An undertold portion of Duke basketball’s history will be put to the silver screen for the first time.
Dr. Javier Wallace, postdoctoral associate of African and African American studies, hosted a pre-screening Feb. 12 of “C.B.: Power to the Player,” a film he produced celebrating the life and struggles of Dr. Claudius “C.B.” Claiborne, the first African American basketball player at Duke.
A select group — including Emmy-nominated producer and editor Funmi Ogunro and Martin Paul Smith, executive producer and an assistant professor of the practice of education at Duke — joined Claiborne to view the film.
“Dr. Wallace and I met when we were in elementary school … He hit me up and said he wanted to tell the story of C.B., and he wanted to tell it in the film format,” Ogunro said. “Once I heard C.B.’s story, I said I would love to make a movie about C.B.”
Claiborne first joined the program during the 1966-67 season under coach Vic Bubas, graduating in 1969 with a degree in mechanical engineering. While he had plenty of success off the court after graduation, the film largely centers on his story as it relates to basketball and his time at the University — which was as much about fighting for civil rights as it was bouncing a ball.
“I just wasn't satisfied with the story I was hearing about Dr. Claiborne and his contributions to the University. So when I had the opportunity, really I made the opportunity to do it, I felt like it was important to do that, just tell that story,” Wallace said.
During his time at Duke, Wallace has been a leading scholar studying race and sports. He has taught multiple iterations of a class centered around Duke men’s basketball and race relations — with ample mention of Claiborne’s story. This course is just one portion of the larger Black in Blue: The Duke Sports and Race Project, and Wallace is one of the faculty leads. The three-pillared academic movement aims to critically evaluate how race and identity affect the politics of collegiate athletics.
The roughly 16-minute documentary runs through Claiborne’s upbringing in Danville, Va., before coming to Durham, featuring him returning to his old high school and speaking to the staff there.
There are a variety of other interviews beside the namesake throughout the piece, including former Duke player Fred Lind, Claiborne’s best friend on the basketball team, and current head coach Jon Scheyer.
All set behind a jazz soundtrack from a hired composer, Claiborne’s journey is spelled out in a sequence of interviews coupled with archival photos and videos. The pioneer details his process of being recruited to Duke and its significance at the time before going into his experience as a student at the University.
While time is given to his successes on the court, mixed in with game footage and interviews with Lind, the majority of the film discusses Claiborne’s greater societal impact on campus.
As a student, the Danville native fought vigorously for better treatment of African Americans at Duke, pushing for the creation of an African American student association as well as a variety of items published in the Black Demands — a document written by students who participated in the Allen Building takeover that pushed administration to give more consideration to the experience of Black students on campus.
This document came about during one of the most influential moments in school history and Claiborne’s life. The Allen Building takeover, which happened 56 years ago to the day from the screening, is the key emotional segment of the documentary. With a backdrop of intense shots and footage from the event, Claiborne recounts his experience as part of a group that fundamentally changed how Duke operates.
“That made such a difference, because this University was not the same University pre-1969 that it became … The difference between what happened before Allen Building, who Duke was — a small, segregated regional University — and who it had the opportunity to become afterwards, when it decided that it wanted to do something,” Claiborne said to the audience.
As the film drew to a close, it ended with a reflection from Claiborne and others about his life and a shot of him patrolling the floor at his former stomping ground of Cameron Indoor Stadium, acknowledging his role as a foundational piece of Duke’s storied history.
The event also coincided with the program’s celebration of Black History Month; general manager Rachel Baker helped to moderate the event, the team wore Claiborne-inspired warmup shirts before their game against Cal that evening and Claiborne himself was brought out to shoot a free throw for charity.
Among the crowd were members of the Duke basketball community, professors at Duke, members of the Durham Success Summit — a initiative put on by the city to mentor young Black men — and family members of Claiborne that accompanied the esteemed guest.
Despite the accomplishment of creating a documentary, plans are in the works to make a full-length film about Claiborne’s life, diving more into his life before and after Duke.
“We had a lot of footage of C.B. in Danville in his childhood home, and he talks a lot about his upbringing in Danville. We wanted to include all of that in his film, but we had a time limit of about 14-16 minutes,” Ogunro said. “Our next step in this phase of telling C.B.’s story is to produce a feature-length version of the film where we can get into the nitty-gritty.”
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The guests did not leave empty handed either; Claiborne graciously signed a limited-edition poster of the film for all moviegoers to commemorate the occasion.
The film is not yet available to the public but will soon go on a festival tour before distribution is permitted to general audiences. The most notable of these stops is the Oscar-qualifying Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival August 1-9.