Bryant McBride partners with TSN to produce documentary on the legacies of Herb Carnegie and 'Buck' O'Neil
June 23, 2023
In his hockey career in Sault Ste. Marie, at the United States Military Academy at West Point where he was the first Black class president and at Trinity College in Connecticut, Bryant McBride did not have a coloured teammate.
While learning how to negotiate sometimes uncomfortable White spaces, he vowed to change the landscape and make the sport more inclusive.
McBride was the National Hockey League’s (NHL) first Black Executive, serving as Vice-President of Business Development from 1991 to 1999.
He also created the NHL/USA Hockey Diversity Task Force that transitioned to Hockey is for Everyone, hired trailblazer Willie O’Ree as an NHL Ambassador and produced ‘Willie’, an award-winning feature length documentary about the Hall-of-Famer and Order of Canada recipient who broke the colour barrier in January 1958 with the Boston Bruins.
A firm believer that effective collaboration can enhance inclusion in sport, McBride – the co-founder of the Carnegie Initiative and founder of Burst which is a mobile video technology space – partnered with TSN to produce ‘Beyond Their Years: The Incredible Legacies of Herb Carnegie and John ‘Buck’ O’Neil’.
Filming started on November 8, 2022 that would have been Herb Carnegie’s 103rd birthday. He passed away in March 2012.
McBride, who resides in Lexington, Massachusetts, was in Toronto for the Hockey Hall of Fame (HHOF) induction ceremony where Carnegie was posthumously inducted in the Builder category, and the second annual Carnegie Initiative Summit.
“There was a lot happening that week in terms of Herb’s legacy being cemented and we knew TSN had the broadcasting rights for the induction ceremony,” he pointed out.
During a conversation with good friend Wendy Lewis who is responsible for implementing game-changing diversity & inclusion strategic and metric-based platforms for Major League Baseball (MLB) franchises, McBride learnt that was the same week they were honouring O’Neil who, like Carnegie was denied the opportunity to play in MLB.
The ‘Thanks A Million, Buck’ Hall of Fame gala took place on November 12 at the Negro League Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
“My first reaction when Wendy told me that was ‘What do you mean?’ McBride recounted. “It hit me that the parallel lies with the way these two incredibly gifted trailblazers lived, the way they led and the fact they were so far ahead of their time.”
A three-time All Star and Negro World Series champion, O’Neil was inducted into the MLB Hall of Fame last July, 16 years after he was not among the 17 players from ‘Black baseball’ making it to Cooperstown.
The first African-American coach in MLB who died in 2006 would have been 111 on November 13.
“We had all of these events honouring Herb and Buck in that one-week span in early November last year,” said McBride. “We cross-referenced and looked back at some historical markers that happened in those same six days in early November. As a six-year-old, Ruby Bridges desegregated her all-White school in Louisiana on November 14, 1960. We had Herb and Buck who were told to stay in their place and now finally, with the help of a lot of allies, they finally went into their rightful place in the Hall-of-Fame.”
He said there are similarities with this documentary and ‘Willie’.
“It’s is all about teaching, healing and humanizing people,” said McBride who has a Master of Public Administration from Harvard University.
‘Beyond Their Years’ was screened for the first time on May 15 in Minnesota to mark the third anniversary of George Floyd’s death.
Bernice Carnegie, the daughter of Herb Carnegie and co-founder of the Carnegie Initiative, and her daughter, Brooke Chambers, attended the private screening.
“There are a lot of parallels in my father and Buck’s life when it comes to exclusion from their respective sports and what they did to make this world a better place,” she said. “What was very interesting was that as I was watching the portion around Buck, I got a better understanding of the challenges my dad faced. It is hard seeing how systemic racism damaged people. Our parents agreed not to share many of the issues dad encountered when we were younger because they did not want their children to be jaded by the difficulties he faced because of his skin colour. I did not know many things until I was older. Though I am angry, I am forward thinking about wanting to make change and leaving this world a better place than I found it.”
The documentary will be screened in Toronto at the Hockey Hall of Fame on June 27.
Attending Carnegie’s induction into the HHOF five months ago, said McBride, was ‘one of the greatest honours of my life’.
“I didn’t learn about him until when I was in my 20s and that was embarrassing,” he said. “I met him when I was working with the NHL and was completely blown away by his presence, who he was and what he represented. After he couldn’t play in the NHL, he found a way to grow the sport and help people. He is one of the most incredible men I ever met.”
Working for the NHL opened doors that resulted in McBride becoming his own boss.
In the last 23 years, he has built seven start-ups at the intersection of sport and technology.
“I also want to work with who I want to,” the entrepreneur said. “When your partners are people like Bernice Carnegie, great things happen.”
Bryant McBride (r) with Bernice Carnegie and TSN executive Lester McLean (Photo by Ron Fanfair)
In 1970, McBride’s family moved to northern Ontario when he was five after his mother remarried a Canadian citizen.
He said there is a stark difference between growing up in Canada and the United States.
“When I walked out the door there as a teenager, I didn’t think of race,” he pointed out. “Here in the U.S, it is one of the first things most teenagers think about everyday. They may encounter the wrong police officer or bump into an angry Trump supporter. You just don’t know and you have to have your antennae up all the time. After the George Floyd murder, my daughters – they were 14 and 16 years old -- were at Lexington Battle Green protesting and not just letting George Floyd die in vain. While waiting to pick them up to go to another event, a guy drove by with his Trump flag flying calling them sluts and whores. This is happening in a beautiful Boston suburb in 2020.”
