Black Faces of War
Speaker:
Robert V. Morris
07 Feb 2011
7:00 PM
South Ballroom, Memorial Union
Robert V. Morris is the author of the new illustrated history Black Faces of War: A Legacy of Honor from the American Revolution to Today. The grandson and son of two decorated army officers, Morris founded the Fort Des Moines Memorial Park and the WWII Iowa Tuskegee Airmen Memorial at the Des Moines International Airport. His documentary Tradition And Valor was broadcast on Iowa Public Television and preceded the release of his book by the same name. Morris is a graduate of the University of Iowa, taught journalism at Iowa State University and is a past-president of the NAACP Iowa-Nebraska Conference.
In his first book, [i]Tradition And Valor[/i], Robert V. Morris tells his father's and grandfather’s stories. His father won a bronze star fighting in the South Pacific during WWII. His grandfather, a Howard University Law School graduate, was the first U.S. Army black officer candidate class at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, in 1917. He survived two combat wounds fighting in France during WWI and returned to Iowa to co-found the National Bar Association (1925) and the National Newspaper Publishers Association (1940), the first national black legal and media networks. He also served as publisher of the [i]Iowa Bystander[/i], the oldest black weekly newspaper west of the Mississippi River.