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Team profile by Javier Wallace, Martin Smith, Funmi Ogunro, Henry Yeh and Isaiah Fisher-Smith
This year we set out to produce a documentary on Claudius B. (“C.B.”) Claiborne, Duke’s first Black athlete and member of the Duke men’s basketball team. Our team started this project utilizing research that team leader Javier Wallace began through a 2022 Story + project: From Stephen to C.B.: Tobacco, Race & Duke Men’s Basketball.
While the previous research on C. B. Claiborne provided a base from which to start, our team endeavored to dive deeper into his story, including the entanglements of tobacco and the industry that grew around it, and create a visual product to attract more viewers to the story.
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Our team quickly realized that a high-quality, feature-length documentary was beyond the scope and funding for this project. Nonetheless, by leveraging our connections, including our partner and Emmy-nominated visual storyteller, Funmi Ogunro, we boldly met this challenge. Through her network, Oguna helped us bring together a team of highly trained and talented people to put Claiborne’s story on the screen.
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Student team members went to work reviewing all the previous work done on C.B Claiborne and took a deep dive into different archives to extrapolate more information. More than just engaging in archival research, we decided to pay attention to the “silences” in the archives.
We analyzed how archival silences had minimized the university’s recognition of C.B. Claiborne. Our approach of centering Claiborne and specifically members of his segregated community in Danville, Virginia, allowed a more holistic approach to him as a notable figure beyond integrating Duke Athletics. We investigated and challenged the Duke Athletics Department criteria for Hall of Fame recognition by only statistical performance measures.
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The short-film documentary we were able to produce aims to address the silences in both how the Duke community has suffered from amnesia and realizing the “silent” benefits it has garnered since Claiborne’s arrival and protests. He fundamentally changed the course of this university and transformed Duke men’s basketball into one of the most recognized and largest basketball brands in the world.
The students’ involvement in the pre-production, production and post-production process allowed them to see how sports documentaries go from idea to distribution on platforms such as ESPN 30 for 30 or on streaming platforms. We actively involved ourselves in the film industry while telling a story, which has impacted change.
Over the academic year, we witnessed our impact firsthand. We learned the university decided to award Claiborne with an honorary doctorate for his contributions to Duke. It was then our team realized the impact of elevating a story. We are excited to see what more comes when the short-film documentary is released by the beginning of the next academic year.
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