Thursday, May 10, 2012
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Brown Babies
The must see documentary “Brown Babies: The Mischlingskinder Story” created by Regina Griffin, highlights post World War II and the birth of 5,000 “brown babies” born to German women and fathered by Black American troops in the 1950s-60s.
“[It was] a real messed up situation,” says Dave Tunney who was a soldier placed in Germany at the age of 19 during that time and featured in the documentary. Tunney witnessed many of his fellow troops and friends impregnate the German women and quickly leave afterwards either being replaced to other bases.
After World War II, Black troops were seen as wealthy, cool and understanding and thus highly desirable to many young and poor German women. The troops would hang out at local clubs where they would meet and mingle with the women. Unlike his friends, Tunney stayed and raised his child and later married the woman he got pregnant.
Due to the strong racism and dislike for Americans at the time, German women who birth these babies suffered from “humiliation” by their society, they were kicked out of their homes and fired from their jobs. Due to these repercussions many gave their babies up and they were sent away to an orphanage.
“It’s just really sad,” said Amber Barnett, 22, Speech and Applied Communications major from Cincinnati who attended the screening held in Howard’s Blackburn ballroom, “ I just feel like no child should have been treated like that.”
According to the documentary, brown babies were more likely to end up in orphanages than being adopted by Germans because of their skin color. Many of these children were left in these orphanages and were physically and mentally abused, some even sterilized so that they could not reproduce when they grew older.
Many of these children were sent to Denmark, which Germany believed to be “less racist” than their selves. However, some brown babies were lucky enough to gain attention of Mabel Grammer, a Black socialite from America who traveled to Germany to seek adoption for these unwanted children.
Grammer was able to find homes for some children at bases in Germany by other black families and found the others homes across sea with other Black families. By doing this Grammer created a better life in America for these children than they would have had in Germany. “My [biological] mother told me if I would have stayed I would have the option of being either a hair dresser or a prostitute.” Says Doris Mcmillon, a brown baby who partakes in the documentary and is now a very successful journalist in America.
Not all of the adopted brown babies were as lucky as Mcmillon with finding success in America however Dan Cardwell another brown baby featured in the film never felt he shared a true bond with his adopted family. Cardwell never felt that he had a true family or was even loved by his adoptive family. He and his other adopted brother and sisters believed they were only adopted so that they could work on their parent’s farm tending the hundreds of chickens and working in the cornfield. They were treated more as help than children and. In the documentary it take Cardwell 25-30 years to find his biological mother. He longs to feel a sense of what it feels like to have a mother and a real family. When he finally reaches her, she had already passed away from committing suicide from her grief of not having her child.
What history fails to mention, this documentary captures by telling the stories of the birth and troubled lives of the brown babies born post-war Germany. This documentary has opened many shuteyes of the post-war and shares then struggles of these former brown babies as they continue in life trying to find out who they are and where they belong. More information and viewing of this award-winning documentary can be found at: http://brownbabiesproject.com/
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