Transcript: Race in America: History Matters with Morgan Freeman & Phil Bertelsen -

MR. ROBINSON: Hello, and welcome to Washington Post Live. I’m Eugene Robinson, associate editor and columnist here at The Post, and I’m going to start today with a question. Did you know that during World War II, after the D-Day invasion, there was an all-African American tank unit, the Black Panthers, who fought their way all the way across Europe into Adolf Hitler’s Germany? I did not know that, but our guests today are going to change that fact.

I am so happy to welcome my guests. Joining me are Academy Award-winning actor Morgan Freeman and Emmy Award-winning director Phil Bertelsen. Morgan and Phil, welcome to Washington Post Live.

MR. FREEMAN: Well, thank you very much, Mr. Robinson.

MR. BERTELSEN: Thank you so much.

MR. ROBINSON: It's great to have both of you here. I have seen the documentary, and it is absolutely fantastic.

Morgan, you are the executive producer of this, of this new film, and I believe you say in the trailer that you've sort of been chasing the story of the 761st forever. "761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers" is the name of the film.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: So what did you mean by that, that you've been chasing it forever?

MR. FREEMAN: Well, I--well, it was some sort of hyperbolic term. Actually, for close to 25 years, we've been trying to get this project mounted. By project, I mean somehow getting it into the public eye, either by a movie--or in this case, we have--we got a documentary, which we finally got done, and now we're headed to turn it into a series. The documentary gives us a taste of it, tells us who and what, but not the nitty-gritty, not the inside, not sort of the day-to-day life of these men, which is what I really want to do, pattern it after "Band of Brothers," that series, which was so good--

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. FREEMAN: --for the Airborne.

MR. ROBINSON: So you--

MR. FREEMAN: That cover it?

MR. ROBINSON: No, that covers it, but it sounds like you're thinking about further projects on the 761st. Is that right?

MR. FREEMAN: Absolutely, absolutely. Personally, we think that the best way to do that is with a ten-part TV series. You know, it shows them moment-to-moment, day-to-day, battle-to-battle, gets you more involved with who the men were, stuff like that.

MR. ROBINSON: I hope you get to do that.

Phil, this is--there actually have been attempts to raise the existence and the exploits of the 761st to public awareness in the past. I think there was a previous documentary and maybe there was a book. Why is now the time to try again and to do this project?

MR. FREEMAN: I don't know, personally. I think that things happen when they will.

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. FREEMAN: Time comes for something to happen, and it happens then. We've been trying for so long, but it doesn't matter. Nothing good comes easy, as they say. So--

MR. ROBINSON: Now, that's--now, that is the truth.

Phil, let me ask you the same question. Why--for you, why now this project?

MR. BERTELSEN: Well, for me, why now is the gentleman sitting with me and Mr. Freeman. I mean, those earlier attempts did not feature his passion, did not feature his story or his input, and I think, you know, the influence that he has has been able to bring this story to the light of day in a manner that previous projects weren't able. So they went unseen for the most part and unheard, and so now we hope to, you know, make the most of the opportunity to tell this little-known story about these war heroes.

MR. ROBINSON: So let me tell you both why this is so personal to me. I had a great uncle who served with the African American 92nd Infantry in World War I. My father and all three of his brothers served in the military during World War II. Only one, I think, that I know of, went overseas. He was in Italy. My godfather served in World War II in Iran, of all places, helping to operate the Persian Corridor where U.S. arms were shipped to our ally, the Soviet Union. And my father-in-law was a member of the all-Black crew of a Navy ship in the Pacific and left a map tracing his path from San Francisco to Australia, up the chain of islands toward mainland Japan. And so, you know, I know so many other people of African Americans of my generation who have that sort of family story but who haven't seen that represented at all in in the media, in the history books, and not in the public consciousness.

Morgan, you had uncles, I believe, who served in World War II, and you learned some things that you didn't know about their service in the course of doing the film. Isn't that right?

MR. FREEMAN: Right. You know, Phil and a crew did some incredible research, because I had to ask--I had no information on them at all about them even being in the service. There was no record of them. And I remember asking Colin Powell and--the secretary of defense then, Cohen, Bill Cohen, if they could help me find them, and they found nothing. Nothing. So I think Phil--you know, that proved they did an incredible job.

Turns out that I thought that my--one of my uncles was missing in action in the Pacific. I heard that when I was a little kid and went through life thinking, yeah, and I got to find out what happened to him. We find out he wasn't in the Pacific at all. He was in France, and yeah, he didn't die in battle. He was killed, murdered, like wow, so--

MR. ROBINSON: Wow. The things I've been--I've been researching a book of family history, and sometimes the things you find out are just out of the blue.

So, Phil, in the course of doing that kind of research for this film, was there an aha moment anywhere? I mean, I know from experience that when you're reporting a story and you don't quite have it, but you get this one nugget of information or this one interview, and you think, okay, now I've got it. What was that moment for you?

