Film Analysis: We Were Soldiers Once And Young

The United States was at war over civil rights, a war that in many ways spread from the South in the 1950’s throughout the country in the 1960’s and by the early 1970’s had spread worldwide. Although the battlefields were very different, the lush forests of the Ia Drong Vvalley stand in stark contrast to the skyscraper littered landscapes of Chicago, Detroit or Los Angeles, it was war nonetheless. While company commanders like Hal Moore lead his legendary 7th Ccavalry Rregiment into the Ia Drong battle in a fight that would be immortalized in the movie We Were Soldiers Once and Young, hundreds of thousands of Americans marched with Martin Luther King Jr. in some of the largest and most publicized demonstrations for civil rights in the United States. With the death of Martin Luther King Jr. iIn 1968 and the escalation of the Vietnam War and draft coinciding with his death and the explosion of Black Radical politics in the United States, primarily the Black Power Movement lead by Stokley Carmichael and the Black Panther movement, Vietnam became a battleground between whites and blacks. 1968 markeds a turning point for African
Following roughly 200 years of slavery and the massive buildup of racism that was prevalent throughout the country to justify slavery, the failures of reconstruction following the Civil War, and the inadequate school systems, African Americans were excluded from mainstream American society. By the 1950’s this alienation became was becoming much more visible as African Americans were increasingly left out of the unprecedented economic growth following World War II. Although, as a nation the United States’ GDP skyrocketed, the majority of that wealth was concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, particularly that of the upper- and