called her Cambodia book “a work of the first importance;” the Financial Times said “Becker writes history as history should be written;” and the Washington Post praised it as “an impressive feat of scholarship and reporting: intelligent, measured, resourceful.”

The prosecution for the for the Khmer Rouge Tribunal in Cambodia recognized Ms. Becker’s unique expertise and called her as an expert witness in the trial of Khmer Rouge leaders for genocide. She testified about her experience and knowledge of Khmer Rouge atrocities and other war crimes before the tribunal in 2016, and the two defendants were convicted.

Ms. Becker began her illustrious career as a war correspondent for the Washington Post in Cambodia in 1973. She subsequently became the Senior Foreign Editor of National Public Radio, and later worked as a New York Times correspondent covering national security, foreign policy, agriculture and international economics. She has reported from Asia, Africa, South America and Europe while based in Phnom Penh, Paris and Washington.

Her honors for her journalism include an Overseas Press Club Award for her Cambodia coverage, the DuPont Columbia Award for her work as executive director for coverage of Rwanda’s genocide and South Africa, and the North American Agricultural Journalism Association Award. She also was a member of the Times staff that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for public service in covering 9/11.

Ms. Becker graduated from the University of Washington in South Asian studies, and was a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center and an adjunct professor at Georgetown University. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and serves on the boards of Oxfam America Advocacy Fund and the Harpswell Foundation.

Ms. Becker generously responded by email to a barrage of questions about her career and her compelling book on the Vietnam War and women reporters who covered it. I am very grateful for her thoughtful remarks and insights.

Robin Lindley: Thank you Ms. Becker for discussing your work and your illuminating book on pioneering women who reported on the American wars in Southeast Asia, You Don’t Belong Here. Before getting to your book and the three women you profile, I’d like to first ask about your background. You were a trailblazing journalist in Southeast Asia and were honored for your reporting on the war in Cambodia. How did you come to pursue journalism as a career?

Elizabeth Becker:  At the University of Washington, I became enamored with classes about South Asia and petitioned the university to create a major in the field. I graduated in 1969 with a degree in South Asian studies. (It is now a major field in the UW’s Jackson School). I and then spent a year in India traveling and studying Hindi at the Kendriya Hindi Sansthaan in Agra.  I returned to the UW for graduate studies in the same field, centered on political science, with the aim of completing a PhD

Robin Lindley: And what prompted you to travel to Cambodia in 1973?

Elizabeth Becker: The answer to that question is in the preface to my book. My thesis professor rejected my Master’s thesis after I refused to have an affair with him. He insisted my rejection of him had nothing to do with his rejection of my thesis. And he then asked me to reconsider. It was clear that my academic career was over. So I cashed in my fellowship check and bought a one-way ticket to Cambodia. A friend I met in India was working for United Press International there and had been lobbying me to come and become a reporter with her.

Robin Lindley: You’re renowned for your reporting on the war in Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge revolution. Your vivid book on that experience, When the War was Over, was acclaimed by scholars and general readers alike. When you reported on the war and the genocide, you capture the often horrific and painful experience of the Cambodian people. You witnessed the US carpet bombing and the brutal fighting on the ground and atrocities of war. Your courage and resilience are remarkable. When did you arrive in Cambodia and what was happening in the war then?

Elizabeth Becker: January 1973. The US had just signed the Paris Peace Accords and more than a few reporters said I had come too late. The war was ending. In fact, Cambodia did not sign the Accords and the fighting intensified immediately. US bombing from March through mid-August was the most intense of the war. It caught the world – and news organizations – by surprise.

There were very few reporters living in Cambodia. Most staffers lived in Saigon, Hong Kong, Singapore or Bangkok. They needed someone on the ground at all times. After three months writing for the now defunct Far Eastern Economic Review, I was hired by the Washington Post, Newsweek and NBC radio as the local reporter or stringer. The fighting was close to constant.

Robin Lindley: What kind of support did you get when you were reporting from Cambodia? Did you have supportive colleagues or government support? 

Elizabeth Becker: Some of my colleagues who lived in Phnom Penh were superb:  James Fenton, the British poet, was there as a stringer for the New Statesman; Ishiyama Koki, of Kyoto News Service; Neil Davis, the Australian television reporter; and Steve Heder who became the greatest expert on the Khmer Rouge.

Robin Lindley: When did you leave Cambodia and what led to your departure during the brutal war with the Khmer Rouge?

