Courage in Full Color

But no black soldiers received the Medal of Honor during World War II.

"I knew we fought well," says Stephenson, who now lives with his daughter, Jolene Ivey, a state delegate. "We just didn't get credit for it."

Countering the Hollywood Myth

James McBride had a huge success with his memoir, "The Color of Water," about his Jewish mother raising her biracial children. Afterward, he began thinking about his father's brothers, who had regaled him when he was a child with stories about The War.

These were stories from an unknown world, far different from what he remembered on the TV screen as a child. "I grew up seeing the Great White Soldier on TV in shows like 'The Rat Patrol,' " he says of the TV series that premiered in 1966.

McBride began to track down the soldiers of the 92nd, old men whom he'd visit for hours. He moved on to Italy and tracked down old Italian soldiers and villagers who remembered "the colored troops." He did the historical research but clothed it all in a novel. "The 92nd was an experiment to see if the Negro soldier could fight," says McBride. "Although the word 'experiment' is a misnomer because blacks fought since Crispus Attucks." (Attucks was a colonial-era runaway slave who died battling the British in Boston in 1770.)

McBride says he wrote "Miracle" to draw attention to an overlooked part of American history. "I hoped I could throw a toothpick into the hurricane of Hollywood mythology regarding how black people are viewed historically," he says.

McBride was particularly drawn to William J. McCaffrey, division chief of staff of the 92nd Infantry Division. McCaffrey's son, Barry, is the retired four-star general familiar on news programs for his military analysis.

"Dad used to say he was the white liberal West Point grad that was there to balance the Southern white officers who commanded the division," says Barry McCaffrey.

McCaffrey grew up hearing his father talk about the heroism displayed by soldiers of the 92nd. "As a high school kid, Dad took me to Italy and we followed the route of the 92nd up along the Italian coast. The 92nd, nicknamed the Buffalo division after the Buffalo Soldiers, had one of the highest individual records for valor for units in combat. It saw extremely difficult battles along the west coast of Italy."

A fan of the film "Glory," which highlighted the heroics of a black military unit during the Civil War ("I've seen it at least 15 times, and it still brings tears to my eyes"), McCaffrey says Hollywood has missed out on opportunities to showcase the black soldier from World War II. Even the famed Tuskegee Airmen were only the subject of a cable TV movie in 1995.

"As much as America might be ashamed to say it," McCaffrey says, "the blacks were exploited for so many years. And there is a lens into celluloid where the black soldier's bravery has been underrepresented. But even as I say that I must also add that today, I think, the military's record in diversity and integration is second to none."

"The fact that Spike Lee is telling the story of the 92nd is great," Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin says on the phone from Iraq. Austin, who is black and a West Point graduate, is commander of the multinational corps in Iraq -- the second-highest-ranking American military official in the country. "Everyone in the service can look at those soldiers in the 92nd and say they are a model of patriotism. They just were not given a lot of credit at the time for what they did."