MR. BERTELSEN: Well, I think it--in large part, you know, I would have to say it started with the reporter Trezzvant Anderson, who was embedded with the battalion, and his story had been left untold. So he had done reporting from behind enemy lines with the 761st, and there was all this detail about their valor and their mission that was previously unknown. And it became abundantly clear to us--and by that, I mean, me and the Revelations Entertainment team--that there was a lot more there than meets the eye. And so we just kept turning over rocks, and we found some real surprising answers to questions that hadn't been asked. And, you know, fortunately, I had, you know, a strong team, and my producer, Rachel Fleischer, who was able to really do the digging and uncover the artifacts that really fill the story out and made them personal for Morgan, because it all speaks to this erasure of history in some ways.

And the fact that you have come from a long line of veterans yourself, Eugene, you know, is a common theme among African Americans in this country, and it's often their story that goes untold when you talk about the American narrative and who has purchase on its real triumphs and victories. And so that's what we set out to do, and hopefully, we were able to shine a little bit of light in this one dark place.

MR. ROBINSON: Well, I think you--I think you really did. You've shown a lot of light, a light on it.

And that, I mean, one of the fascinating things, of course, is that, you know, the military was segregated, was racially segregated, and that that's one reason why these stories were sort of ignored and overlooked. But there was also like an ideological reason. African Americans weren't supposed to be brave and capable and fearless. They weren't supposed to be suitable for combat.

And, Morgan, wasn't there some sort of study in 1925 or around then that--in which the Defense Department concluded that, well, you know, these Black folks just really can't fight?

MR. FREEMAN: Well, yes. We don't--we can't think fast enough. That was backing this idea that, well, we can't think fast enough to be tank men. Black people are just a little bit dull in the brain, you know. Yeah, and there was some people you could fall on who were, you know, outside the norm, but in the norm, no, couldn't do it. And that was what they came up with.

And I want to ask you a question before we finish, and that's about your relatives who were on this ship. I never heard of that.

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. FREEMAN: Do you know the name of the ship?

MR. ROBINSON: I don't have it with me. I think my wife has it someplace. He left behind--this is my father-in-law. His name was Edward Rhodes Collins. He left behind both a National Geographic map on which he had drawn the map of where his ship went during war, and he also left a photograph, which I think we have in storage now, but it's a photograph, a ship's photograph, the entire crew. So they're all assembled for a formal photograph and all Black sailors, and on every face, he has sort of--or above every face, he has sort of noted the person's nickname so like this is "Booboo" and this is "Big Money" and this is, you know, JoJo," and that's--it is an amazing artifact of that time. But, yes, he was on--he was on an all-Black Navy ship, and he was--so he was fighting the war, of course, but African Americans in the Second World War were fighting another battle. There was a whole battle here on the home front, and there was this concept of fighting for double victory.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: And so, Phil, can you talk about that a little bit, double victory, what that meant?

MR. BERTELSEN: Yeah. So the Double V campaign actually originated in the Black press, and it was this idea that, you know, rather than live as a half American to go abroad and fight fascism with the thought that your valor, your courage would earn you some citizenship back home that, you know, was lacking. And so a lot of men fought with that in mind, and, you know, it was arguably the right idea, because when you do go and show that courage, come home wounded, the least you can expect is your country to welcome you for your heroism. But, unfortunately, that wasn't the case for Black soldiers in World War II and the wars previous. But those that came home after World War II set about joining the civil rights movement and really pushing forward this notion that second-class citizenship was no longer acceptable. We've gone, fought for our country, died for our country, and we have every right to, you know, experience the meaning and depth of its citizenship.

And so it set about a desegregation of the military post-World War II. In fact, we're coming up on 75 years of the desegregated U.S. military as a result.

MR. ROBINSON: Exactly. Just a couple of weeks ago, I participated in a program here in Washington commemorating the 75th anniversary of Harry Truman's executive order desegregating the military, and of course, that followed World War II, and it also followed a horrific incident in my home state of South Carolina in which a returning Black soldier was brutally maimed. You covered it in the film Isaac Woodard--

MR. BERTELSEN: Yes.

MR. ROBINSON: --in Barnwell, South Carolina. It was just one of the most horrific things, and that helped prompt--helped get--you know, galvanize attention. It got President Truman's attention and ultimately helped push him toward the desegregation order.

You know, it's interesting what they--what was done to us, though. I mean, Morgan, talk about the fact that the training camp for the 761st was apparently deliberately situated in the Deep South in Louisiana. Tell me about that place, and tell me about what that was like for soldiers.