Elizabeth Becker: I left in September 1974. Phnom Penh was dangerous so we would go to Saigon for R&R. Two of my friends disappeared behind Khmer Rouge lines. Every day I chronicled and witnessed how the people and country of Cambodia were being destroyed and I finally couldn’t bear it. I wrote my family back in Seattle that, if I didn’t leave soon, I would be carried out in a straitjacket or a body bag. 

Robin Lindley: You are one of the few western reporters who was invited to meet Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot and you interviewed him. How did that 1978 assignment happen and what did you learn then about the Khmer Rouge and Pol Pot?

Elizabeth Becker: Over three years I petitioned the Khmer Rouge for a visa – sending letters to their embassy in Peking (Beijing now) and going to the UN every October to see the Khmer Rouge foreign minister, the only time he came to the US. Finally, they invited Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and me, for the Washington Post. Malcolm Caldwell, a British scholar sympathetic to the Khmer Rouge, rounded our group.

We were the only Western reporters to visit Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. We had no freedom while there – we only saw what they wanted us to see and spoke to people they chose and under their supervision. We were essentially under house arrest. If you don’t mind, here is a link to the best summary I wrote about what I saw and why it became so contentious.

Robin Lindley: You escaped an assassination attempt on that trip, and one of your fellow correspondents, British Professor Malcolm Caldwell, was murdered. Who were the assassins? How did you and fellow reporter Richard Dudman escape and depart from Cambodia?

Elizabeth Becker: Our last day we were given an hour’s notice to dress up for an interview with Pol Pot. Dudman and I went first. Caldwell had a separate interview after us. Back at our guest house we packed our bags for the flight out the next day, had supper and went to bed.

Around midnight I heard gunshots, ran to the main room and met a gunman who threatened me. I ran back to my ground floor bedroom while he ran up the stairs, shot at the feet of Dudman and then stormed the bedroom of Caldwell and murdered him. He escaped and we were left each in our separate bedrooms not knowing what had happened for several hours that felt like a lifetime. Finally top officials came to see us. We were taken to another guest house after viewing Caldwell’s body and then flew back on a Chinese plane to Peking the next morning.

Robin Lindley: What a harrowing experience. I’m glad you weren’t physically injured. More recently, in 2016, you testified at the war crimes trial of two surviving Khmer Rouge leaders. How did that happen and what did your testimony concern?

Elizabeth Becker: I was asked to testify at length about my book When the War was Over since it had become a classic history of the Khmer Rouge and includes exclusive interviews of Khmer Rouge officials as well as foreign officials who played key roles in the story. I also wrote an entire chapter about my reporting trip to Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge that proved to be so rare.                    

Robin Lindley: Thank you for sharing that experience. The prosecution was fortunate to draw on your expertise.

And now, to You Don’t Belong Here. How did you come to write this book on trailblazing women reporters? Was there an incident or a person that sparked your interest?

Elizabeth Becker: It was in the back of my mind for years. The spark was my testimony at the Khmer Rouge tribunal when I realized our history – the women who broke through during the war – had been lost.

Robin Lindley: Your book is deeply researched and, of course, you were also a prominent woman reporter during the Southeast Asian conflicts. What was your research process and what was some of the source material you found?

Elizabeth Becker:  My goal was to write full biographies of the three women – their earliest lives, their education, what drove them to become war correspondents, and then their complete lives during the war – letters to family, friendships, horrible romances, self-doubts, etc. At the same time, I wanted to provide the reader with the story of the war. It had to be the strong spine of the book so the reader understood what these women faced and how difficult it was to cover the war.

Ultimately, you can read the book and have an intimate and deep understanding of the women, what they faced, and the war itself. I wanted to eschew what I felt was the confining, swashbuckling model where the focus is fully on the horror of war and how the reporter covered it.

Robin Lindley: Your book focuses on three women correspondents: Catherine Leroy, a fearless French photojournalist; Frances FitzGerald, an acclaimed American journalist, intellectual and author; and Kate Webb, an innovative daredevil Australian war reporter. How did you decide to share in-depth accounts of these women in your book?

Elizabeth Becker: I knew one woman couldn’t tell this story of how women reporters defied the odds and permanently broke the glass ceiling preventing women from being true correspondents. They did that by working around rules and really changing how the war was covered.

The main research was to determine who were the standouts and innovators. I did it by category – photography it was Catherine Leroy; long-form it was Frances FitzGerald; and daily reporting it was Kate Webb.

