Obeime '15 and Tucker '17, were teammates for two seasons under head coach Jolene Nagel. Dynamic personalities on and off court, they remain close friends to this day. Both had the unique gift of gathering and leading others during their time at Duke and nothing has changed since they joined the massive Blue Devil alumni family. It was their steadfast friendship and the shared experience of being black women in America that sparked the idea for the video, but it is a testament to their exceptional leadership capabilities that led to making the potent video happen.
"Jordan and I continue to talk almost every day," Obeime said. "A few months ago in light of recent events, it was impossible to remove the topic of racial injustice and systemic racism from our conversations. It was top of mind. Similar to everyone, we're continuing to learn more on racism and how to address it because even as black women, it was clear that we don't have the answers to fix it. We had tons of conversations and given that Duke was what brought us together, we started to think about how close we were to the rest of the Duke community and the experiences we had that were shared. Jordan brought up the idea of connecting with our peers and reached out to Duke to see what we could do to express ourselves … to express what we had been discussing the past few months."
Obeime and Tucker knew they were not alone in the feelings they were experiencing and the desires they had in letting their voices be heard. So, with the approval from Duke Athletics to produce and compile the video, they rallied their Duke alumni teammates and went to work.
"Luckily we have each other to go through this with," Tucker said. "We thought if Jeme and I are feeling this way, how are all these other people who we respect, admire and care about feeling. How do we help the Duke community? We felt this was a good way to help incorporate other people from many different sports who had the same experience and help try to bridge the gap between perception and these athletes who you're cheering for every fall in football, every winter in basketball or whatever sport it is."
In all, Obeime and Tucker personally contacted 28 former Duke student-athletes to be featured in the Black Lives Matter video that became viral on social media: Justise Winslow (basketball), Marvin Bagley III (basketball), Jeme Obeime (volleyball), Andre Dawkins (basketball), Jordan Tucker (volleyball), Jeanette Llorens (rowing), Amber Henson (basketball), Anthony Boone (football), Immanuel Kerr-Brown (wrestling), Angel Thompson Brown (lacrosse), Kennie Taylor (baseball), Chris Taylor (football), Jeremy Ebobisse (soccer), Elizabeth Williams (basketball), Jalen Phillips (baseball), Nailah Waterfield (volleyball), Lexie brown (basketball), Josh Hairston (basketball), Matt Jones (basketball), Chloe Dipasquale (volleyball), Daniel Jones (football), PJ Kolman (rowing), Myles Jones (lacrosse), Becca Greenwell (basketball), Brian White (soccer), Sebastien Ibeagha (soccer), Maddie Kopp (track and field) and Natasha Anasi (soccer).
After coming up with the idea, the duo established a goal to include as many Duke student-athletes from as many sports as possible because racial injustice and systemic racism isn't just a volleyball thing or a football thing, it's a human thing.
"We're all going through this and to show that was very important to us," Tucker said. "Many of the people featured in the video were people we admired and respected. It was very fun to help put together and really awesome to see it come full circle."
Using Duke Athletics alumni was an intentional decision by Obeime and Tucker. They wanted the Duke Athletics family and the whole world to understand that just because they had been a Duke student-athlete doesn't change the way they are seen.
"Early on, we decided to focus on alums," Obeime said. "There was this narrative of we're not Duke student-athletes anymore. It's really easy to forget about us when we're not on the court. You might not care about our struggles as much and we don't have the same platform we had when we were Duke student-athletes. When we're walking around not decked out in Duke gear, we can't be easily identified as athletes. We're seen the same way in America as any other black person. We're objected to the same injustices and biases."
Obeime and Tucker felt the need to speak out on this topic because staying silent is being complacent. They wanted to be on the right side of history.
"There are a lot of topics where you can see both sides, but really the entire purpose of saying black lives matter is saying black people are equal," Obeime said. "Black people should be treated with the same respect, should receive the same justice and receive the same protection under the law. If you don't say that, you're saying you don't agree with it. For us, it's not an either or. We wanted to be on the side of good and not being afraid to speak up."
"It wasn't an option for us to not say anything," Tucker said. "This is an expression of the people we have developed to be through Duke, through Coach Nagel and through our program. We are people of action. We were raised to do the right thing. If we could help to better the experience of a current player from any university or a former player from any university … we felt the obligation to do that."
Obeime and Tucker are working on a second Duke Athletics initiative that came from working on this project: Duke United Black Athlete Alumni. This will be a coalition comprised of former Duke athletes interested in continuing and growing the conversation.
Now that they've been heard and had their message amplified by Duke Athletics, it's back to work for this dynamic duo. It's time to gather and lead even more people.
"Before we even stepped on campus, we were told we were going to be representatives of Duke for the rest of our lives," Obeime said. "We try to do that and we were just grateful that Duke was willing to represent us during this time and let us use their platforms so our voices were heard."
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