Jonathan Beamish’s documentary follows Terry Harrison, born in 1944 in Leicestershire, whose father was an African-American GI. This is Terry’s GI Dad.
Terry grew up mixed-race, a wartime ‘brown baby’, knowing his mum’s husband wasn’t his real dad, but also realising that he was growing up ‘different’ while feeling just the same as other children.
It would not have been possible for a Black GI and a white woman to marry as the USA was segregated, with marriage between the races strictly forbidden. It was even likely that the man would have been threatened with a rape charge.
Although I had some idea from the 1979 film Yanks of the tensions between Black and White GIs, I didn’t realise the extent of the freedom those Black men must have had in England, accepted and even respected.
As well as Terry, other GI babies are included in a round table GI Trace discussion, each recalling how they were not accepted even within their own families, and how they discovered they were mixed race.
Terry’s mother was alone during the war, her husband was overseas, her children were small. Stigma attached to her and to her ‘other’ child, a reminder of her transgression.
As for the father, there is more than one story. Watching Terry react to the ups and downs of finding his true family history is both instructive and emotional.
It is also shocking to hear how Black GIs were treated when they returned home to Jim Crow, lynching, and suppression, but clear how the civil rights movement grew and developed from wartime experience as ‘equals’.
The story of Terry and his heritage is a true collaboration between him and Beamish, and started from a video clip on the Mixed Museum‘s website.
Well worth a look from both the personal angle of one man’s journey, and for the wider social history of Black and mixed-race people in the last half of the 20th century.
Terry’s GI Dad can be seen along with over 60 other shorts and features by purchasing a Breeze Online pass here: https://londonbreezefilmfestival.com/purchase-pass/, live from midnight 21 Oct to midnight 2 Nov.