At the dawn of the millennium, we were inundated with lists proclaiming the best and brightest personalities of the twentieth century. Of those dealing with outstanding sports personalities, one list has been consistently overlooked – the one recognizing the accomplishments of the many sports personalities who gave visibility and credibility to minorities during the past century, thus paving the way for minority athletes of the future.

As one born in the first quarter of this past century, I feel qualified to enumerate such a meaningful list. In as much as I have been a sports writer and professor for more than fifty years, and as a minority who, because of my ethnicity, was denied full and meaningful participation until after World War II ended, it is obvious that my list will have a different prospective than others that have been produced.

Sports in America for the first fifty years of the past century are full of instances that reflect its segregated state and racist nature. Therefore, I take this opportunity to list those sports figures who through their outstanding performances helped establish minorities as a sports presence in America.

My list would be incomplete if I failed to recognize a select few non-minorities who helped right an obvious wrong by making it possible for those of color to perform outstandingly. The Branch Rickeys, Pete Rozelles, George Irelands, Don Haskins and Walter Browns, who exhibited a bravery rarely exhibited by professional owners, administrators and coaches. These men, though not widely known by sports historians, and were not African American, were pioneers, nevertheless.

Each on this list helped propel this country’s minorities into the consciousness of America and the world. They gave of themselves in the face of America’s selfish nature on one hand and on many occasions, faced emotional and physical harm as they performed collegiately or professionally. This decade introduced to millions of Americans the sports talents of Blacks which racial segregation had “hidden.”

Without further ado – here is my list of the top

Sports Personalities Who Gave Visibility to
Minorities in the 20th Century

1 [2] Jesse Owens and Paul Robeson

Jesse Owens and Paul Robeson share first place on my list, as each, although outstanding student athletes, was provided very limited media attention in the 30’s as college graduates of Ohio State and Rutgers Universities respectively.

Owens, as many may recall, won four gold medals in the 1936 Olympics at Berlin, which made him the first of his race to win multi-Olympic medals, helped destroy the German claim of (white) racial superiority.

Robeson, equally as talented an all-around athlete as Owens, was the first Black to perform at Rutgers, and won fifteen varsity letters in four sports.

3. Joe Louis

Nicknamed the “Brown Bomber” Louis, individually and publicly, unlike Jack Johnson, was not given to any form of braggadocio. In 1936, a loss to Max Schmeling in a twelfth-round knockout haunted Joe until the night of June 22, 1938 when he defeated Schmeling in the first round. This victory also debunked Adolph Hitler’s myth of racial superiority.

It was the quiet demeanor of Louis, which many attributed to his trainer, Jack Blacklurn, a former lightweight fighter during the era of Jack Johnson, that helped foster positive race relations. It was Blacklurn who cautioned Joe about the lifestyle that made Johnson a less than well-received fighter.

4. Frederick Douglas “Fritz” Pollard

Fritz Pollard was the first African American to play and coach in the National Football League.

Standing five feet, nine inches and weighing 160 pounds, Fritz was Brown University’s first Black player, as well as the first of his race to live on campus where he endured racial prejudice throughout his years at the Providence, Rhode Island school. While at Brown, John D. Rockefeller, Sr. was Fritz’s financial benefactor. It was not unusual, then and today, for a wealthy alumnus or friend of the university to adopt (assist) an economically and financially challenged athlete. He then played (with Paul Robeson) for the Akron Pros of the Americas Professional Football Association in 1920. Later, he played for and coached the Hammond, Indiana team in 1923 before he retired in 1925.

5. Jack Johnson

Jack Johnson began his boxing career at the turn of the past century. His career, too helped dispel an existing attitude among this country’s majority that Blacks were inferior. However, Johnson, who was a talented as well as very outspoken, soon paid the price for his outspokenness.

On July 4, 1910 in Reno, Nevada, Johnson first toyed with and then knocked out James J. Jefferies in the fifteenth round. Unwilling to accept the defeat of their champion, Jeffries, American whites reacted with widespread rioting, which made global headlines. The Daily Express newspaper in London dated Wednesday, July 6, 1910 reported in its headlines: “Race Riots in America, 19 deaths, many hurt and 5,000 arrested.”

6. Jackie Robinson

Jackie Robinson, who broke the baseball color line in 1947 with the assistance of Branch Rickey, ranks sixth on our list. The emotional and physical turmoil that engulfed baseball’s first African American seems unreal when viewed by youth of later generations.

During Robinson’s inaugural season, the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers - Leo “The Lip” Durocher said this to his squad as they prepared to play a pre-season game in Havana, Cuba, “I hear some of you fellows don’t want to play with Jackie Robinson and that you have a petition drawn up that you are going to sign. Well, boys, you know what you can do with that petition? You can wipe you’re a_ _ with it. I’m the manager of this ball club, and I’m interested in one thing—winning. I’ll play an elephant if it can do the job.”

7, 8 and 9. Johnny McLendon, Bill Russell and Althea Gibson

Johnny McLendon, Bill Russell and Althea Gibson, although trailblazers in the sport that he/she dominated in the ‘50’s, are, unfortunately, names that are not readily recognized by many sports enthusiasts of this era.

McLendon, who was as quiet as he was talented, was the first African American to coach [and win] three consecutive collegiate national basketball championships at Tennessee State University. Also unknown to many, Coach Mac was the first African American to coach a professional basketball team in this country. The year was 1959, and the team was the Cleveland Pipers of the Industrial Basketball Association.

Bill Russell was the first African American to coach a team in the National Basketball Association. After he led the University of San Francisco to back-to-back collegiate titles in 1955 and 1956, he led the Boston Celtics to eleven NBA championships before his retirement in 1969.

