Based on the books ‘Lay This Laurel’ by Lincoln Kirstein and ‘One Gallant Rush’ by Peter Burchard, and the wartime letters of Robert Gould Shaw, ‘Glory’, one of the finest films ever made about the American Civil War will be screened at 6 pm on Novemebr 10 at the American Canter, Colombo 3.
Considered as the first major Hollywood film to acknowledge the vital contribution of African American soldiers to the country’s historic struggle, the film tells the story of the 54th Regiment of the Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an all-black unit comprising Northern freemen and escaped slaves.
Director Edward Zwick’s 1989 Civil War epic tackles the little-known fact that distinguished the 54 Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry from others in the Union army: it was made up primarily of black men, some free Nothern blacks, others escaped slaves from the South.
In the events leading up to the Battle of Fort Wagner at Charleston, South Carolina, on July 18, 1863, we watch as the men become better-trained for combat, only to see that at the time, Northern intentions for this black regiment focused more on things like putting on a show for the abolitionists, or using them as a means to destroy Southern towns and collect profit off of the goods they lift from the dwellings.
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