SYNOPSIS:

Black Ice is the epic and virtually unknown tale of the fabled champions of the Colored Hockey League (CHL). The CHL was the first organized Black sports league in the world and one of the most complex sports organizations ever created. The CHL’s vital contribution to the sport is apparent in every aspect of the National Hockey League (NHL) and in how hockey is played around the world today. Over a hundred years ago, the CHL was formed in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada. Comprised of the sons and grandsons of runaway American slaves, the league pioneered the sport of ice hockey by changing this winter game from the slow-paced gentlemen’s pastime of the nineteenth century to the fast-paced exciting game of today’s NHL. This feat was accomplished during the time of rampant racism, World War One and The Great Depression. James Kinney, the first Black graduate of the Maritime Business College, and "one of the greatest Canadian leaders never known" was the league’s chief organizer and driving force. Envisioned, organized and led by the charismatic nineteen-year-old Baptist preacher and entrepreneur Kinney, the CHL was founded on the principles of Black pride. Kinney strove to uplift the mind, body, and spirit of the Black community to break the racial restraints inhibiting Black equality. The CHL and Kinney's community had its enemies. A clandestine Canadian chapter of the KKK was one of the forces arrayed against the black populations and sportsmen. Meanwhile, the league had an even more formidable adversary in North America's largest railway concern led by the economic might of two infamous rail barons, Sir William Mackenzie and Sir Donald Mann. Against overwhelming odds and obstacles, Kinney builds the CHL with a cast of diverse characters during the explosive and exhilarating jazz age, when great new confluences and conflict of people and cultures prompted promise and pain, experiment and exclusion. On and off the ice, in the back room of a church, in the stands, in barrooms, and courtrooms, knockdown bloody brawls are commonplace as the black league fights for its life, and our characters sacrifice theirs in the name of a vision, a dream and progress.  James Kinney knew what had to be done … “We’ll beat them at their own game."