A Valiant/Flawed Effort

Rating: 10/10 (20 May 2001)

The film "Glory" was a tremendous effort depicting the valor and sacrifice of the Massachusetts 54th Colored Regiment's assault on Fort Wagner near Charleston, South Carolina. Morgan Freeman and Denzel Washington deliver stand out performances that offer powerfully moving messages about the plight of Black Americans during this watershed in American history. Yet for all of this film's strong points, it offered viewers many inaccuracies that Hollywood seems incapable of avoiding when rendering accounts of Black American history. The 54th Regiment was made up of 1,000 men that were primarily well-educated, professional northerners from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, the Midwest, Canada, and in one instance a Black émigré from Bermuda that then lived in New York City. His name was Robert J. Simmons. He became a Sergeant in the 54th.
The film unfortunately left viewers with the impression that the regiment was primarily composed of illiterate, recently escaped or freed slaves. Nothing could have been further from the truth about the 54th and indeed the majority of Black soldiers who served in the Union Army! Many were doctors, lawyers, educators, and other professionals. (I challenge viewers to read Edwin S. Redkey's compilation of Black Union soldiers' letters entitled "A Grand Army of Black Men". You will discover that letter-writing is a lost art as most of these letters are eloquent and highly descriptive. You will be immediately struck by the grammatical accuracy and various details about their personal and professional lives that underscores these men's obvious exposure to first-rate educations and a variety of professional and business pursuits.) While "Glory" was moving and relatively historically accurate, it failed to acknowledge Black Abolitionist Frederick Douglass' two sons who served in the 54th, one of whom became a Sergeant Major. The character of Thomas Searles, portrayed by the phenomenal Andre Braugher, was the only educated free Black northerner depicted in this film. Unfortunately, his character was depicted as too intellectual to be psychologically and physically fit for the rigors of military life; there was no innuendo that his allegedly privileged, "free" life in Massachusetts had rendered him less capable of adjusting to the rough life of a soldier.
The brave men who actually served in the 54th were as articulate and intellectual as Searles, but viewers would never have known it by viewing this film. While we can be certain that there were Black Union soldiers more adaptable to combat than others, viewers should have at least been allowed to learn that Black male intellectualism, physical prowess, and military capability were, more often than not, compatible components found in many of these individuals. "Glory" represented a good first effort at describing what happened at Fort Wagner that fateful day of 18 July 1863, but it managed to offer viewers a rather flawed depiction of the personalities, backgrounds, and motives of the Black men who made up this regiment. Viewers would have been better served if the narrative had drawn on much more than Colonel Robert Gould Shaw's letters. Viewers might have learned that lettered Black men from the north were bright individuals who could and did fight heroically. This film gets an "A+" for performances, but a "C-/B+" due to its historical inaccuracies.