This past weekend, the Tennessee A&I men’s basketball team, an HBCU squad that won a title more than 60 years ago, got a White House visit.

Tennessee A&I made history

The living members of the Tennessee A&I Tigers basketball team were honored by Vice President Kamala Harris at the White House.

“This is the greatest day of my life,” said George Finley, a player on the Tigers team, said to CBS News.

Credit : Tennessee State University

The Tennessee A&I Tigers men’s basketball team was the first HBCU team to win a national championship in 1957, and made history again by becoming the first college team to win three back-to-back national titles from 1957-1959.

“I thought this would never take place,” said Finley, who was part of the 1959 championship team, told the network. “[Winning] the championship was big, but it wasn’t as big as being here with [Vice President] Harris today.”

The challenges

In a time of segregation and the Jim Crow era, Black teams were often not recognized for their achievements but the team finally got their just due.

Harris hosted six members of the team in a meeting along with their family, friends, and those close to the group of former athletes. Henry Carlton, Robert Clark, Ron Hamilton, Ernie Jones, George Finley, and Dick Barnett joined Finley in the Roosevelt Room at the White House.

Tennessee A&I is now known as Tennessee State University.

A Detroit man who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for over six years was awarded $10 million in damages by a jury.

$10 million for man wrongfully convicted

Alexandre Ansari was wrongfully serving a life sentence over claims that in 2012 he shot and killed Ileana Cuevas, a 15-year-old girl, and wounded two others in Detroit, according to a lawsuit filed by Ansari in the United States District Court, Eastern District of Michigan Southern Division.

Alexandre Ansari (Photo Source: Wolf Mueller Law)

“Once I got the verdict back, my heart dropped. And I’m like, ‘Dang, I got to spend the rest of my life in here for something I didn’t do.’ And you know, I tried to kill myself,” Ansari told Linsey Davis on “ABC News Live Prime.”

“It felt like nobody didn’t put all the evidence together to see that I wasn’t the person in the first place. So things started getting overwhelming for me.”

Exonerated

Ansari, 39, was exonerated in 2019 by the Wayne County Circuit Court after it determined that Moises Jimenez, a former Detroit police detective withheld evidence for Ansari’s trial that would have implicated someone else as the shooter, according to the County of Wayne Office of the Prosecuting Attorney.

Jimenez received an anonymous tip that linked the shooter to the Mexican Drug Cartel, according to the complaint that released Ansari.

The officer withheld the evidence from Ansari’s 2013 trial, according to the lawsuit.

Jimenez’s attorneys told ABC News that the former detective claims that he provided all evidence he uncovered during his investigation and plans to appeal the $10 million lawsuit verdict.

There have been no reported arrests connected to the shooting since Ansari’s exoneration. Ansari was wrongfully arrested for the crime when he was 27 years old.

In the first trailer for the upcoming Netflix movie Shirley, Regina King stars as the first Black woman to be elected to Congress.

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm

Chisholm’s story will be chronicled, showing her uphill battle and obstacles to win a seat in Congress as the daughter of a Barbados-born maid and a Guyanese laborer, her struggles to navigate Congress alongside her White male colleagues, and her groundbreaking 1972 presidential campaign.

Movie production

Produced by Regina King and her sister Reina King, Shirley also stars the late Lance Reddick, Lucas Hedges, Terrence Howard, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Christina Jackson and more.

King, who spent 15 years producing the film, said the project was an incredible feat.

“It was always a little disheartening for Reina and I to have so many people over the years of our lives not know who Shirley Chisholm was,” King told Harper’s Bazaar.

“What she did was so pioneering. She was a true maverick and, you know, we use this term all the time, but she was a true first.”

King said they decided to release the film during an election year as they thought it would make for a more “impactful” release.

“As a team, we felt that is probably the best way we could possibly honor Shirley: to release her in a space that she created for herself.”

Regina King as Shirley Chisholm trailer

Shirley is will be released on Netflix March 22.