A new motion picture brings to the screen the story of 160 young African Americans, who fought German U-boats in the Atlantic and racism at home during World War II, as members of the U.S. Navy's first all-black crew of the USS Mason (DE-529).
In the United States, no set of citizens has had to prove itself more—or more often—than African Americans. Beginning with the first to fall in the Boston Massacre, the African American-Native American harpooner Crispus Attucks, black Americans have waged a dual struggle with foreign enemies as well as with their own country. Sometimes they even have fought to fight. Sadly, when they sought recognition of their service afterward, they usually did not get it.
Between Attucks and President Harry Truman's 1948 fiat that ended segregation in the services, African Americans in the U.S. Navy were given few chances to prove themselves—the integrated Union Navy of the Civil War was a short-lived exception. Most often, they were set up to fail. If they somehow completed their mission, they were forced to do it far from the eyes of the nation.
One of these stories, rescued from the murk, is the foundation of Proud, a new feature movie by Mary Pat Kelly that creates a lively and energetic portrait of some special heroes whose lives easily could have vanished into the mists of history. It is the story of 160 African Americans out of 110,000 serving in the U.S. Navy in World War II who were "allowed" to engage directly in combat. Placed on board a single ship after being trained in segregated facilities and physically attacked in U.S. ports by white dock workers and sailors, this one crew (with ten white officers) was tasked with the triple burden of a public relations mission, a human rights agenda, and the heavyweather job of convoy duty during the Battle of the Atlantic.
They succeeded. Under the circumstances, the "satisfactory" rating the Evarts (DE-S)-class destroyer escort Mason (DE-529) received was a triumph. That the ship remained on solitary duty with her convoy during the "storm of the century" (when her British counterparts refused to leave port) earned the Mason a commendation.
But the decoration was not awarded until 1995, and that is what makes Proud one of those particularly American kinds of war stories. It is the narrative, familiar today in Iraq, that pairs the struggle of our country in combat with its simultaneous struggle to adhere to and advance its deepest values—even in a time of pronounced peril, when those values are seen by some to impede progress toward victory.
For the story of Proud, we can thank the luck, and pluck, of the Irish. Mary Pat Kelly was a Good Morning America producer when she first traveled to Northern Ireland in the 1970s to do a story about John Hume, a Catholic leader who was reaching out to Protestants and trying to put an end to the cycle of violence. She also became hooked by the untold stories of the 300,000 U.S. servicemen stationed in Northern Ireland during World War II. Kelly made a documentary about them, Home Away From Home: The Yanks in Ireland, in 1993. Walter Cronkite narrated, and the Mason was mentioned.
It was the concurrent discovery of an article in a black newspaper, however, that really opened Kelly's eyes. In 1944, wrote the Journal & Guide of Norfolk, the Mason's crew had a revelatory experience when they arrived in Ireland. "The Irish were the first to treat African Americans as Americans," says Kelly.
When Kelly located her first Mason veteran, James Graham, he told her, "I've been waiting for this call for 50 years." Kelly decided she had to get this particular story. When James Graham asked if she would do a book and a documentary about the Mason, she asked, "Does it matter that I'm a white woman whose Ph.D. is in English, not history? And whose books have been about film?" Graham said, "No, we want you," and the Naval Institute Press concurred.
Her pursuit of the ship's records and the story for the mislaid commendation was carried on despite initial reluctance by the Navy. But the climate had changed under the Clinton administration and secretary of the Navy John Dalton, and a number of human rights wrongs were righted, if only symbolically. Freddie Meeks, a survivor of the so-called Port Chicago Mutiny, which took place in August 1944 after a Navy inquiry blamed the supposed incompetence of black sailors for an explosion at an ammunition pier that killed more than 300 sailors, received a presidential pardon. Now it was the men of the Mason's turn.
As documented in Kelly's book, Proudly We Served (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1995), and her PBS documentary of the same title, the survivors of the Mason got their moment in the sun and more. Because of the book, the commendation was confirmed and awarded by secretary Dalton in a ceremony at the Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Even then the story would not quitor, rather, Kelly would not let go of it. Something in her burned to expand the audience for the story. She wanted to make it into a feature film. To do thatfilm being a fabulously expensive medium—more than a new source of inspiration had to appear. She needed a financial angel.
A big fan of the story, it turned out, was clothing mogul Tommy Hilfiger, whom Kelly had met 15 years before. "Mary Pat Kelly gave me the book," said Hilfiger at the New York screening this past Memorial Day weekend, "and I just felt that this story had to be told-publicly." He was part of her effort to gain financing and support for a feature.
