Finding the motivation to run a half or a full marathon was never a problem for Fred Whitaker. The thought of completing 13 or 26 miles was daunting, but when doubt crept into his head, his friend Yusuf Neville simply told him to “shut up and run.”
“Sometimes when I do get frustrated, and I’m out there by myself, I can see his face and hear him saying, ‘Just shut up and run,’” he said. “It’s the tough love we showed each other, but it’s saying, ‘Why are you complaining about the things that you asked for in life?’”
That motivation only grew after Jan. 29, 2014, when Neville took his own life just four days before he was to run the Miami Marathon. Instead of running beside the 28-year-old Neville, Whitaker and his friends participated in his honor in the half-marathon. Ten years later, the marathon continues for Neville’s friends who are the subjects of a new four-part documentary, “Inspiration by the Mile.”
The YouTube series — produced by Los Angeles Lakers player LeBron James and his business manager Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company — follows Whitaker, Ryan Shaffer, Lashawn “Quiet” Ray, Hercules Conway II and Denaz Green, Jr. as they train for one of the World Marathon Majors, the Boston Marathon, this year and reflect on their understanding of mental health and suicide among Black men.
The final part of the documentary will be released this week.
Shaffer, who considered Neville his best friend since their high school days in Durham, N.C., said he admired Neville for achieving personal and professional successes in his early 20s.
Neville, a graduate of Hampton University and a member of the Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity, was engaged to his longtime girlfriend and had a fruitful career as a service manager for Cintas at the time of his death. The avid runner had completed the Great Wall Marathon in 2011, the Paris Marathon in 2012 and the Miami Half Marathon in 2013. Despite their closeness, Shaffer laments that Neville “did not know how to articulate” his private struggles to his friends, nor were they equipped to navigate such conversations.
“All of us were in a fraternity of some type, most of us played a sport, so there is a masculinity aspect of getting through it that is your own responsibility. That’s how we grew up thinking,” Shaffer said. “The most we knew how to reinforce each other was to remind one another, ‘You can do it. I believe in you.’ Not necessarily, ‘Hey, do you need some help with this thing?’”
Suicides among Black Americans
In the series, licensed therapist Kier Gaines debunks common misconceptions about Black people and mental health. “My entire life, I always heard Black people don’t get sunburned, we don’t get skin cancer, and we don’t have suicidal thoughts,” he said. “None of that is true.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported the suicide rate for non-Hispanic Black people increased by 19.2 percent between 2018 and 2021. For Black youths and young adults between 10 to 24 years old, suicides increased 36.6 percent, while 25-to-44-year-olds saw an increase of 22.9 percent.
Fewer Black adolescents receive mental health care than peers in other demographic groups, in part because of “systemic inequities, including racism and poverty, as well as deeply rooted stigma around mental health and well-founded cultural mistrust of the health care system,” according to an April report from the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Shaffer said that during his adolescence, suicide was seen as a “very drastic last resort” that was hardly discussed unless it was a celebrity. To Shaffer, a White entertainment attorney who attended majority-Black schools, “the elevation of Black men” should be everyone’s responsibility.
“There needs to be an awareness that it’s a reality, and that wasn’t very present in my community,” Shaffer said.
Therapeutic vs. therapy
Whitaker, a Black man who grew up in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn in the ’90s, said he was encouraged to be a “tough guy” by older male cousins to prepare him for an unaccepting world. To them, vulnerability equated to “softness.”
His churchgoing grandparents told him to pray about his problems, while his parents, though open to talk, often directed him to the park to play. Gradually, the author of “Come on a Journee with Me” used basketball as his emotional release.
“Sometimes you just need to go and release those toxins by breaking a sweat,” Whitaker said. “All my life I’ve been active in sports, but I didn’t know that playing sports was an escape.”
In the documentary, Gaines said he cautions his patients not to mistake therapeutic activities for actual therapy.
“I see so many brothers say, ‘Hey, the gym is my therapist. These weights are my therapist.’ No, they are not,” Gaines said. “They are therapeutic. I never met a barbell that’s going to help you walk down the wounds from your parents not giving you the kind of love you need. I’ve never seen a treadmill that helps you dispel your cognitive distortions.”
Shaffer said running was a physical and mental challenge from Neville, who introduced him to it in 2011.
“Running is not a substitute for therapy,” Shaffer said. “I run to maintain physical and mental fitness rather than the exercise fixing something.”
But therapy with a licensed professional, he said, “is more like maintenance for me. It’s an exercise to make sure I’m thinking through things.”
Dispelling stereotypes
Courtney Whitaker started collecting footage of her brother, Fred Whitaker, and his friends running marathons in 2015. Over the years, she noticed how more people from “siblings, spouses and cousins” signed up to run with them — some of whom had never met Neville. When the group agreed to her idea of them running the Boston Marathon, the first-time director saw their preparations not only as a chance to examine their fitness routines, but also as a means to dispel stereotypes of Black men as hypermasculine and emotionless.
“This documentary creates the opportunity for Black men to be softer, to embrace community and lean in on each other,” she said.
In the debut episode of “Inspiration by the Mile,” the men use this year’s Miami Marathon as a primer for Boston in April. They maintain their speed, agility and stamina by trying out boxing classes, lifting weights and going for longer runs on weekends. Shaffer and Whitaker said they also cut back on drinking and replaced fried food with grilled chicken, salmon and vegetables.
Amid their physical transformations, Courtney Whitaker watched as the group’s inside jokes and affirmations took on more emotional meanings.
“We always say, ‘We all we got.’ Yusuf used to say that,” she said. “After he passed, it became, ‘Oh, Let’s Yusuf.’ Let’s do this for him.” (The saying is inspired by the Waka Flocka Flame song “O Let’s Do It.”)
Shaffer said that when he’s at the finish line, clutching a medal, he knows running has transformed him and his friends into the men Neville pushed them to be.
“Ultimately, you have to decide whether or not that person’s story and the way that he was a friend to you is worth relaying to other people moving forward,” Shaffer said. “The guys in the documentary felt the same way. … It gives life purpose.”
If you or someone you know needs help, visit 988lifeline.org or call or text the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988.
An earlier version of this article incorrectly mentioned the source of a report on fewer Black adolescents receiving mental health care than their peers in other demographic groups as the Pew Research Center. The report was from the Pew Charitable Trusts. The article has been corrected.