Earl Lloyd, left, the first black to play and coach in the NBA as well as the first black to win an NBA title, recalls struggles during the Civil Rights era with Hall of Famer and basketball pioneer Earl “The Pearl” Monroe.

Black Magic is a remarkable, although anguish-inducing documentary. It is the powerfully uplifting story of African American collegiate basketball players crashing through rabidly racist barriers. Premiering on March 16 and 17, the ESPN production vividly illustrates how legal segregation impacted black American life and how the interminable struggle for justice and respect is a painstaking and often excruciating emotional journey.

The two-day, four-hour documentary also reveals — similar to what took place in the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League and Major League Baseball— how blacks fundamentally altered a game that they were inexcusably barred from.

Earl Lloyd, the first African American NBA player and assistant coach, Earl “The Pearl” Monroe and ESPN senior vice president Keith Clinkscales spoke at HBCU giant Morehouse College about the historic film. Black Magic features an all-star cast of observers and contributors and is narrated by infamously militant Samuel L. Jackson, (who was suspended from Morehouse College for exercising his radical politics), Harvard history professor Henry Louis Gates and jazz legend Wynton Marsalis.

Dan Klores,award-winning and critically acclaimed filmmaker, speaks at Morehouse College about the ESPN documentary Black Magic.

Black Magic is directed by acclaimed filmmaker Dan Klores, whose other offering, The Boys of SecondStreetPark, was screened at the exclusive Sundance Film Festival. Another Klores film, Viva Baseball, took home the BANFF Global Award and the Imagen Foundation’s 2006 Best Documentary for TV or Film Award in 2006. Black Magic plows through more than 200 hours worth of material and shows how records were erased from history, or never kept at all. It goes on to depict how blacks players coped with and circumvented societal norms at the time, as well as how games against elite white teams were played out under the shroud of absolute secrecy to prevent riotous outbreaks or egregious backlashes from segregationists. Monroe, a graduate of HBCU stalwart Winston- Salem State University, co-produces the long-untold story along with New York Times staffer Elvis Mitchell.
–terry shropshire

Keith Clinkscales, senior vice president at ESPN, addresses the audience prior to the screening of the documentary Black Magic.

Dr. Robert Franklin, president of Morehouse College, speaks about the need for more African American sportswriters.

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