Not that anyone cares, but this short film was shown on CBS-TV's New York City station (WCBW at the time) on 1 December 1944. While not produced for television, it nevertheless represents an early example of televised content. The other programs on WCBW for that night were "At Home" (a variety show), "December in New York" (a fashion show), "The Battle for the Marianas" (film), and "Will You Remember?" (a music show. The episode is question featured a singer playing the character of a woman whose husband overseas due to the war).

In order for me to post this review, I watched this short film. It's no better and no worse than I was expecting it to be.

A good overview of how the negro students were being trained for wartime. It's actually amazing to me, when I think about it now, about how non-integrated schools were and how black people were supposed to go to schools as this. Anyways, really good footage of Muskagee airmen training, and other training as well. But again, if you put a "white person" instead of the "black person" in, the doc would be pointless. Here, it stands as a curious exploitation of the black people and how the white person is saying, "See! they're not as stupid as you think!". Or maybe I'm reading way too much into this.

This film gives me greater insight into my parents' generation. Both were in Negro colleges in the late 30's/early 40's and certainly were inculcated with a patriotism that is reflected herein. My late father was a WWII veteran, serving as a chaplain to the segregated Negro troops.

On the one hand, this film gives me the joy to see Black people of my parents' generation engaged in intelligent and socially responsible activities. These everyday Negroes are rarely seen in popular images of the time. On the other hand, so much promise is imbued in the narration's subtext: Promise of winning the war; Promise of being equal citizens. But the producer wasn't foolish enough to make explicit promises so no one could hold the producer to its word.

The military produced the film to recruit Negroes into the service. Period.

Fascinating little film offering an amazing attitude toward African American college institutes during the second world war. At no point does the narrator mention anything about race; the only thing about that is in the title of the film, and perhaps also in the monument to Booker T. Washington outside Tuskegee College. While Washington advocated the teaching only of manual labour to the recently emancipated African slaves, here we see students training to be chemists (for chemical warfare, funnily enough), doctors, pilots, architects etc. One interesting snippet is of nutrition students doing research into the use of soy as a replacement for meat and milk. Of course, one must remember that this was all in aid of the war effort, so it's no civil rights classic.