MR. FREEMAN: Well, of course, they--you know, they had separate facilities, living facilities, and as I remember reading, particularly in Louisiana, they were down in swamp areas. So you know what you get there, the mosquitoes and stuff, and, you know, they just--it got second-class everything, food, health care, living conditions. And the main thing about them, however, is that they were there from about 1940--some say '42. I thought I read '43. And anyway, all they did was train.

MR. ROBINSON: Right.

MR. FREEMAN: Train, train, train, train, train. So when they were mobilized, they were awesomely prepared--

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

MR. FREEMAN: --which--I mean, which is one of the reasons that that kept them out in front.

MR. ROBINSON: Oh, that's right. So let's get to that point.

MR. BERTELSEN: Right. Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: Go ahead.

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MR. BERTELSEN: I say the ultimate irony of keeping them out of battle meant that you overtrain them for battle. So when they got the call, they were better prepared than most.

MR. FREEMAN: Superbly.

MR. BERTELSEN: And they demonstrated.

MR. ROBINSON: Right. So that call ultimately came from General George S. Patton, who needed manpower and firepower in Europe as he was trying to drive into Germany.

So, Phil, why don't you just give us a kind of a sense of what exactly it was the 761st did in their campaign.

MR. BERTELSEN: Well, the primary thing they did was defy expectations. You know, they got called up by Patton's Third Army due to high attrition. This was after Normandy in around October of 1944, and they stayed at the tip of the spear, as it were, for 183 days. They were a tank battalion that wasn't assigned to any one particular infantry but moved around and described as a fire brigade, and so they went to these points of conflict where there was help needed, including the Battle of the Bulge, the Siegfried Line, which was the line along the Rhine River that separated, you know, Western Europe from Germany. And by the end of it all, they were the furthest east of U.S. tank units in the theater of war. They were--they found themselves in Austria when they heard the war was over--

MR. ROBINSON: [Laughs]

MR. BERTELSEN: --and even contributed to the liberation of concentration camps. So it's an extraordinary story of valor and perseverance, and they--but they have suffered great loss as well. Nearly half of this battalion was lost at battle.

MR. ROBINSON: You know, I smile because they end the war in Austria, right? It's furthest east of anybody. When I was growing up, the only sense I had that there were any Black soldiers in World War II was the one Black POW on "Hogan's Heroes," Sergeant Kinchloe. That was kind of it.

MR. BERTELSEN: Exactly. Yeah, that's right.

MR. ROBINSON: And, you know, I mean, I've seen the movies, you know, "Band of Brothers" and "Saving Private Ryan." I just missed--I guess I missed the scene about the 761st being the furthest advanced of all the tank units in the allied armies.

But they were actually--Morgan, they were actually out there for 183 straight days. Is that insane or just crazy? I mean, that doesn't happen, right? Except it happened to the 761st.

MR. FREEMAN: Soldiers usually get rotated back for rest and recreation, but, you know, Patton thought, well, okay, so you people wanted to come over here and fight. Well, I'll give you all the fight you want. So he did. That was--I think that was what the driving force, you know. This is the best unit we have. Don't want to say that, but there it is.

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, they were--

MR. FREEMAN: We can carry that through today. Look at your NFL football team. Who's becoming the leading quarterback in the NFL? Who's the leading players in the NBA? Could you remember about the flying--whatever that's called, that the--

MR. BERTELSEN: The Tuskegee Airmen.

MR. ROBINSON: Oh, the Tuskegee Airmen?

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah. But what is the movie? "Maverick"?

MR. ROBINSON: Oh, "Top Gun: Maverick"?

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah. "Top Gun." Well, "Top Gun" began after World War II when they put up a contest all between all these different fighter groups, Marines, Navy and Air Force. And in it were the Tuskegee Airmen.

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. FREEMAN: They were the Top Gun when that contest was over.

MR. ROBINSON: Really? Wow. Now, see, that I didn't know either. So we're going to have to--we're going to have to make a new action movie about that.

Morgan, one of the--one of the moments in the film that actually really touches me, one of many, the many moments that I just found personally affecting, but you sat down with Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: You mentioned having known and, you know, previous defense secretaries. This was different. Tell me about that. Tell me about that moment for you.

MR. FREEMAN: The one germane question that I asked secretary was, "Do you ever think the fact that you're Black? Do you ever just think of that, you know, like look in the mirror, realize who and where you are and what?" And he says, "Every day," every day, because he's in a place that historically would never happen, and there he is and doing the job. So--

MR. ROBINSON: Yeah.

MR. FREEMAN: And we talked about everything. We talked about the 761st, of course, but all kinds of Army history, how he came up through the ranks and where from and stuff. He was born in Birmingham, Alabama.

MR. ROBINSON: Yeah. And look where he is now.

MR. FREEMAN: Exactly.

MR. ROBINSON: It is amazing.

MR. BERTELSEN: Leading a force that looks a lot like him as well.

MR. ROBINSON: Mm-hmm.

