There's embarrassment and shame in this admission, but you need to know: We forgot about Woody Sauldsberry.
He was the NBA's Rookie of the Year in 1958, just the second black man to win the award. He played for four NBA teams and later the Harlem Globetrotters. Retirement wasn't always easy. Diabetes claimed one of his legs and had its sights set on the other. When Sauldsberry died last year in Baltimore, there was no obituary in the next day's newspaper and no old highlights aired on that night's SportsCenter. We forgot about him, but Earl Monroe and filmmaker Dan Klores didn't. We're fortunate for that.
Sauldsberry is one of many characters who give life to Black Magic, a new film that revives a lost slice of history, examining the civil rights movement through the eyes of the basketball players and coaches from historically black colleges and universities. It's a gripping and educational four-hour journey, and to underscore the importance of the story, ESPN is airing the documentary commercial-free over two nights, March 16 and 17.
Monroe, drafted by the Baltimore Bullets out of Winston-Salem State in 1967, is not just one of the film's riveting subjects, he's also listed as a producer.
"I don't think any of today's players really know the story," Monroe said last week after a private screening of the film in New York. "This will be an educational thing for them. Hopefully, they'll take it to heart.
"You're looking at so many guys who go into the pros at such a young age. If they can understand more about the people who came before and helped them get to where we are now, they can have a bigger appreciation for the whole process. If you don't know what it was like before, you can't really appreciate what you have."
Klores' film credits include the critically acclaimed Crazy Love. He had set out to create an epic multipart documentary on basketball, a la Ken Burns. From his research, Black Magic emerged, a story that was just itching to be told. Klores conducted dozens of interviews, even came to Baltimore and interviewed Sauldsberry just weeks before he died. Klores successfully preserved a story that was at risk of falling through the cracks of time.
