If there is anything ESPN typically does not need help with it is marketing itself.  But I want to give the world wide leader some help and encourage people to watch Black Magic.

From the film’s web site, “the film tells the story of the injustice which characterized the Civil Rights Movement in America as told through the lives of basketball players and coaches who attended the Historical Black Colleges and Universities.”

A two-part four-hour film, the first part aired last night on ESPN with the second part showing tonight at 9 PM EST.  It will re-air this Thursday and Friday, and then again on March 25 and 26.

The first two hours told the stories of people such as John McClendon, John Chaney, Harold Hunter, Earl Lloyd, Dick Barnett, Cleo Hill, Elgin Baylor, Oscar Robertson, Wilt and Russell, Sam Jones, Willis Reed, Pee Wee Kirkland, and many others.  Some of these names I am sure you have heard of before, and some maybe you have not.  But even for those you have heard of, the film tells the stories that likely had not been told before.

It tells the stories of these people, players and coaches and the injustices they faced and overcame during the Civil Rights Movement.  These stories include how it was playing for one of the Historical Black Colleges and Universities before desegregation; the impact of the Supreme Court’s 1954 desegregation ruling on these schools; black players’ fight to make it in the NBA, or on the Harlem Globetrotters or in the ABA and the obstacles they encountered.

If any of these issues interest you at all, I suggest you watch.