Biography
Billy Dean Smith was a Black U.S. Army private whose court-martial for "fragging" — the grenade killing of two officers in Vietnam — became a cause célèbre for the antiwar and Black liberation movements. Born the tenth of twelve children in Bakersfield, California, he grew up partly in Texas and in the Watts section of Los Angeles. Drafted into the Army in 1969 against his will, he trained at Fort Ord, California and Fort Sill, Oklahoma and was sent to Vietnam in October 1970. Outspoken in his refusal to be a "good American soldier" in a war he saw as racist and unjust, he clashed with his commanding officer, Captain Rigby. On March 15, 1971, a fragmentation grenade exploded in the officers' barracks at Bien Hoa, killing two lieutenants and wounding a third; Smith, the "incorrigible, unwilling" Black soldier in the company, was immediately singled out. He was charged with the murder of the two lieutenants, the attempted murder of his commanding officer and a first sergeant, and two counts of assault on military police — the only physical evidence being a single grenade pin said to have been found in his jacket pocket. Held for about nineteen months in a six-by-nine-foot cell, he was returned to the United States and tried by general court-martial at Fort Ord. On November 14, 1972 the panel acquitted him of the fragging charges; he had pled innocent throughout, and the government could not prove its case. He was released.
The Black Panther (January 18, 1975, printed p. 14), reprinting a Semper Fi report, said the Army Court of Military Review had also reversed his remaining conviction for assault on military police. That conviction had carried a reduction to private and a bad-conduct discharge. The report does not supply the appellate decision date; the earlier November 1972 acquittal and physical release are separate events.