In June 2001, a new Mason was commissioned, with as many of the old crew who could make it in attendance. At the ceremony, Kelly reunited with Lorenzo DuFau, one of the principals of the documentary and vice chairman of the USS Mason Association. She felt confident enough to promise him, "I'm going to make your movie, Mr. DuFau."
The events of September 2001 made that promise come true earlier than expected. As Hilfiger tells it, "Two years ago, after 9/11, I just said to Mary Pat: 'Here's the money. Do the story.'" Kelly remembers a more impassioned version of the same conversation. "Tommy said to me, 'We need heroes, and we need them now.'"
Hilfiger formed T.H.Entertainment and gave Kelly money to make the movie. By Hollywood standards, this was not 1 % of what Pearl Harbor cost. As a first-time feature director, Kelly would go the indie route. There would be no oceanic simulations in water-tank studios in Mexico, no A-list starlets, no explosives displays to rival the destruction of the Arizona (BB-39). But then, it was not that kind of story, anyway.
The script developed the struggles of the crew through a framing device: a trio of young urban black sophisticates, educated and savvy, who have inherited the freedom to live their lives without understanding the sacrifices that made it possible. But the grandfather of one of the young men is Lorenzo DuFau, and when their loud hip-hop wakes him one night, he gives them an earful of his own. As his story unfolds, the three young men become the three principals on board the Mason: DuFau, Graham (also chairman of the Mason Association), and Gordon Buchanan.
The role of the elder DuFau gave the film its first A-list actor: Ossie Davis. Davis, who did the narration in the 1996 documentary and is an Army veteran of World War II, has created legendary roles, written breakthrough plays, and directed films of his own. His earthy passion ignites Proud, and his scenes give the drama a soaring operatic quality. The second A-list actor to sign on was a ship, on exhibit in Buffalo at the Naval and Military Park. To play the part of the Mason, the museum's destroyer, The Sullivans (DD-537), was enlisted.
Three young actors took the roles of the young compatriots DuFau, Graham, and Buchanan: Albert Jones, Eric Laray Harvey, and Jeffrey Nash. To fill out the ship's crew and friends, an open call was issued. "It was the middle of winter, but once the word got out about the nature of the project, we were overwhelmed," said Kelly. "One hundred extras from some pretty rough areas in Buffalo swapped their puffy jackets for uniforms. And you know, something interesting happened to some of them when they put on those old-style uniforms. They stood a little taller, stopped slouching. They felt the pride."
Albert Jones felt the same transformation. A graduate of Notre Dame and the American Conservatory Theater, Jones and the other actors did not have the luxury of the sort of three-month "boot camps" big-time stars and directors love to indulge in, and which make for so much good publicity. But Jones did turn to his grandfather, an Army veteran of the war, for insight. He found more. "My character's from Louisiana, my grandfather's from Louisiana," Jones said. "Just like my character, he had married right before he went over, so he was trying to retain his relationship long distance. But unlike Mr. DuFau, he didn't get a chance to fight; he was doing clerical work. He related very much to what my character was going through."
Filming was done in three segments: on board The Sullivans in a frigid March that rather too accurately simulated a North Atlantic convoy run; at Hilfiger's estate in his hometown of Elmira, New York, for the contemporary scenes; and in Derry, Northern Ireland, where the third A-list member of the cast provided the warm Irish welcome.
Actor Stephen Rea has made his mark playing men tormented by ambiguity and conscience, often inhabiting the gray area where a war for independence shades into terrorism. In Proud, Rea puts a nice twist on his previous roles as an IRA operative in The Crying Game and Michael Collins by tempting the character of James Graham to desert. That no such incident happened is balanced by Graham's ultimate decision to stay. How he decides will be left for those to see who catch Proud when it opens in theaters in February 2005.
In the process of coming to the screen, Proud unites two kinds of heroes: those who fight the battles for freedom and those who fight to make sure those battles are remembered, and, just as important, understood. In addition, it points to the need for another type of hero—an angel, hovering somewhere in the wings, to ensure that future generations get a chance to experience the past.
Of course, those who lived the story have their own opinions. When James Graham was asked how he felt on seeing the movie, he gave his by-now familiar gruff laugh. "How do I feel?" he repeated. "I was thinking about reenlisting."
Mr. Wallace is executive editor of Yachting magazine and author of One Great Game (New York: Atria, 2003).