The average American didn’t seem to notice the irony in our national celebration over the fifty-six U.S. medals in the 1936 Olympics in Berlin, Germany. Many Americans took particular pride in humiliating Adolf Hitler and his smug philosophy of Aryan superiority as Ohio State University’s Jesse Owens and seventeen other African-American athletes won fourteen of those fifty-six medals. Owens himself captured four gold medals and set seven world records. He was the first American to win four gold medals in track and field in a single Olympics. Yet, Owens’s return to America was anything but triumphant. Because he was black, he received no endorsement contracts, and to earn money to care for his family, he was forced to abandon college in his senior year and use his remarkable speed in bizarre exhibitions. He raced everything from people, to horses, to motorcycles. He was a familiar sight around the Negro Baseball League where, before games, he would sometimes race thoroughbred horses. Other times he would race the teams’ fastest runners, each time giving them a ten-yard advantage before speeding past them to victory.
At first glance, boxing seemed to be the exception to this pattern of racism. After all, when African-American heavyweight Jack Johnson defeated Jim Jeffries in 1910 to claim the championship title, he won what was the largest boxing purse in history: $117,000. It wasn’t that boxing was color-blind—in fact, just the opposite. Promoters exploited racism to build attendance. All other sports were metaphoric regarding race rivalry, but in boxing two men pummeled each other until one was left standing, and that said it all. Fists to the face spoke more directly to the fans’ racial attitudes than did the more stylized sports that involved chasing a ball. Jim Jeffries made that clear when he came out of retirement to put this upstart black man in his place. Said Jeffries at the time, “I am going into this fight for the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro.” At ringside, a band played the popular song “All Coons Look Alike to Me,” while promoters led the mostly white crowd in chants of “Kill the nigger!” After Johnson easily knocked out Jeffries, race riots ensued across the country as white lynch mobs attempted to breach black neighborhoods. Nevertheless, black Americans across the country felt a jolt of pride in his accomplishment. Whites had demanded proof of black equality—and they got two fistfuls of it. Jack Johnson’s flamboyant lifestyle of outspokenness, partying, and marrying white women (at a time when interracial marriages were illegal in most states) further outraged whites—and many conservative blacks. Finally, in 1912 Johnson was convicted of transporting his wife across state lines before they were married and he fled the country. These troubles didn’t diminish Johnson’s importance in the black community. If anything, they enhanced his image, because it proved that whites would do anything to destroy a black man who challenged their notions of racial superiority.
Heavyweight champion Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber,” was determined not to suffer Johnson’s fate of being triumphant in the ring only to be knocked out by public opinion. He followed strict rules of behavior to avoid being characterized as threatening, which included never being photographed with a white woman, never going clubbing by himself, and never speaking unless spoken to. Despite all his effort to present a docile public face, Louis became the focal point of the most racially charged bout in world history. On June 19, 1936, undefeated Joe Louis fought Germany’s Max Schmeling, who was personally endorsed by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler to prove white supremacy to the world. When Schmeling did the impossible and knocked Louis out, Germany’s press celebrated with endless propaganda that this was conclusive evidence of white superiority to all people of color. Perhaps less expected was when some American newspapers joined in to echo the Nazis. A columnist in the New Orleans Picayune said, “I guess this proves who really is the master race.”
Two months later at the Berlin Olympics, Jesse Owens would make those master-race proponents swallow their words when he proved to be America’s master racer. Undoubtedly, that contributed to the hype that accompanied the Schmeling-Louis rematch in 1938. So confident was Hitler in the outcome that he ordered all the movie theaters to close, forcing the public to stay home to listen to the fight on their radios. But, when Louis instantly began pounding Schmeling right from the opening bell, Hitler cut the power to the radios. Louis knocked out Schmeling only 124 seconds into the first round. That sports figures were icons of more than just winning for their own glory is clear in what Joe Louis meant to African-Americans everywhere. Said poet Maya Angelou, “The one invincible Negro, the one who stood up to the white man and beat him down with his fists. He in a sense carried so many of our hopes, and maybe even our dreams of vengeance.”
During the first half of the twentieth century, when professional sports were becoming more popular—and lucrative—one thing was abundantly clear to all African-American athletes: if they wanted to compete at all, they would have to form their own teams and leagues and compete among each other. Even though most of the white owners, managers, and players did everything to keep sports, and the money involved, to themselves, a few enterprising black men and women made black sports not only profitable, but a pulpit from which the gospel of equality was not only preached, but demonstrated again and again. These pulpits were hardwood floors with baskets, or diamond-shaped fields with bases, or hundred-yard fields with goalposts, and it was on them that white Americans experienced what no sermon on civil rights would ever be able to articulate. Ed Henderson, the first black man to teach physical education in an American school, and the founder of the first black basketball league, explained how important black athletes were to the movement for racial equality when in 1927 he told a reporter, “I doubt much whether the mere acquisition of hundreds of degrees or academic honors have influenced the mass mind of America as much as the soul appeal made in a thrilling run for a touchdown by a colored athlete…. Fairness creeps out of the soul in the athletic world to a larger extent than anywhere else.”
If “fairness” was ever going to happen, this is where it would start.
The Father of Black Basketball:
Smilin’ Bob Douglas
When this wall of segregation in sports seemed both impenetrable and insurmountable, one entrepreneur of both the wallet and the soul, Robert “Smilin’ Bob” Douglas, began to chip away at that wall. At first glance, he seemed like an unlikely challenger to Jericho’s gated community. Born in 1882 in St. Kitts, British West Indies, Douglas was only nineteen years old when he emigrated to New York City in 1901. For the next four years he worked twelve hours a day as a doorman, earning only $4 a week. But, like many of his fellow Caribbean immigrants, he wanted to be a businessman. This entrepreneurial spirit, more common among Caribbean immigrants than those who had migrated from the South, caused its own brand of racism in Harlem. Many Harlemites resented both the ambition and success of their West Indian neighbors, refusing to patronize their stores. So, for Bob Douglas to succeed, he would have to overcome the prejudice of white America as well as that of black Harlem.