Althea Gibson earned a spot on this list because she was the first of her race to excel in a sport believed by many “too complicated” for those of color - tennis. Althea graduated from Florida A&M University, where her tennis skills were sharpened. In 1950 she was the first Black woman to be invited by the American Tennis Association (ATA) to play in the National Indoors, and later in the Nationals at Forest Hills by the United States Lawn Tennis Association. She went on, in 1957 and 1958, to become the first African American to win the Wimbledon singles championship.

10 – 31

The Branch Rickeys, Irelands, Haskins, and Auerbachs of this century will never be given the highest accolades they deserve. The reason - they helped to accomplish something that was more important than the media then and history since has portrayed. Case in point - it was Rickey’s plan that enabled Jackie Robinson to integrate major league baseball.

Ireland and Haskin dared to play four and five minority basketball players at the same time. Ireland at Loyola (Chicago) in 1963, and Haskins at Texas Western in 1966. As the two schools won NCAA titles with “Black teams,” blows were struck against an “unwritten rule” not to play more than two at a time.

Pure and simple Pete Rozelle’s attitude against any form of segregation integrated the National Football League.

This list of 33 sports figures does not in a real sense include others that were also important to the ascendancy of African Americans to sports excellence in this country. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Hank Aaron, Walter Payton, Wilma Rudolph, Perry Wallace, Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice, Doug Williams, Eddie Robinson, Clarence “Big House” Gaines and Jackie Joyner-Kersee were all champions who paid an extra price for being African American. And those of us who witnessed their outstanding talents are richer for it all.

Sports Achievers of the 1900s

Addendum

Perry Wallace

The first Black basketball player in the Southeastern Athletic Conference (SEC) was Perry Wallace, a 6 foot, 5 inches, 220-pound graduate of Nashville’s (TN) Pearl High School. Although not ostracized by his teammates at Vanderbilt, he was forced to endure the racist attitudes of the fans and players of the other not-yet-integrated SEC schools, particularly those from the Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia schools who openly resented his presence on “their basketball court.” During the three years he played for Vandy - freshmen could not play varsity basketball at the time - he was forced to endure racist signs and taunts paraded in gyms that would never be tolerated today.

Years after graduation, (with a major in electrical engineering) Wallace indicated publicly that had he known what animosity awaited him as the first basketball player in the SEC, he never would have accepted the scholarship offered to him from the Nashville school.

First in the NBA: Lloyd, Cooper or Clifton?

Youthful basketball enthusiasts are not aware, perhaps, that Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton were the first African-Americans to play in the National Basketball Association. In fact, each entered the NBA the same year, 1950.

Walter Brown, owner of the Boston Celtics, drafted Cooper in the second round on April 25, 1950, which drew stares and comments from fellow NBA owners.

According to George Sullivan, a New York Times reporter who was present when the Duquesne University product was selected, another owner commented, “Walter, don’t you know he’s a colored boy?” Brown responded: “I don’t give a damn if he’s striped, plaid, or polka dot! Boston takes Chuck Cooper of Duquesne!”

Later in that same draft (ninth round) the Washington Capitals selected Earl Lloyd of West Virginia State. And three months later the New York Knicks purchased the contract of Sweetwater Clifton from the Harlem Globetrotters.

The history of the three reads correctly as follows: Cooper was the first drafted; Clifton, a graduate of Xavier University in New Orleans, was the first to sign an NBA contract; and Lloyd, on October 31, 1950, became the first of this trio to play in an NBA contest.

Wesley Branch Rickey

To fully appreciate the role that Branch Rickey played in helping to integrate major league baseball, allow us to view the state of baseball before the Rickey-Robinson Experiment.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis had controlled major league baseball in every respect upon becoming Commissioner after the Black Sox Scandal, in which eight Chicago White Sox were accused of “throwing” the 1919 World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. Although a civil court did not find the players guilty, Landis felt that they should never play major league baseball again, and were all barred from the game for life.

In addition to being a racial bigot, Landis was a verbose, tobacco-chewing, rib jabber, honest and egotistical man, who felt it was his duty to prevent Blacks, however qualified, from playing in the major leagues. Which he did until his death in 1944. His death, on November 25, 1944, paved the way for the selection of Albert B. “Happy” Chandler, a senator from Kentucky, to serve as the next Commissioner of baseball, beginning in April 1945.

Chandler was forthright when questioned about his attitude concerning Negroes playing in the major leagues: “I don’t believe in barring Negroes from baseball just because they are Negroes.”

Wesley Branch Rickey born on a farm in Stockdale, Ohio in 1881, a staunch Methodist of strong work and moral ethics, had been thinking and planning to integrate the Brooklyn Dodgers since he gained control of this major league team as its president.

As a college baseball coach in 1910, Rickey had experienced firsthand the dehumanization of racial segregation when one of his players was denied a room in a hotel where the team was staying. This experience made the Ohio Wesleyan and University of Michigan (law degree) graduate, who was also a practicing Christian, even more determined to change the racial sociology of major league baseball.

In 1945 Rickey embarked on a quest, although surreptitiously, to find “the player” that was talented enough emotionally to integrate baseball. The cadre of scouts that Branch had employed fed him the names of such standouts of the Negro League as Satchel Paige, Dave “Showboat” Thomas, Jose Gibson, Sam Jethro, Luke Easter, Roy Campanella, Monte Irvin and Jackie Robinson.

Of the scores of players listed by Rickey’s scouts, the one name that appeared repeatedly was Jackie Robinson.

Rickey traveled to California to determine whether or not Jackie was indeed the person to break down the color barrier of baseball. What Rickey found in Jackie was a strong sense of pride and exemplary personal life - the perfect ingredients to insure success of what became known as the Rickey/Robinson Experiment.