Morgan Freeman, 86, on His Documentary About WWII’s First Black Tank Unit: ‘American History Includes Black People’

What was his response?

Steven said, “Well, yeah, I know, mea culpa.”

There was a controversy then about the lack of inclusion in Saving Private Ryan, right?

Yes. I told Steven we wanted his help [producing our script].

But Spielberg went on to produce WWII projects with Tom Hanks — the documentary Shooting War: World War II Combat Cameramen (2000) and the miniseries Band of Brothers (2001) and The Pacific (2010), and you went on to other movies?

Ultimately, the 761st Tank Battalion project was shelved.

Morgan Freeman with Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in conversation with Pentagon military personnel.

Photo by André Chung/The HISTORY Channel

However, you persevered. Your two uncles served in WWII — how did the mystery of their stories pull you into this one?

My father and his two brothers were conscripted. My father was the only one with children so he was sent home. My two uncles remained. But I could find no record of them. At all. I thought that I’d heard that my favorite uncle was missing in action in the Pacific. Then, while making this movie, we learned that he was murdered and buried in France. When my father found out, he had his remains transferred stateside.​

In the film, you sit down with one of the last surviving members of the 761st, now in his 90s, and his children — who discovered facts about his experience they hadn’t known. Why had the veteran kept secrets from his own children?

The problem of war veterans is, they don’t talk about exploits or whatever they did in the military. It was very hard for them to regurgitate their experience. When you’re killing and being killed, the fog of war is some kind of mindset that is different than your everyday life. That’s one reason you don’t get these oral histories. Whether Black, white or yellow, veterans don’t come back talking about their exploits. As a regular soldier, they go, they come back. If they come back alive, great; if they come back in a coffin, pity.

Morgan Freeman

Photo by André Chung/The HISTORY Channel

At 18 in 1955, you enlisted to be an Air Force pilot, but they made you a radar mechanic. You thought that Black pilots were nixed by Gen. Curtis LeMay, who later inspired Jack D. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove and ran for vice president on segregationist George Wallace’s 1968 ticket. Was segregation an issue for you?

Segregation is an interesting concept. Off base we didn’t hang out with white servicemen. It was birds-of-a-feather syndrome. Segregation wasn’t imposed.

Was it different on base?

When you’re on the post, you’re all there together. Once we had a dance on the post. I hooked up with a white girl. There was a second lieutenant who dogged us, asking us “What are you doing?” and all of that, but the colonel set him straight.

How do you feel about the fight over civil rights today?

I’m not going backward. There are people who are attempting to reverse something. That’s on them. For me, if you are able to ban books, I don’t think that’s really possible. You can’t in this world. You can’t tell people they can’t read. If I’m in some sort of cocoon of unacceptance, that’s fine. I’m not going back. I won’t allow anybody around me to go back, either.