MR. BERTELSEN: And so to be the first Black secretary of defense is not insignificant, and he's quite a leader. I'm really impressed with him.

MR. ROBINSON: Yeah. He is an impressive man.

In the film, Phil, we meet several military veterans who are working very hard to get the 761st the recognition and the accolades they deserve, and, you know, they finally got a Presidential Unit Citation, I think, 30 years or more after it should have been given. What more is being done? What more needs to be done?

MR. FREEMAN: We need to make this movie.

MR. ROBINSON: Well, of course, you need to make that that eight-to-ten-part TV series, and I'm sure that Netflix and Prime are listening and will be happy. But in the meantime, what else shall I ask, Phil, should be done?

MR. BERTELSEN: You know, I would say that there are those--and the 761st had more than its fair share of allies who were looking for them to get their long overdue recognition. Most importantly, they themselves, the veterans of the 761st formed an alliance and pushed, you know, for 30-plus years before they got the Presidential Unit Citation and then another 20 years before Ruben Rivers, one of their most heroic, who died in battle, was able to get his Medal of Honor. So I think it could be said that there are others besides Ruben who probably deserve that medal. There are plenty of Purple Hearts to go around and Silver Stars. I lose track of the number of wartime commendations, but the most significant ones, the ones that make it into the history books were lacking. And so, you know, there's still more to be said about the 761st, and hopefully, a multipart series will help do that.

MR. ROBINSON: Hopefully. I'm going to binge that. [Laughs]

So, in the film, we do meet one veteran of the 761st, and it is--again, it's one of those moments. He demonstrates his injuries, the shrapnel that's still in his body from injuries he sustained while serving with the unit.

Morgan, tell me about that, going into that home and speaking with him and that family. I think his children are sitting around the table.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah, of course. Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: And they say they're learning some of this for the first time. Talk about that.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah. Well, the main thing with war veterans is it's almost impossible to go back home and talk about your exploits, your experiences of what you did in combat. It just--I don't know if it's--if it's a fog-of-war situation or it's just that you can't--you can't make contact with people who have not experienced it. It's hard to--it must be too hard to express what you're going through when you're killing and being killed.

MR. ROBINSON: Yeah.

MR. FREEMAN: It's such a dire situation.

MR. ROBINSON: I guess at one point he says, you know, "I just didn't want to bring that home, you know, to you." He's speaking to his children. He didn't want to--

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah, yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: --to burden them. Right.

MR. FREEMAN: The film talked about how long it was before he even started to open up about his experience. It's "heartening," I guess is the word I want to use, to realize that any of them were still alive and able to discuss this with--

MR. ROBINSON: I know.

MR. FREEMAN: And what happened to him was this was the first contact they had with the enemy, and all that shrapnel came from a--

MR. BERTELSEN: German bazooka hit his tank.

MR. FREEMAN: Yeah.

MR. ROBINSON: A bazooka, right.

MR. FREEMAN: Exactly. And he was not mortally but gravely wounded and--

MR. ROBINSON: You know, that was the thing about--

MR. FREEMAN: And he was hidden in a ditch, covered up with ferns and gravel and--I mean ferns and dirt and stuff, and he survived until they found him again, took him to the hospital. So that was the end of his war after the first--after the first contact, but--

MR. BERTELSEN: Purple Heart.

MR. ROBINSON: Purple Heart. That's right. That's right. We get to see the Purple Heart, and he certainly--he certainly earned it. You know, there will come a day when there are none of them left, and that's--you know, that will be a--that will be a sad day, but it--I think we're all fortunate that that day hasn't quite come yet.

I want to--I just want to thank you both for, first, making "761st Tank Battalion: The Original Black Panthers"--let's give the title of the film correctly and--because I think it is just a wonderful and necessary and important addition to our knowledge about our history, and it understands that African American history actually is American history. There is no American history without African American history.

MR. FREEMAN: Yes. That's my mantra. There is no Black history that's worth anything. It's the American history.

MR. ROBINSON: It is American history, and this is a part of American history that we--that we know less of, much less of than we should, and I am extremely grateful that artists like the two of you are bringing it to us and bringing it to the wider public. So thank you for that and especially thank you for joining me on Washington Post Live.

MR. BERTELSEN: Thanks so much.

MR. FREEMAN: It's a great pleasure to talk to you. You're a voice and a face I'm very familiar with, so I'm pleased to know you.

MR. ROBINSON: Well, pleased to know you too.

MR. BERTELSEN: Thank you so much, and thank you, Morgan, for the opportunity to tell this story.

MR. FREEMAN: All right. Peace all.

MR. ROBINSON: And thank all of you for joining me today. For more information about what we have coming up at Washington Post Live, you can go to WashingtonPostLive.com. There, you can register. You’ll get all the information about the great interviews we have lined up.

Thanks again. I'm Eugene Robinson for The Washington Post.

[End recorded session]

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