Charging Ahead While Looking Back

If it weren’t for such acclaimed television movies and miniseries as “Roots,” “The Tuskegee Airmen” and “Miss Evers’ Boys,” many Americans would never know about these unjustly ignored chapters in African American history. “Buffalo Soldiers,” premiering Sunday on TNT, is the latest chronicle of that heritage to be dramatized for the small screen.

Danny Glover, Myketli Williamson, Glynn Turman, Michael Warren and Carl Lumbly star in the tale of the African American U.S. Cavalry Corps, which was pressed into service in 1866 to participate in the Army’s ongoing skirmishes with Native Americans. Given their name by the Plains Indians, who compared the black soldiers’ hair to the wool of a buffalo, the unit served at Wounded Knee, fought Crazy Horse and helped capture Geronimo and Billy the Kid. After the Indian wars, black cavalrymen fought alongside Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders in Cuba and served in the Philippines. They survived as a corps until President Harry Truman desegregated the Army in the 1940s.

“There was a saying, ‘No one could catch an Apache except a Buffalo Soldier,’ ” says Glover, who also is executive producer. “I mean, these guys were incredible at what they did. They took pride in what they did. They had the lowest desertion rate. They had the worst mounts, the worst arms, the worst uniforms and everything else.”

“The African American actors wanted to make this film because when youngsters go to school, you don’t hear about the Buffalo Soldiers,” says director Charles Haid (“Cooperstown,” “Riders of the Purple Sage”). “Now the whole country is going to know about the Buffalo Soldiers.”

Haid says he was “extremely deliberate in the racial and gender mix of the cast and crew. We really tried to make a joint effort here. If I was going to take a subject like this one on, especially as a white man, I wanted to make sure we did the most powerful job we could possibly do.”

Glover plays the fictional character of Sgt. Washington Wyatt, who, though obsessed with capturing the feared Apache Indian warrior Victorio, must grapple with his conscience over pursuing a dying nation whose members have struggles similar to those of the African American.

Lumbly, who plays a black Seminole scout named John Horse, praises TNT for airing “Buffalo Soldiers” outside of February’s Black History Month “and letting it live on as a piece of American history, which is simply what it is. So much of the story of the Buffalo Soldiers has to do with what was going on with white people at that time, what was going on with black people and what was going on with Native Americans at that time. I think all of the points of view were brought together in this piece. I think groups sort of get a chance to talk and listen to each other in the dramatic reenactment of the teleplay.”

Glover tried for “some time” to bring “Buffalo Soldiers” to the screen. Initially, the project was at HBO. “It was a little bit too ambitious,” he says. “It never did come together like we wanted. We ended up at Turner. Turner had a script it had gotten, written by Frank Military, that was in turnaround. We began to draw out and eke out the story we wanted to tell.”

Haid, who played Officer Andy Renko on “Hill Street Blues,” nearly turned down the job of director “because of my belief that an African American director should have done it.” He changed his mind with Glover’s encouragement. During production, he says, he realized it was actually a universal story.

“I realized it was just as much about the Apaches and the disenfranchisement of Native Americans as it was about the disenfranchisement of African Americans,” Haid says. “I realized the story could have taken place in Cambodia or Northern Ireland or Central America, where people are fighting over pieces of ground and are not respecting each other’s culture.’

Haid says “Buffalo Soldiers” will surprise viewers who are expecting a traditional Western. “The people who tune into these sort of flag-waving movies have certain expectations about what the ‘Buffalo Soldiers’ is going to be, and it’s not. It’s a story of heroism on a very real level.”

The film’s message, Haid says, is that “no matter how oppressed you may be, how much you think the world has oppressed you, it is possible to change the world with one act, and certainly [to] find salvation in one act within yourself.”

“Within the campaign they discover something about themselves and about morality--about the right thing to do,” Glover adds.

Haid brought writer Susan Rhinehart on board to flesh out the Native American aspect of the movie.

“She was in combat herself and wrote for ‘China Beach,’ ” he says. “I wanted to bring more of the Native American plight into it. We made a decision not to have subtitles. We made a decision to use real Apaches. We made a decision to do it exactly where it happened [in Arizona]. There were a lot of decisions made that sort of address the spirit of the piece.”

The actors also spent a week at boot camp before production began. “It was my pleasure to make Michael Warren learn how to ride a horse,” Haid recalls, laughing. “I would be sitting there working on something, and I’d look out the window and there would be my old partner from ‘Hill Street Blues’ bouncing around on a horse!”

“Buffalo Soldiers” airs Sunday at 5, 7 and 9 p.m. on TNT; it repeats Saturday at 6 p.m. and throughout December.