We have just finished another Memorial Day weekend. This year Hollywood did not release any war-related movie close to Memorial Day In 2006, Clint Eastwood’s movie “Flags of our Fathers” came out the Friday before Memorial Day.
This year, on that Friday, one could find online some complaints about that movie. African Americans pointed to the fact that there were no African American Marines pictured in that movie. The movie apparently did not portray the facts correctly.
I do not plan to take a stand on whether of not those in Hollywood should include more African Americans in their war movies. I do plan to put in this post today, and in my post tomorrow information that sheds light on how the Marine Corps has sought to address the racial issue, an issue that has relevance to all of the armed forces.
Rather than dwell on what should or should not appear on the screen, I plan to write about a man named Frederick C. Branch. He was the first African American officer in the Marine Corps. His life reveals a good bit about the degree to which one could in the past find racial prejudice in the Marine Corps.
Still, at the end of Branch’s life, he saw clearly that the Corps had made a concerted effort to distance itself from such prejudices. Tomorrow I will share Branch’s life story with my readers.
