# A gravestone for the Vietnam War, dated December 31, 1971

A 1971 poster from the Committee to Help Unsell the War in New York shows a gravestone in snow inscribed "The Vietnam War / December 31, 1971" above the words "may it rest in peace."

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- A gravestone for the Vietnam War, dated December 31, 1971

      The Vietnam War, December 31, 1971: may it rest in peace

      A gravestone for the Vietnam War, dated December 31, 1971
      A 1971 Committee to Help Unsell the War poster puts the Vietnam War on a snowy gravestone dated December 31, 1971. Library of Congress copy.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Transfer
      Date1971Made byCommittee to Help Unsell the War (New York)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeNixon AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved October 2, 2026SourceU.S. publication without copyright notice; LoC: no known restrictions on publication Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print
      Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records.

      Full record at propagandaarchive.org

  A 1971 poster from the Committee to Help Unsell the War in New York shows a gravestone in snow inscribed "The Vietnam War / December 31, 1971" above the words "may it rest in peace."

## What the sheet prints

The poster is a photograph. A headstone stands in snow, its face cut with the name of a war and a date. A line of lowercase type below it borrows the most familiar phrase on a grave. The sponsor's name and a post-office box run along the foot.

THE VIETNAM WAR

DECEMBER 31, 1971

may it rest in peace

HELP UNSELL THE WAR BOX 903, FDR STATION, NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10022

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from a 1024 px Library of Congress scan. Full record at propagandaarchive.org.

## Who made it

The credit on the sheet is Help Unsell the War, with a Manhattan box number. The catalog names the issuer as the Committee to Help Unsell the War, New York, and treats the source as openly identified. It was private advocacy, signed and addressed so that a reader could write back.

The group's name is its own argument. "Unsell" assumes the war had been sold, that public support had been built the way a product's market is built, and that the same tools could take it apart. The archive holds several sheets from this committee; this is the quietest of them.

## How to read it

A gravestone records something that has already happened. This one carries a date that works as a deadline, and the poster writes it in stone. FRAME files it under transfer: the finality of a burial is lent to a political goal, so that ending the war by the last day of 1971 looks less like a demand and more like an outcome already settled. The epitaph does the persuading. There is no casualty figure, no policy, and no named official on the sheet.

That restraint is also its strength as speech. It insults no one, and a reader who supported the war could look at it and simply disagree. How widely it was shown, and whether it changed anyone's mind, the record does not say.

For the other side of the war debate, from two years earlier, see Young Americans for Freedom's "Tell it to Hanoi". For the 1969 march poster that used a memorial frame, see "How many more must die?"

## Sources

- FRAME object record, The Vietnam War, December 31, 1971: may it rest in peace, 1971. Issuer: Committee to Help Unsell the War (New York).

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, item 2015649369, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: U.S. publication without copyright notice; no known restrictions on publication.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/unsell-the-war-vietnam-war-tombstone-1971/