The cast includes accomplished actor Jon Voight and Sean Astin of “Rudy” fame. The movie , “Woodlawn” is scheduled for an October release and tells the story of Dolphins great Tony Nathan’s role in healing the simmering racial emotions in Birmingham, Ala., in the early 1970s.
Nathan was part of the first class of blacks to take part in the forced integration of Alabama high schools in 1973-74. As a star athlete, he assumed a larger role in what happened.
“It was about 10 years outside of a lot of the civil rights movement, the freedom riders and the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church,’’ film director Andrew Erwin told Birminghams WIAT. “The city was still struggling to heal. And in the midst of that, this happened to this football team and the emergence of Tony Nathan and them rallying around him and overcoming hurt and pain with love.”
