Paving the Way - history of integration of African Americans into professional basketball league

Basketball Digest, Feb, 2001 by Douglas Stark

Before any of the major sport leagues integrated, the National Basketball League welcomed in African-American players and forever changed the games

THE NATIONAL BASKETBALL League, a forerunner to the NBA, became the first major professional basketball league of the modern era to integrate, in 1942.

The reason you may not know about the NBL's pioneering efforts is because integration in the NBL and professional basketball as a whole came with much less fanfare and fewer problems than it did in other sports. Unlike baseball, hockey, and football, basketball was largely an urban game played by a diverse population on every level but the pros.

To put basketball's integration into context, consider this: It came four years before Kenny Washington played football for the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, five years before Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, and 16 years before Willie O'Ree skated for the Boston Bruins of the NHL.

Basketball did not integrate with a single black player as pro baseball, football, and hockey did. In 1942-43, the NBL integrated with 10 black players joining two teams, the Toledo Jim White Chevrolets and the Chicago Studebakers. Bill Jones, a college star at the University of Toledo, is one of the last living black players from that era. Jones played four games for the Chevroleta in 1942-43 before the franchise folded.

"I was already playing professionally prior to signing with Toledo, but those were independent teams with no league affiliation," Jones recalls. "There was a better feeling in the NBL--it was a true league. I had played with many of these players before [in college and pro leagues] and we all knew each other. When I got to Toledo, I did not have any problems with fans, teammates, or opponents. Integration was not a big deal because I had already gone through it at the University of Toledo."

Jones and his fellow African-American teammates--Shanty Barnett, Al Price, and Casey Jones--had an immediate impact on the league, injecting some much-needed speed and athleticism. The impact of African-American players, by virtue of their ability and not their skin color, was quickly noticed. In 1943, the NBL's Cleveland franchise signed black players, and by 1946 blacks were performing in such cities as Tri-Cities, Rochester, and Youngstown. The Dayton team then integrated in 1948.

While it would be nice to think that progressive thinking triggered pro basketball's integration, in reality it was something much more pragmatic: World War II.

In the summer of 1942, the call for military servicemen depleted many pro basketball teams. Prior to the 1942-43 season, two of the seven NBL teams folded. Toledo, having already lost its star player, Chuck Chuckovitz, to the Army, was desperate for players. The team's owner, Sid Goldberg, solved the problem by signing black players from the Toledo area.

"I went to the league, and I told them, `I don't know what you fellows are going to do, but if you want me to stay in I'm going to use blacks,'" Goldberg recalled many years later. "Some of them didn't relish it, I suppose, because they thought it would bring problems. But I don't think any of them objected."

Toledo wasn't the only NBL franchise to integrate in 1942. After the 194142 season, football great George Halas folded his Chicago Bruins franchise, but the league was able to maintain a Chicago franchise when the local chapter of the United Automobile Workers at the Studebaker factory chose to front a new team.

The Studebakers signed Harlem Globetrotters players Duke Cumberland, Bernie Price, Sonny Boswell, Roosie Hudson, Tony Peyton, and Hillary Brown. Unlike Toledo, the Chicago team chose to sign black players based solely on their talent. The Studebaker factory had been converted into a defense plant, meaning its workers and players were exempt from the draft.

Chicago finished the season with an 8-15 record and lost in the first round of the playoffs to Fort Wayne. Some reports claim that the team was fractured by racial conflicts. Individuals associated with the Studebakers, however, dispute that assertion. "There was no strife [on the team]," head coach Johnny Jordan recalled. "All the blacks were treated well by players and fans. People knew the Globetrotters were great ballplayers. They were well received."

Jones, who knew the Chicago players and played the 1941-42 season with the Globetrotters, concurs. "There was never any bench jockeying like in baseball. We never had problems on our own team. Players on the court for and against were fine."

Despite their pioneering efforts, both the Studebakers and Toledo folded. The NBL's contribution to the integration of basketball, however, continued through the league's final season in 1948-49.

In 1943, Willie Smith, a powerful frontcourt player most known for his days with the barnstorming New York Renaissance in the 1930s, started at center for the Cleveland Chase Brass and averaged 8.5 points a game. Smith was the only black NBL player that season.