For Catherine I went to the foundation dedicated to preserving her legacy, even though it was largely forgotten. There I had free rein to go through her letters, papers, photographs, etc. I dug into the Frances FitzGerald collection at Boston University. I spent a week rifling through Kate Webb’s papers kept in plastic storage bins at the home of her sister in Sydney, Australia. I interviewed everyone in their lives, dug up books, documents and journalism from the period at the Library of Congress (which is four blocks from my home in Washington, DC) and then dug out my papers.

Robin Lindley: Weren’t these women all really outsiders lacking academic journalism training and experience reporting?

Elizabeth Becker: It’s more basic than that. Few if any women at that time (the 1960s) were staff foreign correspondents, much less a war correspondent. Women covered women’s issues usually in a separate area from the newsroom – dubbed the pink ghetto. US military rules prohibited women from covering battles on the battlefield (In WWII Martha Gellhorn was assigned to the military nurses, like other women, and had to sneak onto Normandy Beach).

So, no, these three had no real experience. FitzGerald had written freelance profiles for the New York Herald Tribune. Webb had been the equivalent of a copy boy for the Mirror in Sydney. Leroy had never taken a professional photograph.

They paid their own way to Vietnam. Had no jobs when they arrived. No place to stay and no insurance should anything happen to them. Everything they did was on spec for the first few months. It was sufficiently difficult that, over the ten years of the American war, only a few dozen women actually lived and worked in Vietnam as successful journalists.

Robin Lindley: What were the Pentagon rules for women reporters covering combat in Vietnam? Weren’t women correspondents strictly prohibited from combat in the Second World War?

Elizabeth Becker:  Since President Lyndon B. Johnson refused to officially declare war in Vietnam the rules regarding journalists were suspended. It was the first and only war where there was no US censorship, where journalists could go in and out of battlefields as they wished long as a commander approved (no embedding required). All that was needed was a US approved press card.

The Pentagon didn’t imagine that women would be among the press corps. It wasn’t until General William Westmoreland, commander of all US troops in Vietnam, stumbled across a young American woman reporter covering a unit that the top officials realized that women were breaking the rules. But the women successfully petitioned to be allowed to continue covering battles – arguably since most of the traditional rules about the media had been suspended. This was THE turning point. Ever after women reporters were allowed on the field. However the women in Vietnam kept their victory quiet and didn’t describe how they had broken that glass ceiling for thirty years. 

Robin Lindley: I was very glad that you included Catherine Leroy in your book. I’ll never forget her stunning images of war. She is known for her close-up photographs of the sorrow and the pain of war for both soldiers and civilians. Her photos for me are some of the most powerful and heart-wrenching ever on the price of war and the human condition. I’ll never forget her haunting images from a 1968 Look magazine. How do you see her innovative work?

Elizabeth Becker: I chose her because she broke all the rules. Without any training she took photographs her way, spending more time outside of Saigon – with soldiers and with villagers – than others. She said she strained to photograph the eyes of people, which meant she got closer than others on the battlefield. She became the first woman to win the George Polk award for war photography and the first to win the Robert Cappa Gold Medal Award for excellence in photography and courage.

Robin Lindley: Leroy it seems had almost no regard for her personal safety. She parachuted into combat zones with US troops and she was wounded and even briefly captured. What stands out for you about her commitment to reporting on the war at such great personal risk?

Elizabeth Becker: She didn’t take wilder risks than many of the men. She was a seasoned jumper so, while her photography while parachuting would seem impossible for most of us, it played into her strengths. She also understood that she was the only woman photographer in Vietnam from 1966 to 1968 and, the year before, Dickey Chapelle was killed covering Marines the year before—and was the first female journalist killed in combat.

Media outlets were adamant that they did not want another woman journalist hurt in Vietnam. Finally, when Leroy realized that she was mentally and physically worn out from the war she was wise enough to leave, which was not always the case with other photographers.

Robin Lindley: Despite her stunning photography, Leroy faced many obstacles from her male press colleagues and military officials. Despite threats and often lack of support, she persisted. Your extensive research speaks volumes. You found an employment file on her that revealed an attempt by male colleagues to undermine her. What did you learn?

Elizabeth Becker: I filed a freedom of information request to be shown the secret “black file” on her held in the National Archives. Behind her back, the head of Agence France Presse, other male journalists and several American military officials organized petitions to have her press credentials taken away. She was sent a letter saying she could no longer work as a journalist. She fought back, enlisting the great [photographer] Horst Faas to speak up for her, and got the ban lifted.

Robin Lindley: How did Leroy respond to the sexism and misogyny she experienced?

