January 7, 1972
On January 7, 1972, the Atlanta Daily World featured an advertisement for Soul Solider. The film, directed by John Cardos and starring Olympic champion Rafer Johnson, is a Western about the Buffalo Soldiers in the years after the Civil War. The film was panned by reviewers in the black press. In the New York Amsterdam News, James P. Murray wrote Soul Solider “qualifies as a cinematic disaster in every way imaginable and, at the same time, manages to come across as a major insult to all Black people and any Indians who happen to be in town.” Earl Calloway reviewed the film for the Chicago Defender and wrote that “the much advertised adventure drama...does not even scratch the surface of the heroism of those brave black soldiers.”