Bethune Cookman's Chaney part of 'Black Magic'

"BLACK MAGIC" IS ON ESPN AT 9 PM EDT TONIGHT AND MONDAY NIGHT.

John Chaney knows what it's like to be poor.

"People don't really understand poor," says the Hall of Fame basketball coach. "It doesn't mean you have something. It means you have nothing. You're working to make ends meet at all times, and yet there's always someone worse off."

Chaney knows what it's like to be a second-class citizen.

"In the South, when I was growing up, blacks were being arrested for vagrancy if they didn't have money in their pocket," he says. "So my mother always made sure I had a quarter on me."

Chaney knows what it's like to be slighted.

"In 1951, I was the best basketball player in Philadelphia, but I had no scholarship offers," he says. "There were only two schools in the city that had black athletes at the time -- La Salle and Temple. The others had no black basketball players on their teams."

Chaney's story is one of the threads that ties together Dan Klores' four-hour documentary, "Black Magic," which ESPN will air in two parts Sunday and Monday nights without commercial interruption.

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