John Thompson was the head basketball coach at Georgetown University from 1972 to 1999, where he won the NCAA championship in 1984. He was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1999. He was a graduate of Providence College and held a master’s degree in guidance and counseling from the University of the District of Columbia. He completed I Came As a Shadow shortly before his death in the summer of 2020.
Jesse Washington is a journalist, author and documentary filmmaker. Since 2015 he has been a senior writer for Andscape, formerly known as ESPN’s The Undefeated, a platform for telling Black stories.