"The Negro Soldier" U.S. Army Recruitment Film, 1943

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 2322

The Negro Soldier  was a film produced by Frank Capra¹ for the U.S. Army as part of a recruitment effort for African American soldiers--in addition to the being a small appeasement to the nearly 880,000 who were already serving in 1943. It was also used as an orientation film, and was required viewing by all servicemen.  It was a tricky business for the time, given the racist policies in place, the de facto segregation², and the unfortunately high incidence of racist feeling among U.S. servicemen.  

The armed services needed men.  The Army had a similar problem in 1918, though there seems to have been little effort to learn its lessons with segregation and appeasement. In World War I  there were over 400,000 Black soldiers, half of them in France, but fewer than 40,000 of them actually saw combat duty, the rest being left to construction/upkeep and menial tasks, an army of 760,000 trained men being kept from participation because of racial practices. The Negro Soldier was certainly a partial response to this issue and an appeal to social tolerance and an incorporation of the Black soldier into a unified fighting force.

It was a difficult time for African Americans in films--not to mention in real life-- where the vast majority of portrayals of Black people in cinema was a caricature, indecent. This film has none of the trappings of a contemporary movie about Black people, and was received with high acclaim by Langston Hughes among many others. Although the film portrayed Black people in honorable professions and with respect and dignity, it was also a propaganda film for domestic consumption, and showed a fractured history of African American contributions in quick run-throughs of U.S. history, while also failing to mention things like slavery, breezing through the Civil War in about 20 seconds. Again, that's not what the film was intended to address--it really was supposed to be a "leveler" of sorts, evening the mountainous arena of race relations, attempting to portray the sameness of the races in the fight against Germany.  On the other hand I can help but think about the difference between what was shown in the film and what was happening in real life, and expect men to go and fight for a principle that for them mostly existed in theory.

It is interesting to see this movie still of a minister (the screenwriter Moss)  preaching by using quotes from Mein Kampf; he spells out exactly what is there by Hitler concerning Black people, and it is very bad stuff, calling them half-apes and criminal that they should be allowed to have any position of responsibility....and that the Nazi goal was world domination.

So although a flawed product it was much better than the average fare, not that there was anything to compare it to for the recruitment of Black troops, because (I believe) there weren't any others.  In spite of the obvious lack of historical context top place the African American in some sort of context in the history of the U.S., this was probably a very good film, and evidently fulfilled its mission.

Here's another interesting propaganda film, the story of a Black farmer in Georgia.  Henry Browne, Farmer was made on what seems to be a pretty low budget in 1942, and presents the ideas of the soldier, the soldier of production, and the soldier of the soil, of which Mr. Browne was the later. The film is sympathetic, though Browne and his family are living pretty close-to-the-cuff, plowing with mule teams, taking their mule-driven wagon into a town (Macon?) highly populated with cars. Of high dignity, the Brownes are fairly poor, in spite of having a fine-looking 40 acres. On their wagon trip to town they visit their son, who is a pilot with the 99th Pursuit Squadron, and we watch them as they watch their son climb into a T6 and take off.  I liked that part quite a bit.  

 

Notes:

1. The screenplay was written by Carlton Moss--who also plays the Black preacher--and directed by Stuart Hiesler.

2.  The U.S. Navy would officially end segregation in February 1946; the Army followed with Executive Order 9981 in July 1948.