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Veteran
News | Feb. 23, 2022
Famed director Spike Lee learns of MIA cousin after making movie about cousin’s unit
WASHINGTON – Early in 2021, Spike Lee, acclaimed director of movies like “BlackKkKlansman,” “Malcolm X,” and “Do The Right Thing,” received a letter from the United States Army. He was a little confused, because, as far as he knew, no one in his family had ever been in the Army. Curious, he opened the letter to learn his first cousin once removed, Maceo A. Walker, was a private first class in the 92nd Inf. Div., the only African American infantry division in Europe during World War II, and has been missing since 1945. First cousin once removed means Maceo’s mother was Spike’s grandfather’s sister.
“I didn’t know what to think,” said Spike. “Is this a joke, or what? Because I want to really emphasize, my grandmother, my mother, my grandfather, no one ever talked about my grandfather having siblings.”
It turns out Spike is Maceo’s primary next of kin, his eldest still-living relative.
“We get this all the time where family members are like, ‘We never knew of the service member! Our parents never talked about them.’” said Laurie Jones, Spike’s casualty case management specialist with the Army’s Past Conflict Repatriation Branch. “We have to try to show the family member how they are related to the service member, and that’s what I had to do with Spike, walk him through the genealogy reports so he could understand how he was related, because he didn’t believe he was related to the service member.”
“I had no idea till I got the letter!” Spike said.
In what could be called serendipity, Spike learning about Maceo was not his first connection with the 92nd Inf. Div., called the “Buffalo Soldiers.” He made the movie “Miracle at St. Anna” in 2008 based on the real-life massacre by the Nazis at Sant'Anna Di Stazzema, a small village in Tuscany, and the experiences of the 92nd in Italy during World War II.
“The 92nd was… should be the most fabled black unit in World War II,” said James McBride. “It’s been overlooked by historians for years.”
James is the author of “Miracle at St. Anna,” the novel on which the movie was based. He also wrote the movie’s screenplay.
“I started researching black Soldiers in Europe during World War II,” James said. “Of course, I came across the Tuskegee Airmen, but if you look a little bit deeper, I kept running into these stories about the men in the Serchio Valley who had done this and that and the other, and so I moved to Italy for six months and researched the book and that’s how I found out about the 92nd Division. It’s just an extraordinary story.”
The segregated division, made up of primarily white senior officers and African American junior officers and enlisted, was sent in the summer of 1944 to the Gothic Line in the northern Apennine Mountains, Germany’s last major line of defense against the Allied forces pushing north up the Italian peninsula. They remained there throughout the winter with their one major operation – Operation FOURTH TERM – taking place in February 1945. Maceo was killed on Feb. 10 during a battle near the Cinquale Canal.
“To be in Italy, to do this film, to honor the 92nd Division and be in the area where this battle took place and my cousin, Pfc. Maceo A. Walker, died at 20 years old, that’s the spirits there,” Spike said. “I can’t explain it any other way. It’s not just my cousin, but all of those brothers in 92nd Division, ‘Buffalo Soldiers,’ who fought for this country, who believed in this country, and came home to the United States and were still not full-class citizens.”
Despite countless contributions to military conflicts going back to the American Revolution, African Americans still struggled for the same treatment as their white counterparts.
“It should be mentioned the 92nd was treated very poorly by the press,” James added. “In part because the daily battle reports were written by the commanders of the different companies, and they were mostly white, mostly southerners, who didn’t like commanding a lot of the 1st and 2nd lieutenants, who basically ran everything and who were young, educated black men from New York and Washington, D.C. and went to Howard and so forth. It created a lot of problems, mostly because of Ned Almond, who was a very good general, but he was a southerner, and he reflected the beliefs of that time.”
James continued saying we, as a nation, will be lost if we don’t pay attention to our history.
“There’s a lot about the 92nd that was very good that people didn’t know, and there was a lot about it that wasn’t so good that people don’t know. The fact that we’re having this conversation means that we are trying to ferret our way out of the maze of racial problems that exist in this country,” the best-selling author concluded.
