- We're not ones to fall and stay on the ground.
We get up.
We're going to show y'all what one love really means.
- We are going to disturb all the stereotypes that they think about us.
We are going to disturb all the people that say, "I'm not Black so it's not my problem."
- Basketball is something that really allows people to come together
no matter what background you are.
- It just creates a good form to open up conversation and create a bond right away.
- We're disturbing that here today.
We're disturbing that here tomorrow.
And we're disturbing that here for the rest of our lives.
- The job that I do is like I'm a community activist and a basketball architect,
and I always try to evolve like James Naismith's vision for basketball.
The Hoop Bus is something that was cooking on my brain for about 10 years.
What if we kind of renovated a school bus and turned it into a basketball traveling machine.
Found this beautiful bus collecting dust in the middle of the Palm Desert.
- Their mission is to rebuild basketball courts all over the country with a message to end racism.
- The entire mission of the Hoop Bus is to bring people together.
- Uniting them through basketball, art and fashion.
- We felt called to dedicate the bus to the Black Lives Matter movement.
- I have faced racial injustice in America.
I have been racially profiled.
I have been falsely accused and arrested and gone to jail and had to fight for my freedom.
So I know what it feels like.
- We all have this message that we want to get across—a message of positivity, a message of love.
- We are basically the Freedom Riders of 2020.
- The idea for the road trip was sparked by our goal of traveling the country and building communities.
The March on Washington, which was publicized after the killing of George Floyd,
for us felt like a monumental task that we could build towards.
- In each one of these stops, we're going to be spreading a message of
love and unity through basketball.
We want to do what we've done in L.A.
and spread it across the country.
- We want to come show support and solidarity and start connecting and start having conversation
and just realize that really basketball is the common story, and it really unites.
For this tour we installed bunk beds, outdoor showers, AC system.
We replaced the indoors with hardwood floors.
We changed the seating area so people can face each other and it's more conversational.
For a project like this to come together, it's all about the people involved.
- The diversity amongst us is phenomenal.
We have people from every different background.
- We've been almost all the way across the country now.
- Starting off in L.A.
where the Hoop Bus originated, Venice Beach, California.
- Hit Redlands for a small protest, Palm Springs.
- Phoenix, Arizona; Albuquerque, New Mexico.
- Dallas, Texas.
We went to Houston, Texas.
- Went to New Orleans on Bourbon Street.
- Batesville.
- We went to Birmingham; Atlanta, Georgia.
- Charlotte, North Carolina; Raleigh, North Carolina; then Washington, D.C.
- This is an event that was kind of announced through social media.
Even in small towns where it's like a hundred or 200 people, people already
know about the Hoop Bus is incredible.
It's already become this, like, vehicle of change.
- One of the main things on our trip was improving courts.
- One of my favorite moments was in Dallas.
We built a court for a community, and it was phenomenal.
- Like these guys really came to our community, our little community where nobody comes,
they talked to us, they shook our hands and they built a whole court for us.
- Just to see the excitement and the joy that the kids had.
- That makes an impact even after we leave.
I mean, we pull up to cities and we play some basketball and we have conversations
and then we go on to the next city.
But I think that we were able to really make a lasting impact in that community in Oak Cliff.
- Being in Atlanta has been amazing.
It was definitely one of the spots we were looking across the map like, where do we want to stop?
It was Atlanta 100 percent.
It's a huge, huge culture spot for civil rights.
There's so much history in Atlanta.
First stop we pulled up to was a John Lewis mural.
And when you stand underneath it and we have to look up, I mean, you're just in awe of him
and what he represents in civil rights history.
Stopping by Martin Luther King Jr.'s birth home and standing on those steps, besides
just the Hoop Bus being there, I think being there as an individual was really impactful.
- This city is the most important to me.
- Being born Northside Hospital, Atlanta, Georgia, raised in Marietta, Georgia, literally playing
recreational ball right up there in that gym.
Knowin' all the Black excellence that is in Atlanta and being able
to bring the Hoop Bus here myself.
I could tell my daughter years from now, your father did something positive, beyond
basketball, something big that will last forever, that these kids out here will see forever.
And they'll be like, when I get older, I need to do that too.
- Everybody put their fists in.
We're in this together.
We came a long way together.
- The march taking place here in Washington, 57 years to the day after Martin Luther King Jr.
gave his "I Have a Dream" speech.
- If you're looking for a savior, get up and find a mirror.
We must become the heroes of the history we are making.
- To come to Washington, to be able to walk in the shoes behind the trailblazers
like Martin Luther King, 57th anniversary for I Have a Dream, is amazing.
- The Freedom Riders that were in 1961 really showed that example of standing for something.
- Let’s finish this together.
It's not over.
- The people have the power.
When we gather together, we can do anything.
Build courts.
- We dedicate a court, a court that has a nod to the great
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
- Change communities.
- We want to see change happen, and we want to see justice.
We won't rest until we do.
- There is a knee upon the neck of democracy, and our nation can only live
so long without the oxygen of freedom.
- I have a dream as well to, you know, help change the world and to make the world a better place.
- Black lives!
- Matter!
- The strength must be exercised by more than rhetoric and more than marching.
- It's a full global civil rights movement.
- We're on this journey together.
It's not over 57 years later.
Still a lot of work to be done.
- As the civil rights movement is moving forward, the Hoop Bus is following.
- We have only just begun.
- Our journey has not ended yet.
We will continue amplifying the voices of the unheard.
- It’s not a moment at all.
- Going into the communities and let the world know that these are the people that make America great.
- "Carry on" on three.
One, two, three: Carry on!