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superficial charm and the moral dilemma faced by the white Quakers. However the LosAngeles Times saw its 'timelessness' in the context of a 'world on the brink of newconflicts.' This was the time of the Hungarian uprising and the Suez crisis which broughtthe two major world powers into confrontation and demonstrated once again how close theCold War was to disrupting peace - as Mosby's Marauders were to the Birdwell family.Josh, the eldest son, after a struggle with his conscience, sets aside his pacifist beliefs tohelp to defend the community. When his horse returns alone his father sets out, gun inhand, to find him. Any threat to the American way of life ultimately had to be met. Everycitizen, whatever their beliefs, would rally to America's defence. Friendly Persuasion is agood example of the intertwining of Cold War and civil rights.The next year saw miscegenation explored for the first time in a Civil War film within ablack/white romantic context. In Band of Angels (1957),27 Amantha only learns that she isthe daughter of a mixed-race union on the death of her father. She therefore becomes partof the estate and is taken to New Orleans to be sold as a slave. Amantha refuses to accepther new status. 'Nobody's going to keep me from being free' she tells the slave dealer. Sheis called a 'flower of Kentucky' by the auctioneer, who knows 'for a fact that she hascoloured blood but it couldn't be more than a miser's dram' - yet Amantha's mother wasAfrican American. Hamish Bond, a wealthy plantation owner, who made his money fromillegal slave trading, buys Amantha at the slave auction. She replaces his previous Creolemistress, Michelle, who remains as the housekeeper. Bond seems to have had mainly inter-racial relationships and in the film is never seen with a white woman. There is also the hintthat he is the father of his 'boss Negro' Rau-Ru, whom he rescued as a baby in Africawhen Rau-Ru's mother, 'a woman I used to know,' is killed. The PCA was far moreconcerned with the sex scenes in this film than in Run of the Arrow, although the sex isimplied rather than shown, and seemed to indicate that this was because of the black/whiterelationship. It also takes place in the heart of the South during the Civil War and not in thewest after the Civil War, as in Run of the Arrow. There is an 'unacceptable treatment ofillicit sex,' wrote Geoffrey Shurlock 'resulting in a woman, a slave, getting herfreedom,'staying on as Bond's mistress and then 'sailing off with him 'at the end.' It istreated 'romantically,' there are no 'compensating moral values.' 28 They were there, butgiving slaves freedom was apparently not recognised as a moral value. The HollywoodReporter echoed these sentiments and pointed to the double racial standards when it90
eported that the film had 'already stirred up some excitement and controversy because ofthe love story - a white man and a part-Negro girl.'29Band of Angels did challenge the current tensions in race relations through the maleAfrican American lead Rau-Ru, the self-assured, articulate and 'adopted' son of HamishBond. He understands what freedom means - control over one's own life - otherwise it is'a white word' defined for other races by whites. To Rau-Ru, Bond's attitude to keepingslaves and treating them with 'kindness' is 'worse than rawhide. When a man uses a whipyou learn what there is to fight against. But this kindness - it's a trap that can hold you inbondage forever.' Rau-Ru explodes the myth of the benevolent plantation, of the attitudethat African Americans can never be the equal of white Americans, that a compliantexpression does not imply contentment with slavery -just accommodation until freedomcan be achieved. All this comes out with passion and anger while African Americans arestill seething over the killing of Emmett Till and are celebrating their success of theMontgomery bus boycott. Strong though this discussion is, its impact is lessened byHollywood's caution and compromise, which replaced the complexities and hard realitiesof the book with romance and an apologia for the South. The illegal slave trade is carriedout by Northerners, like Bond, and African chiefs; a former lover of Amantha, a northernerand abolitionist, attempts to blackmail and seduce her; the Union General Butler is accusedof 'confiscating' the slaves to work on 'carpetbagging plantations where the Yankees willuse the whip and pay no wages'; only one of the plantations that are mentioned, run by aplanter of French origin, uses harsh treatment, where every slave is 'scarred by the whip';and at the end Rau-Ru is reconciled to Bond and helps him and Amantha to escape. Thelast scene is of the lonely Rau-Ru waving them goodbye, the loyal servant having helpedhis master one more time - an echo of Griffith's His Trust Fulfilled (1911). 30A different perspective on miscegenation - one that went to the heart of the South's racialfears - is presented in Raintree County (1957). Where Amantha became stronger in herdetermination to overcome her new black status, the southern belle Susanna, in Raintree, ishaunted by the fear that she might have 'one drop' of 'Nigro blood.' This, she declares toher new northern husband, makes 'a person all Nigro.' It is worse than 'being anAbolitionist.' This fear of the mulatto echoes Birth where the 'villains,' Stoneman'shousekeeper/mistress and Silas Lynch, are both mulattos. The South can deal with theissue of abolition (desegregation) in the mid-1950s, but mixing blood through inter-racial91
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Greenwich Academic Literature Archi
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REEL WARS: COLD WAR, CIVIL RIGHTSAN
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ABSTRACTThis study is an examinatio
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ABBREVIATIONSAMPASAHRBirthCommissio
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Historians using film as a resource
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dominated America's foreign policy
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Mary L. Dudziak explores this relat
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pure and simple' and were therefore
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historical texts. Hayden White comp
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Historians, history films and film