Elizabeth Becker: She stood up to it.

Robin Lindley: As you mention, Leroy was honored with prestigious awards for her photography but, despite her pioneering work in Vietnam and later in life, she never seemed to get the wide acclaim she deserved. You note that some documentaries and histories of the war fail to mention her exceptional, provocative visual art. Thank you for featuring her story. Did you ever meet Leroy and discuss her work with her?           

Elizabeth Becker: I met her years ago – that was all – but I knew of her while I was covering the war. I knew where to look and who to talk to. She died in 2006.  

Robin Lindley: Another reporter you profile is celebrated author Frances FitzGerald, who wrote the critically acclaimed Fire in the Lake, a groundbreaking book on the Vietnam War and US involvement in the ill-fated conflict. You take us back before that award-winning book. Many readers may not know that FitzGerald also was a correspondent on the ground in Vietnam who reported from crowded hospitals and devastated villages and violent urban neighborhoods. In view of her privileged family background and her Ivy League education, becoming a war reporter seemed an unlikely career path. What sparked her interest in journalism and then reporting from Vietnam? What are a few things you’d like readers to know about FitzGerald’s experience as a war reporter?

Elizabeth Becker: I wrote a triple biography because each woman in her own specialty was responsible for changing how war was viewed and reported.

FitzGerald wrote about Vietnam as a country, not just a war. Even though her father was a top CIA official deeply involved in the war back in Washington, she felt no allegiance to US policy. Instead, she cast a critical eye on it, largely by going out in the field and examining the effect of the war on the people. That is why she wrote about the hospitals, the growing slums in Saigon, spending time in one village to show how one side controlled the territory by day, the other by night, etc.

Robin Lindley: You vividly capture how the conditions in wartime Vietnam stunned FitzGerald. Even as early as 1966, FitzGerald was seeing that the war was misguided. What was she seeing that others seemed to miss?

Elizabeth Becker: She saw the war from the Vietnamese point of view as well as American. Most reporters only covered the battles. What she did was put the war in the Vietnamese context – its history, culture and society – whereas other reporters put the war in the context of American Cold War ideology and how Vietnam fitted in to those goals. At that time there were very few American scholars knowledgeable about Vietnam so she instinctively knew where to search for the war’s meaning.

Robin Lindley: FitzGerald’s journey involved significant personal sacrifice as well as the obvious risks of a war zone. How was she seen by male counterparts, and did she face the same obstacles as Leroy? The same “you don’t belong here” attitude?

Elizabeth Becker: The same but different. The reporters presumed that her success was due to her privileged position in American society. Nothing could be further from the truth. The American officials in Vietnam didn’t take her seriously, to her dismay. She was considered a debutante tourist by many. So, she “didn’t belong” for other reasons. 

Robin Lindley: FitzGerald also knew Daniel Ellsberg, a Pentagon aide in Vietnam, and Kissinger admired her. She became friends with Ellsberg. Was he helpful to her? How did she come to know him? Did she influence Ellsberg’s view of the war?

Elizabeth Becker:  Ellsberg was an intelligence officer who mingled with reporters and met FitzGerald as others did.  The difference was Ellsberg took her seriously. She was impressed by the books in his apartment. He supported his country’s mission in Vietnam and was comfortable answering her questions challenging how the US was succeeding or failing. They eventually came to agreement on the war and why the US would lose.

Robin Lindley: I think FitzGerald shares something of Martha Gellhorn’s sharp observation and moving depictions of war and those who suffer. How do you see FitzGerald’s writing and her approach to the war?

Elizabeth Becker: Her book Fire in the Lake had an extraordinary impact. The New Yorker published an unusual five-part series of excerpts from the book. It won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award and the Bancroft Prize for history – the most honored book on the Vietnam War. She took an historic view of the war from the Vietnamese and US perspective—the only book at the time to do so.

Robin Lindley: And thanks also for sharing the account of Kate Webb’s experience in your book. I didn’t remember her story. She was from Australia, and by the time she began reporting on the war, she had already suffered significant personal losses. What inspired her work as a reporter? How did she wind up reporting on the war?

Elizabeth Becker: This is the first biography of Kate Webb as well as Frances FitzGerald and Catherine Leroy. I wanted to give their full stories to the reader could understand the remarkable courage it took just to go to Vietnam on their own. The personal as well as professional slights they endured all while learning to be journalists in the most dangerous circumstance.

