Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. didn’t just fight for equality in Washington and in churches across the country. He also took his message to the basketball court.
The new short documentary “Hoops, Hopes and Dreams” puts a spotlight on King’s efforts to galvanize youth in the civil rights movement by playing basketball with them. Producer Jesse Williams said he first heard about the story while attending a benefit gala hosted by Tommie Smith, the famed track athlete who protested at the 1968 Olympics alongside John Carlos.
The guest of honor at the gala was Andrew Young, a U.S. Congressman and ambassador who was one of King’s closest confidantes.
“Ambassador Young gets on stage, gets the award, and the first thing he says is, ‘Tommie, did I ever tell you the time when Dr King and I used to play basketball to connect with kids?’ I dropped my fork,” Williams recalled at the TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt.
“I literally navigated all the tables to ambush him in the parking lot, and I stopped him before he got in his car and asked, ‘Would you mind letting us make a film about that?’”
Since there are no photos of Dr. King on the basketball court, Williams and his team used animation to accompany Young’s recollection of the civil rights leader’s efforts to use sport to bring young people into the civil rights movement. Williams connects King’s work to Barack Obama, who adopted the same strategy of basketball as a way to bridge boundaries.
“This didn’t happen through the internet or through tweets,” Williams said. “It happened through human beings connecting to one another, meeting people where they are and speaking their language, finding out what they really care about. This was the work being done in between the monologues.”
Watch the full interview in the video above.