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How have sympathetic film historian
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Therefore historians can, with over
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identity and these were taken as th
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21 George F. Custen, 'Hollywood and
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63 Rosenstone, The Historical Film,
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of Honor dedicated to, and listing,
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War.....[it] defined us as to what
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The Civil War and popular cultureJu
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memory,53 the place where Union and
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Despite being a new medium Hollywoo
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From the late 1940s Hollywood was u
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1 William Faulkner, Requiem for a N
Page 47 and 48: 36 Blight, Race and Reunion, 77, 81
Page 49 and 50: mainly composed of members of the w
Page 51 and 52: there was cowardice, it was either
Page 53 and 54: This was another Lost Cause myth -
Page 55 and 56: stuff with plenty of clothes, rich
Page 57 and 58: women into or within slavery. 47 Th
Page 59 and 60: departure when, in the discussion o
Page 61 and 62: 1 William Dean Howells, Los Angeles
Page 63 and 64: 37 Melvyn Stokes, The Civil War in
Page 65 and 66: All races and religions, that's Ame
Page 67 and 68: Hollywood almost abandoned Civil Wa
Page 69 and 70: charged with disloyalty and silence
Page 71 and 72: ecover from the HUAC investigations
Page 73 and 74: a living. The daughters grow up to
Page 75 and 76: Gettysburg. 'You know,' says Henry,
Page 77 and 78: combining two great myths, which co
Page 79 and 80: (1948), Tom Dunson's style of autoc
Page 81 and 82: Patriotism became a white attribute
Page 83 and 84: In the absence of African Americans
Page 85 and 86: (Horizons West) and businessmen (An
Page 87 and 88: year later, and there was no lead f
Page 89 and 90: 20 Mary L. Dudziak, Cold War, Civil
Page 91 and 92: 56 Richard White, 'Western History'
Page 93 and 94: 7 have seen the promised land.' 'Th
Page 95 and 96: those between whites and African Am
Page 97: change, to forget what made him, he
Page 101 and 102: campaigning for Lincoln. John's rea
Page 103 and 104: lack/white relationships, in Civil
Page 105 and 106: McCarthy discredited and a more rel
Page 107 and 108: dispute which once divided our nati
Page 109 and 110: pressure, continued to hold. The me
Page 111 and 112: discrimination, attempts at univers
Page 113 and 114: talks about Lincoln pleading that '
Page 115 and 116: creativity. The Confederates use a
Page 117 and 118: police in Birmingham and Kennedy's
Page 119 and 120: 1 Martin Luther King Jr.'s, speech,
Page 121 and 122: 44 Blight, Race and Reunion, 8-11,
Page 123 and 124: - self-belief, reasons for fighting
Page 125 and 126: Sexploitation - which reversed the
Page 127 and 128: would surely recognise the Mexicans
Page 129 and 130: There are similar examples in Major
Page 131 and 132: on working class whites nor receive
Page 133 and 134: The conflict between civil rights a
Page 135 and 136: e trusted from the wiles of the mis
Page 137 and 138: field-hands are too valuable an inv
Page 139 and 140: moving the civil rights agenda to a
Page 141 and 142: McBurney, even though he is wounded
Page 143 and 144: Most reviewers were sympathetic, se
Page 145 and 146: conservatism,' as a natural ally fo
Page 147 and 148: By the early 1970s, Hollywood's opt
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20 Enoch, in Friendly Persuasion (1
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62 Johnson called what happened the
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The world is white no longer; and i
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proceed with civil rights legislati
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would have been counter to the poli
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mid-1990s was rejected as the compa
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those historians who were contestin
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1 James Baldwin, Stranger in the Vi
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39 Robert Brent Toplin, Reel Histor
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1210mmmto3sCT>The number of America
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There is a third problem - that of
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the Library of Congress and the Uni
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mainly contain copies of correspond
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killing. There were two other areas
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are 'no compensating moral values a
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epresented.' 32 However, this was t
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Reference has already been made to
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It is in the final period that anti
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22 Letter from Shurlock to William
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Year Director Company190819091910Ba
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191119121912Grant and LincolnHe Fou
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19131913Call to Arms, TheCarpenter,
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1915 Birth of a Nation, TheColonel
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19341935193619371938193919401941194
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Searchers, TheShowdown at AbileneTh
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Alien, Robert C., and Douglas Gomer
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Cassidy, John M., Civil War Cinema:
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Foner, Eric, Who Owns History, (New
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Landy, Marcia, (ed.), The Historica
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Prince, Stephen, A New Pot of Gold:
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Sternsher, Bernard, Consensus, Conf
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