Kate witnessed the suicide of her best friend while a teenager, and during her college years both of her parents died in a car accident. So she was familiar with grief. She got the idea of going to Vietnam as a “copy boy” in the Sydney pressroom of the Mirror. Australia had agreed to fight with the US in Vietnam – the only other ally to do so besides South Korea. Kate thought someone should cover the war and volunteered. She got laughed out of the editor’s office so she bought a ticket and went on her own.

Robin Lindley: Webb’s writing was innovative and moving. And she was a dynamo—often in the most dangerous areas during the war, including at the American Embassy in Saigon during the bloody 1968 Tet offensive. How do you see her writing about the war and how it stood out from what other reporters were writing?

Elizabeth Becker: She was an artist and an intellectual who read deeply and she brought those qualities to daily battlefield reporting. She reported all the details, investigated all leads and covered the South Vietnamese Army, which most reporters ignored. She wrote with humanity when that was unusual, and with an eye for detail. Here is her oft-quoted description of the US Embassy at Tet:

It was like a butcher shop in Eden. At the white walled embassy, the green lawns and white ornamental fountains were strewn with bodies. The teak door was blasted. The weary defenders were pickaxing their way warily among the dead and around live rockets.

Robin Lindley: Thanks for that powerful excerpt from her writing. Webb did not shrink from reporting combat and following military campaigns. In Cambodia, she was captured by the North Vietnamese and held prisoner for several weeks. She was presumed dead and the New York Times printed her obituary. You describe her captivity and escape. What was she doing when she was taken prisoner and what happened during captivity?

Elizabeth Becker: By then Kate was the UPI bureau chief for Cambodia – as far as I can tell, she was the first woman to ever run a bureau in a war zone. She was captured following up on a new offensive. Her three weeks of captivity were tough – she and three others captured with her had to eat what the North Vietnamese ate and only had the primitive medical care that they had. Otherwise, they were not tortured and she was not molested. She was impressed with the North Vietnamese discipline.

They were released on May 1 – possibly because she was a woman (and not American). Kate considered whether Americans would have treated a North Vietnamese journalist with the same equanimity.

Robin Lindley: After her release, Webb was praised as a hero in Australia. But didn’t she still run into the same problems with male colleagues and officials as other women reporters—the lack of support and sexism?

Elizabeth Becker: She was a full-time staff member of UPI at war’s end and promoted to run the Singapore office. But her direct boss insisted she have an affair with him. She refused. He reported her as insubordinate to New York headquarters without saying why. She quit and didn’t go back to full-time journalism for ten years.

Robin Lindley: It seems that the war haunted Leroy and Webb for the rest of their lives. They struggled with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder after their experience in the Southeast Asian combat zones. I imagine that you and FitzGerald also experienced difficulties adjusting to life after the war. Was there any support for women correspondents who experienced war trauma?

Elizabeth Becker: No – not for female or male journalists.

Robin Lindley: We now see many women reporting from war zones and other perilous places. How has the situation evolved for women reporters in war and disaster coverage in the past fifty years?

Elizabeth Becker: Dramatically. Women are staff members with all the support that entails. They are treated more or less equally.

Robin Lindley: What do you hope readers will take from your book on the war in Vietnam and how the US pursued this ill-fated conflict?

Elizabeth Becker: That it wasn’t so long ago that women were considered incapable of covering a war and prevented by the military, the media and even their male colleagues from doing so.

This book is a coming-of-age story that portrays in the lives of three women how difficult and rewarding it was to break through. Moreover, I placed the women in the story of the war – the backbone of this book is the history of the Vietnam War. You can’t appreciate what they accomplished without placing them in the war. In fact, several colleges are using the book as a history of Vietnam War.         

Robin Lindley: I’m glad that colleges are using the book. It deserves a wide audience. Your recent awards for You Don’t Belong Here are well deserved. And I appreciate very much your courageous work as a devoted reporter, Ms. Becker, and the risks you’ve taken to report to your readers. Congratulations on your groundbreaking book on a forgotten aspect of the history the Vietnam war: the trailblazing women who brought another dimension to the story of war to the world. Best wishes.

Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based attorney, writer, illustrator, and features editor for the History News Network (historynewsnetwork.org). His work also has appeared in Writer’s Chronicle, Bill Moyers.com, Re-Markings, Salon.com, Crosscut, Documentary, ABA Journal, Huffington Post, and more. Most of his legal work has been in public service. He served as a staff attorney with the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations and investigated the death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. His writing often focuses on the history of human rights, social justice, conflict, medicine, visual culture, and art. Robin’s email: robinlindley@gmail.com.