Long Time Coming: A 1955 Baseball Story

LONG TIME COMING: A 1955 BASEBALL STORY looks at a memorable and historic meeting between two Little League teams in the racist South of 1955. The boys on the Jaycees, the Pensacola black team, now in their 70s, recount the thrill of finally being permitted to play in the largely white Little League and the disappointment after winning their division to learn that white teams were refusing to play them in the district and regional playoffs. With each forfeiture, the Jaycees advanced, as per Little League rules, only to be disinvited from playing at the next level. A white Orlando team's coach actually resigns rather than lead his team against black boys. As for the kids, both black and white, they just wanted to play. Also in their 70s now, thoughtful members of the white team admit that segregation so separated the races that there was little opportunity to mix with or know blacks as people when they were kids, allowing ignorance to foster prejudice. One admits his parents were prejudiced and he didn't want to grow up like them. But others use their lack of interaction with blacks to excuse inexplicable views, including that today blacks are no longer affected by prejudice, despite plentiful statistical evidence to the contrary. One white player can't understand the need for a Black Lives Matter movement, arguing that all lives should matter, ignoring multiple police shootings of unarmed black people and also the way that centuries of banning blacks from good schools, good jobs, and good opportunities have disadvantaged an entire race. Even Southern white men in their 70s who profess the need to love everyone, as dictated by the Bible, still can't understand all the black anger. On the other hand, a black team member is moved simply by the fact that the white team members are willing to meet with the black team so many years later. The film sets the meeting against the long history of racism as depicted in a montage showing some breakthroughs -- Sidney Poitier and Halle Berry winning Oscars, Thurgood Marshall becoming a Supreme Court Justice, and Barak Obama being elected President. A white man recognizes that prejudice is a natural result of keeping different people separate. He observes that when people have no real experience of what other people are truly like, "There's a tendency to fill in the blanks, and usually you're wrong." The movie ends on a note of hope inspired by a happenstance event unplanned by the filmmaker.