{"id":18037,"date":"2016-10-07T11:18:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-07T16:18:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=18037"},"modified":"2016-10-07T11:49:50","modified_gmt":"2016-10-07T16:49:50","slug":"breach-birth-of-a-nation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lincolndemocrat.com\/?p=18037","title":{"rendered":"Breach Birth of a Nation"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was an article on the movie title turned on its ear “Birth of a Nation”<\/a> in yesterday’s DNT. The original “Birth” gave birth to modern Hollywood and also helped rebirth the Ku Klux Klan. DW. Griffith’s movie was unlike any movie audiences had ever seen and it made unprecedented scads of money. Think Star Wars<\/strong> Squared. <\/p>\n

It looks like I’ve mentioned the movie a couple times in this blog starting with this post<\/a>. To cap off my recent labor of Hercules – cleaning my office stables – I shuffled thirty year’s worth of family memorabilia into discrete piles for each of several familial lines and put them away for future reorganizations. The pile I kept out for further work is on my Grandfather Robb who has been a constant reference point for this blog and especially so this year on the eve of the centenery of his earning the Congressional Medal of Honor. <\/p>\n

On February 29th, Leap Day, I attended a presentation by Dr. Jeffrey Sammons at the World War 1 Museum in Kansas City who spoke about his recent research on my Grandfather, George Robb. <\/p>\n

Dr. Sammons wrote the book<\/a> on the premier American Infantry Regiment in World War 1 called the “Harlem Hell Fighters” after the German assessment of their fighting abilities. White American officers didn’t want anything to do with them, didn’t want them to fight and earn “glory” and perhaps pick up dangerous uppity notions upon their return to America. General Pershing’s solution was to give the American unit to the French Fourth Army where they managed to accomplish two things 1. win a unit citation from the French which awarded the regiment<\/a> the nation’s highest military medal the Croix de Guerre and 2. single handedly bring American Jazz to Europe making it an overnight sensation.<\/p>\n