Ed Emanuel is on a mission.
The former Vietnam veteran and filmmaker told part of his story in his 2003 memoir, “Soul Patrol: The Fascinating True Story of Vietnam’s First African-American LRRP Team.” Since then, he tried to make a documentary, but it was never told. That is, until filmmaker Jason “JM” Harper stepped in and their film “Soul Patrol” premiered Sunday night at the Sundance Film Festival.
“Because I survived Vietnam, I was able to come home and tell this story,” Emanuel says. “My whole existence in Vietnam was about coming home to tell the stories of brave black people.”
Through Super 8 film, archival footage, and talking heads, Soul Patrol not only reunites some of the Vietnam War’s first black special operations teams to tell their stories; It explores what these “soul brothers” were like fighting one of the most important wars in history. The documentary also highlights that even after this reunion, the trauma of war is still present for Emanuel and his team.
Ahead of the film’s premiere, Variety interviewed Emanuel, Harper, and journalist Jesse Lewis about the erasure of black soldiers.
Jason, where did the Soul Patrol story begin for you?
Jason Harper: I picked up a book called “Nam, Vietnam Experience.” I found this book on the bookshelf at Barnes and Noble when I was about 14 years old, and from that moment on I was obsessed with that war. I saw teenagers who looked exactly like me. They were black, they had machine guns, they had bandoliers of ammunition, they were walking through the jungle, and they had Black Power symbols, Black Panther symbols, or peace symbols on their helmets. I started to feel that there was a discrepancy between what they were doing and what they were saying on the helmet. So I just read everything and watched everything I could. Years later, I picked up Soul Patrol and read Ed’s story, which changed my life.
Ed, you’ve been trying to make this documentary for years, so what does it mean to release it, especially at this pivotal time in American history?
Ed Emanuel: I worked on this film for years, traveling up and down the East Coast doing interviews and finding everyone. A group of us met in Washington, DC, where we began filming our first documentary. I let Jason know where we were and that a documentary was being filmed, and he told me he was made to tell this story. That shocked me. You cannot make such a statement and there is no legitimacy to back it up. The more I met Jason, the more I became convinced that I had to take them under my wing and tell them the full and complete story about Soul Patrol.
And Jesse, what does this story mean to you?
Jesse Lewis: That was very humbling for me. But the book also says a lot about the state of American journalism at the time. I was hired by the Washington Post in 1962 as a copy boy. During the interview, I was asked, “What are your career aspirations?” I said, “I’d like to be a foreign correspondent.” The person who hired me said: “That will never happen…If I hire you, I want you to cover what was then becoming the civil rights movement.” Now, lo and behold, the Vietnam War was in full swing. Blacks fought, died, and were wounded at higher rates.
I focused on black GIs, which aroused the ire of my white colleagues. No one wrote about Black GIs as a phenomenon. So I continued to do that, and I continued to be looked down upon by my white colleagues at the New York Times and the Associated Press. I was the only black correspondent there.
I stayed there for four or five months, and at the end of my stay I wrote a novel. This article was on the front page in 1967 and they were desperate to recreate it. The New York Times sent in a black reporter, Tom Johnson. Time magazine sent out Wallace Terry, and they did a great job, but they were playing catch-up. Having been in the military myself, I gained the trust of the U.S. military. I didn’t write any opinion pieces. I wrote about what was happening on the ground. So I was translating the blood and guts I saw on the battlefield into very harsh words, very descriptive words.
Jason, what were the key touchpoints to communicate in your collaboration with Ed?
Harper: Ed had been going around for several years interviewing his war comrades, many of whom had passed away by the time I started. There he kept an extensive archive of sit-down interviews with other veterans of Company F, 51st Infantry. When we organized a reunion to bring the Soul Patrol team together, we found it very timely. Mackie was buying a tuxedo. He was ready to come for the interview. he was very excited. Then, two weeks before the reunion, he passed away. In that sense, it was very timely, and I was able to use some of the material I had taken of Mackie. At the reunion, we had everyone sit around a round table and talk together, and the members remembered each other and told stories from that year-long tour. On top of that, one of the gentlemen who came to the reunion, Willie Brown, asked me if I would be interested in this Super 8 film reel he shot while on tour.
They were using Super 8 cameras. What struck me as I was editing it was that they were recording themselves on the base between battles, and they were still teenagers, and that was incredible because you don’t get to see that side of their lives at that time. It was amazing to have that archive so readily available.
Between archival footage, roundtables, and interviews, how did you go about the editing process to tell all these stories?
Harper: Niles Howard was able to help create that visual language. How do we go back and forth in time in a sort of seamless way? This is truly a monumental challenge, a journey across 50 years, so we knew the editing would have to be clever to make sure we could go back and forth in time without getting lost.
Finally, there is a quote that says we need to look at where we come from and where we are going. What does it mean to publish this story in America today, when people are trying to erase history?
Harper: When great figures like Martin Luther King come into our lives and some of our leading Black voices are being erased from our national parks and cemeteries, I would be outraged if the Department of the Interior is literally erasing evidence of Black historical influence. It feels an incredible weight and responsibility to speak up and tell Black people’s stories at a time when the administration is making deliberate and deliberate efforts to silence Black voices in the name of all things. In my opinion, black stories are more important than ever because this is an existential crisis. You can see that not only in the way this story is told, but also in the way the documentary was financed. You can check the currently institutionalized chilling effect in real time. We lost two people while filming and they won’t be able to speak for themselves from the grave. Therefore, it is very important to document what happened in order to get that message across.
Emmanuel: That’s exactly why I wrote this book. We knew they were trying to erase us from history. This book had to come out. My very existence in Vietnam was about coming home to tell the stories of the brave black men who will never forget what they did in Vietnam.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
