History, LeBron James to explore baseball’s black pioneers in After Jackie

The History Channel has greenlit a two-hour film from basketball star LeBron James that tells the story of the second wave of black baseball players after Jackie Robinson.

LeBron James (photo: All-Pro Reels via CC)

After Jackie will explore how athletes such as Bill White, Curt Flood and Bob Gibson put their lives on the line to integrate baseball and demand a fairer, more inclusive US for African American athletes around the world.

Directed by Andre Gaines, it will be produced for History by James’ media brand Uninterrupted and Firelight Films in association with Major League Baseball (MLB) and in collaboration with The Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Based largely on Robinson’s private letters, it will feature rare interviews with former and current baseball players such as CC Sabathia and Mookie Betts, while MLB has provided unlimited access to its expansive media archive chronicling more than a century of baseball history to help tell the story.

It will be executive produced by James, Stanley Nelson, Gaines, Maverick Carter, Jamal Henderson, Philip Byron, Eli Lehrer, Jim Pasquarella and Nick Trotta and co-executive produced by Matthew Rissmiller. A+E Networks holds worldwide distribution rights.

“Everyone knows about the bravery Jackie Robinson exhibited in April 1947, but they probably don’t know about the tenacious men who followed him that continued to demand the game of baseball reflect the diversity of the world in which we live in,” said Eli Lehrer, executive VP and head of programming of The History Channel.

“History is proud to partner again with LeBron and Stanley and with Major League Baseball to create a powerful documentary that showcases the courage, grit and relentless determination of the baseball players that rose up after Jackie to alter the course of history for the better.”