The true story of how a group of African American pilots overcame racist opposition to become one of the finest US fighter groups in World War II
Paris Qualles (teleplay), Trey Ellis (teleplay), and 3 more credits »
The man known for creating the nationally syndicated comic strip The Boondocks in the late 1990s also has his hands in a film being released this weekend. Aaron McGruder, the controversial man with wide-ranging opinions on a vast variety of subjects, co-wrote Red Tails.
The project, financed by filmmaker George Lucas, opened on Friday in theaters nationwide and chronicles the lives of Tuskegee Airmen, a group of black pilots placed in an experimental training program during World War II.
“About two years ago, I got a call from my agent asking if I wanted to meet with Lucas to talk about the script,” McGruder told the Daily Beast. “I was like, ‘Yes, I would!’ I’m a Stars Wars guy and also the son of a military pilot, so it was the best of both worlds for me to do a project like this.”
McGruder was said to be brought on by Lucas to add a fresher, more youthful take on the film.
“That was my biggest contribution to the project, making it more of an action-hero type film,” McGruder told the Daily Beast. “I used my comic strip experience to make the script have a faster pace. There have been other movies on the Tuskegee Airmen, so I wanted to make sure the audience had a different view of these men … this film has something for older people who know the story, and younger people who aren’t so familiar with the story and like action.”
We urge everyone to go and support this film that George Lucas felt was an important enough story to tell, whether Hollywood backed it or not.
A black Navy veteran credited with saving the lives of some of his shipmates during a World War II battle will be getting a long-awaited medal for his heroism, a Northern California congresswoman said.
Carl Clark, 95, will be awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with the Combat Distinguished Device on Jan. 17, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo announced Thursday.
Clark was serving as an E-6 Steward First Class aboard the USS Aaron Ward when Japanese kamikazes attacked the destroyer near Okinawa in May 1945.
“They would guide those planes directly into the ships,” Clark said of the planes he described as “flying bombs.”
Six kamikazes hit the destroyer, with the blast from one plane so powerful that Clark said it blew him “all the way across the ship.”
Though he suffered a broken collarbone in the attack, Clark was credited with saving the lives of several men by dragging them to safety. He also put out a fire in an ammunition locker that, according to Eshoo’s office, would have cracked the destroyer in half.
Reached at his home in Menlo Park on Christmas Eve, Clark told The Associated Press that even though the destroyer’s captain acknowledged that he had saved the ship, it took 66 years to be recognized for his actions, according to Clark, because of “bigotry.”
“It wouldn’t look good to say one black man saved the ship,” he said.
The captain of the destroyer tried to make up for the slight by giving him extra leave and making sure that he was not sent back to sea, Clark said.
The work in eventually getting him the medal was made more difficult because of the lack of documentation and living witnesses to the attack, Eshoo said, adding that the decision to award the medal was a “Christmas Miracle.”
“It is a singular privilege to be in a position to correct the record for those who have fought to preserve our freedoms,” she said in a statement.
“Carl Clark served our nation during a time when the Navy was deeply segregated and a culture of racism was prevalent. His courage stands as a symbol of the greatness of our nation, and this award, also given to Senator John McCain, calls out Mr. Clark as a true American hero.”
Clark will receive the medal during a ceremony at Moffett Field in Mountain View, Calif.
Trenton’s New Black Panther Party on Thursday denounced a neo-Nazi rally set for tomorrow at the Statehouse, across from New Jersey’s World War II Memorial, and urged community members to join them in a counterprotest.
Speaking at the city’s Veterans Memorial on South Broad Street, Panther youth minister and former city council candidate Divine Allah criticized plans for a demonstration by up to 150 members of the National Socialist Movement, or NSM.
“It’s not about violence, it’s not about fighting fire with fire,” he said. “It’s about standing up and not letting this pass by.”
His feelings were echoed by state Senate Republicans who said they will introduce legislation honoring the 30,000 service members from the state who were killed fighting fascism in World War II.
“New Jersey’s World War II Memorial was dedicated in 2008 to honor the sacrifices of those who fought fascism overseas to preserve our freedoms at home,” said (more…)
Ralph Bunche was an American political scientist and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Palestine. He was the first African American to be so honored in the history of the Prize. Bunche chaired the Department of Political Science at Howard University from 1928 until 1950, where he taught generations of students. He also was a member of the American Federation of Teachers affiliate at Harvard. In 1936, Bunche authored a pamphlet entitled A World View of Race. In it, Bunche wrote: “And so class will some day supplant race in world affairs. Race war will then be merely a side-show to the gigantic class war which will be waged in the big tent we call the world.” From 1936 to 1940, Bunche served as contributing editor of the journal Science and Society: A Marxian Quarterly. Bunche spent time during World War II in the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA, as senior social analyst on Colonial Affairs before joining the State Department in 1943. At the State Department, he was appointed Associate Chief of the Division of Dependent Area Affairs under Alger Hiss. With Hiss, Bunche became one of the leaders of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR). He participated in the preliminary planning for the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference of 1945. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations and in 1963, received the Medal of Freedom from President John F. Kennedy.
Nearly a dozen sculptures considered by the Nazis to be “degenerate” artwork and believed to have been lost or destroyed after World War II have been unearthed during construction near Berlin’s city hall and were shown to reporters Monday.
The terra-cotta and bronze statues were found during a dig to lay down a new subway line. They belonged to a collection of 15,000 works condemned by Hitler’s regime for containing “deviant” sexual elements, anti-nationalistic themes or criticizing Nazi ideology.
The sculptures mainly depict women — a woman holding grapes, a mother and her child, a full-figured woman stretching — the other three are of males.
Ten of the pieces will go on display Tuesday in Berlin’s Neues Museum. One, a male terra-cotta head, is too fragile for display.
Construction workers found the art on the site of an office building that burned down in the summer of 1944, Museum Director Matthias Wemhoff told reporters Monday. The fire started in the roof, burning the building from the top down.
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