Nearly five years after the fateful assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the little-known Memphis State University Tigers were poised to meet the basketball Goliath UCLA Bruins in the 1973 NCAA National Championship and possibly revive their battered city in the process.
Courting the Dream™ explores how this team of unlikely young men, black and white, helped to unify a city in the throes of the modern civil rights movement. It is a story of the power of sport and how the magnitude of certain moments can only be fully appreciated in retrospect.
With the approach of the 50th Anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 2018, Courting the Dream™ is more than a feature documentary film. It is a call to action, a means to inspire young people to foster cross-culturalism in their own communities.
The mission for the project is three-fold. First, to develop a high quality film that documents a riveting basketball tale wrapped in the story of a city in crisis. Second, to engage audiences in a dialogue that spans racial boundaries. And third, to use the film as a means to benefit positive development, sports-based programing for youth in communities across the country.