I’ve found another reason to be proud of Durham.

Even when it comes to college sports in this area, I don’t think the younger generation is interested in history as much as we were, talking about the truly good old days with our friends at Sutton’s or at dinner with the family.

My book “Game Changers,” about UNC basketball and Chapel Hill during the civil rights era, was very popular with the over 50s generation, but not so much with the younger set. I learned something over the weekend that happened a few years before I became sports editor of the Durham Morning Herald in the 1970s.

In the current movie “Best of Enemies,” school integration was only achieved after NAACP leader Bill Riddick came to Durham and brought the black and white communities together with an organized charrette that was led by struggling African-American activist Ann Atwater and a former high school baseball star named C.P. Ellis, who had used his popularity on the diamond to open a gas station and ascend to president of the Durham KKK chapter.

In the riveting drama, the two-week charrette — held evenings at a local junior high — led to community leaders voting on three pressing issues on education, the last of which was compliance with the 1954 Federal court ruling on school integration, slow to be enacted by states throughout much of the South and country.

Begrudgingly forced into dialogue at meetings and having to eat in the cafeteria with a member of the opposite race, Atwater and Ellis both got a true glimpse of how life was like for the other side. Played by superb character actor Sam Rockwell, Ellis reached a courageous and historic decision the night of the last vote.

When I covered sports in Durham, downtown wasn’t a safe place to be. I know its makeover into one of the coolest foodie capitals in the state was sparked by Duke and the city coming together, and frankly I love to visit the place where it was once very dangerous to park your car after the sun went down.

But the genesis to reinvent a city and make Duke, its students and residents all proud to live in an open Durham was this community meeting led by Atwater, the outspoken black single mother, and Ellis, the white baseball hero.

“The Best of Enemies,” go see it.