Running for Integration: CCNY and the Promise of Interracial Cooperation Through Basketball

Arthur Banton, Purdue University

Abstract

In 1951, an investigation of gambling in college basketball by New York district attorney, Frank Hogan, ultimately led to the arrest of more than 30 players from seven schools, including six players from the City College of New York (CCNY). Just a year earlier in 1950, CCNY became the first racially integrated basketball team to win the national championship; and the only one to win the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and National Invitational Tournament (NIT) championships in the same season. Unfortunately, their accomplishments were overshadowed by the gambling scandals. The intention of this project is tell the story about that CCNY team, yet to be addressed in scholarship. How these young men arrived at CCNY and what prepared them to compete academically and athletically in an integrated environment many years before the Brown vs. Board of Education case that dismantled de jure segregation in schools. Existing literature interrogates the scandals, but the voices of these young men and what they accomplished is absent from the narrative. These student-athletes from various racially and social-economically segregated neighborhoods, revolutionized the game with their up-tempo and kinematic style of play (known as the “city game”), accomplished the vision that Dr. Martin Luther King reflected in his I have a Dream speech thirteen years later – the promise of interracial cooperation. In order for these players to come together as unit, the culture to which they functioned had to be tolerant and more accepting of people from different backgrounds. With that said, a significant portion of my research examines the culture of the schools these players attended, the neighborhoods they resided, the coach that embraced them and their style of play and finally the City of New York which became the epicenter for racial tolerance and ultimately integration.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Curtis, Purdue University.

Subject Area

African American Studies|History|Recreation

COinS