THE HOPEFUL STORY OF A MOST BEAUTIFUL THING
On the long walks to and from school, Arshay Cooper thought God existed everywhere except the West Side of Chicago. So Cooper wasn’t going to let one of his teammates on the nation’s first all-Black high school rowing team walk alone.
For three years in the late ’90s, Cooper and Alvin Ross navigated a daily route riddled with regular gunfire and a different gang on every other block, talking passionately about their unconventional sport.
“I didn’t want him to fall in any kind of trouble,” Cooper, 38, told The Washington Post this week. “To have two guys from the West Side walking on the way to Manley talking about boats was crazy.”
What started as a group of boys, many of whom didn’t know how to swim, giving the predominantly White and historically stuffy sport a chance as an after-school activity turned into something much more. Together, Cooper, Ross, Malcolm Hawkins, Ray “Pookie” Hawkins and Preston Grandberry became not just the country’s first all-Black rowing team but did so against a backdrop of poverty, racism and death.
The 20th anniversary of their unlikely journey is presented in “A Most Beautiful Thing,” a documentary based on Cooper’s self-published memoir that is available to stream on Xfinity On Demand on Friday. The film, executive produced by rapper-actor Common and NBA legends Grant Hill and Dwyane Wade, comes at a time when athletes and reopening professional sports leagues in the United States are using their worldwide platforms to address racial injustice and police brutality...
read more +
watch the preview
*If you have trouble linking to the article - email me at susan@praybles.com and I will send you a full reprint.
