The story of Edwin Moses: Excellence, achieved

He’s famous for his gold medals and world records and nine-year, nine-month, nine-day winning streak. But legendary 400-meter hurdler Edwin Moses is a young child running through his yard with the family dog when we meet him in a new documentary.

Moses the competitor often is stoic, but the smile he flashes in those early scenes returns throughout the film as he strives for academic and athletic excellence while navigating the realities of racism and exploitation.

Moses, who will speak Sunday at Moscow’s Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre before a screening of “Moses: 13 Steps,” talked about the film, his upbringing and his legacy in a recent phone interview.

A focus on education

Moses’ childhood, depicted in remarkable detail thanks to archival footage unearthed by the documentary’s German filmmakers, was shaped by parents who valued education and expected excellence. His father, Irving Moses Sr., was a Tuskegee Airman and elementary school principal, and his mother, Gladys, was a teacher.

Growing up in the 1950s and ’60s, he saw “live and up close” Vietnam War coverage on the evening news with Dan Rather and Walter Cronkite. He remembers the discourse in the country as the civil rights movement pushed forward, and when leaders like John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated. He was 13 years old when U.S. runners Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised their fists from atop the podium at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City — a historic, inspiring and costly move for the Black athletes.

“I remember exactly where I was when all of that happened,” he said.

Moses “started with nothing” when he enrolled at Morehouse, a historically Black college in Atlanta, on an engineering scholarship. He’d won an Olympic gold medal in the 400-meter hurdles by the time he earned a physics degree in 1978, despite training off campus since Morehouse didn’t have a track at that time. He calculated his approach for maximum efficiency, pioneering the method of leading with his left food and taking exactly 13 strides between hurdles.

He never lost his focus on education amid his athletic success. Moses earned a Master of Business Administration in 1995 from Pepperdine University, in Malibu, Calif., and later received an honorary doctorate from the University of Massachusetts, Boston.

His success, he said, was hard won, the product of “straight excellence, ingenuity and hard work.”

“I had to be the best,” he said. “Period.”

Young people today, he suggested, would do well to adopt a similar approach.

“It’s their time now, and they’re going to have to go through what it’s gonna be, and they’re going to have to respond and analyze ... and decide what they’re gonna do and what kind of lives they want to live,” he said. “It really comes down to character.”

Documenting unmatched success

Moses continued to dominate the 400-meter hurdles in a way not seen before or since, setting world records and earning more gold in 1984 after missing the 1980 Moscow Olympics when the U.S. boycotted the games.

And he pressed for better pay for athletes, after competing in front of tens of thousands of paying spectators at arenas in Europe, and for a rule change that allowed Olympic athletes to earn an income from their sport.

He won 122 consecutive 400-meter hurdles races between 1977 and 1987, a track and field record champion Olympic sprinter Michael Johnson puts into perspective in the documentary when he explains he’s won the second most races in a row — with 58.

The documentary, which Moses said he was involved with from start to finish, includes appearances by celebrities such as film director and fellow Morehouse alumnus Spike Lee, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson and actor Samuel L. Jackson (who also attended Morehouse). Actor Morgan Freeman was a producer on the project.

Family members, coaches, trainers and other athletes are interviewed as well.

The film covers the incident, in 1985, when Moses was accused of soliciting sex from an undercover police officer during a sting on L.A.’s Sunset Boulevard, a charge he firmly denied and successfully fought in court, where he was found not guilty.

It explores his leadership with the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, crafting policy to tackle the use of performance-enhancing drugs, and his charitable work, alongside Nelson Mandela, to encourage social change through sport with the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.

“Moses: 13 Steps,” which debuted in September during the Morehouse College Human Rights Film Festival in Atlanta, received awards at several film festivals around the world, and Moses said he hopes to see it picked up for wider distribution.

“It’s curated very well, and it’s an authentic version of my life and my story,” he said. “That’s what I wanted to produce, and I think we got it.”

Bringing ‘13 Steps’ to Moscow

The idea to bring the film to Moscow was sparked at the Morehouse premiere.

Kenworthy board member Sydney Freeman Jr., director of the University of Idaho’s Black History Research Lab, attended the festival while on sabbatical in Atlanta and saw that first screening.

Freeman and Kenworthy Executive Director Colin Mannex collaborated on Black History Month programming at the center the past several years, and showing “13 Steps” with Moses on hand to introduce it and discuss it afterward “is really a high point in our efforts to celebrate Black Excellence in Moscow,” Mannex said via email.

Changes in federal funding for nonprofits and universities could make organizing events of this scale difficult going forward, Mannex said, but he’s confident the strong ticket sales he’s seen for the screening will “send a message that these programs matter.”

Stone (she/her) can be reached at mstone@inland360.com.

IF YOU GO

“Moses: 13 Steps” screening and Q&A with Edwin Moses

When: 4 p.m. Sunday.

Where: Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, 508 S. Main St., Moscow.

Tickets: $10, free for students, at kenworthy.org/events-calendar/moses-13-steps.

Details: Gold-medal Olympian Edwin Moses will introduce the documentary (1 hour, 45 minutes) and participate in a question-and-answer session with the audience afterward.