In America, history has rarely treated the Black people who helped build this country with fairness. Their contributions have often been minimized, overlooked or deliberately erased. Lately, that pattern of erasure feels more prevalent than ever. Newsrooms have shrunk, longstanding institutions have lost funding, and even modest efforts to center diverse voices are met with resistance. In this climate, who gets to tell the story matters as much as the story itself. Soul Patrol, J.M. Harper’s documentary about the first all-Black Long-Range Reconnaissance Patrol unit in Vietnam, arrived at Sundance at the perfect moment. By focusing on the men who served and were largely forgotten, the film is an example of why preserving these accounts should be a responsibility for anyone with the means to do so.
The documentary draws from Ed Emanuel’s 2003 memoir of the same name, which chronicled his service with Team 2/6 of Company F, 51st Infantry, a six-man reconnaissance group operating deep behind enemy lines. Set in 2024, the camera follows Emanuel as he reconnects with surviving teammates, including Thad Givens, Lawton Mackey Jr., Willie Brown and Norman Reid, among others. For several, it is the first meeting in years and, given their age, likely the last occasion they will share the same room together.
Drawing from a mix of archival material, including Super 8 footage shot by the soldiers during their tours, Soul Patrol gives the viewer a rare, up close perspective of daily life in the field. Harper also incorporates sparing reenactments, with actors portraying the men in their youth to clarify moments that were never documented on camera. In these sequences, the soldiers’ reflections are paired with passages from the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writing functions as a recurring thread throughout the film.
Before Emanuel published his memoir over 20 years ago, many of the men carried their experiences privately for decades. Few spoke about what they had seen or done. The silence stemmed not only from military discretion but from the reception they expected at home. Emanuel served from 1968 to 1969, during one of the most turbulent periods in the United States. The civil rights movement was at a breaking point, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And Robert F. Kennedy deepened public unrest. For many Black Americans, the conflict overseas felt distant compared with the battles unfolding in their own neighborhoods, leaving returning soldiers to confront a difficult question about why they had fought abroad for freedoms still contested at home.
Soul Patrol also features news footage and speeches from the era show activists challenging the war and openly questioning the role of Black service members. The film incorporates Dr. King’s “Beyond Vietnam…” address at Riverside Church alongside clips of activists such as Bobby Seale, Stokely Carmichael, and Harry Belafonte, illustrating how divided the country had become. Within that context, it is striking to hear one veteran describe enlistment as an effort to “serve and improve” a nation that had not fully extended its promises to him. The sentiment carries added gravity given that Black troops were deployed and killed at disproportionate rates, even as their sacrifices were often overlooked in public accounts of the war.
One scene that stood out was when Emanuel recalled a moment in Củ Chi, in Tay Ninh province, when his unit encountered Vietnamese soldiers and, by his account, narrowly escaped death. He described the episode as disorienting, and said he has struggled to make sense of it ever since. The memory of that event lingers decades later, symbolic of the kind of experience that followed many of the men home. The documentary touched on the difficulty of readjusting to civilian life and the isolation that set in once the routine of service disappeared: “I was out of Vietnam, but Vietnam was not out of me,” one veteran said. Their spouses described similar challenges, noting that the men who returned often felt changed, distant, and harder to reach, leaving families to navigate the aftereffects of a war that had not fully ended for them.
In its final scenes, Soul Patrol settles into the present-day reunion, where Emanuel and the remaining members of the unit sit together and talk plainly about Vietnam. The conversations are direct, genuine, and to be honest, disheartening. The director lets the men speak for themselves and leaves their words to do the work. In a moment when so many Black histories go undocumented or outright ignored, the simple act of recording feels necessary enough.