The first step to success was to find something to be passionate about. For Bob that came in 1905, when a coworker took him to visit an upstairs gymnasium on Fifty-second Street and Tenth Avenue. As a child on St. Kitts, he had been a mediocre player of the island’s most popular sports of soccer and cricket. But when Bob walked into that gym and saw his first basketball game, he knew he had finally found his passion. “I knew it was the greatest thing in the world,” he later commented. “You couldn’t keep me off the court after that.”
This newfound passion inspired him to form a partnership with George Abbott and J. Foster Phillips to found the Spartan Field Club in 1908. The club provided black children with a place to compete in amateur sports such as soccer, cricket, track, and basketball. But Douglas had bigger ambitions, for both the club and basketball. He put together his own club team, the Spartan Braves, which, under his leadership as the manager as well as a player, became a leading amateur team in New York City. In 1918, at the age of thirty-six, Bob Douglas retired as an active player to
become the general manager of the Spartan Field Club. For the next three years, the Spartan Braves were a dominant amateur team in New York City, easily winning the Eastern Championship in 1921.
During this time, Douglas got his first taste of professional basketball, a taste that proved somewhat bitter. Although the Spartan Braves were successful against other amateur clubs, when they faced the Loendi Big Five, Cumberland Posey’s professional team from Pittsburgh, in February of 1921, they were humiliated by a twenty-point loss. A month later the Spartan Braves would face Loendi in a grudge match, and again they would lose, this time by a more modest 30–25. Thus began a sports rivalry between Bob Douglas and Cumberland Posey that would endure for several years, raising the profile of black basketball while raising the quality of black players.
Eight years younger than Bob Douglas, Cumberland Posey (1890–1946) was already a legendary figure in both baseball and basketball. A star basketball player in college, he had gone on to become a star semipro baseball player. Like Douglas, Posey had business ambitions beyond the sweaty uniforms and fleeting glory. He became owner of the powerful and profitable Homestead Grays baseball team, as well as a guiding force of the Negro National League. In 1912, he founded the Loendi Big Five professional basketball team, for which he also played. By the time Douglas’s Spartan Braves played them, they had already won two Colored Basketball Championships in a row—and would go on to win the next two years as well for an unprecedented four-peat. His baseball team was equally successful, winning nine consecutive pennants from 1937 to 1945. He was a savvy businessman who oversaw a dynasty in two sports. Certainly Bob Douglas was respectful, if not downright jealous, of his more successful rival from Pittsburgh. Losing to his team on the court only rubbed salt in the wound—and seasoned his taste for victory. That taste would go unfulfilled the next year when, before a crowd of four thousand fans, Posey’s Loendi Big Five again defeated the Spartan Braves.
“The Sport Supreme” Turns Pro
From the size of the crowds, it was now clear, according to the New York Age, that basketball reigned as “the sport supreme among the colored people of Harlem.” With that popularity came business opportunity. Many amateur players, as well as managers, wanted to turn pro. The Metropolitan Basketball Association (MBA), the regulating organization of amateur basketball in New York City, fought hard against what they considered to be the increasing corrupting influence of professionalism. The MBA promoted the ideal that amateur sports built strong bodies and strong moral character, whereas professional sports was, according to the Chicago Defender, a road “which in the long run leads nowhere.”
The line between professional and amateur basketball became blurred as players jumped from team to team. The MBA, trying to plug the crumbling dike of amateurism, began punishing teams who added professional players to their roster. Douglas’s Spartan Braves were fined for using a former Loendi player, James Sessoms. In 1921, two professional black teams tried to make a go of it. The Lincoln Stars played the champion all-white Original Celtics at Madison Square Garden, only to lose by a score of 30–16. Meanwhile the newly formed New York Colored Leaguers were barely holding their own with a mediocre record of seven wins against sixteen losses. The MBA quickly announced that any MBA player who played for the Stars would be banned from MBA teams forever.
This battle between amateurs and professionals took its toll on Bob Douglas and his Spartan Braves. When the Spartans met their Loendi rivals again, Douglas was forced to bench his top players, James Sessoms and Frank Forbes, because the MBA had determined they were pros. The Spartans lost again, for the third time in a row, this time by only four points (30–26). Douglas arranged for games outside the MBA, but the Spartans were on a downward slide. The Defender Athletic Club handed the Spartans their worst loss: 31–9. When the MBA finally banned Sessoms from play, things just kept getting worse, with more losses piling up. And, if Douglas had any hopes of revenge against the Loendi team, that hope died when the MBA declared the Loendi Five to be “a menace to amateur basketball” and banned all member teams from playing against them. Becoming ever more desperate, the MBA also suspended some of its own teams. In the end, the MBA didn’t have enough fingers for all the holes in this dike, and their attempts to hold back the future just nudged it along even faster.
As the crowds became bigger, the games became more than sporting events, they became social events. Many games were held at casinos and nightclubs, with full orchestras or jazz bands providing music before and after the games as the fans danced late into the night. Both teams and club owners were making increasingly more money. Given this atmosphere, amateur play inevitably gave way to the professionals. To speed that transition along, in the fall of 1922 the McMahon brothers, successful white boxing promoters based in Harlem (and grandfather and granduncle of Vince McMahon, the current chairman and majority owner of the World Wrestling Entertainment Inc. empire), formed their own professional black basketball team, the Commonwealth Big Five, named after their Commonwealth Casino. A former Spartan Brave, Frank “Strangler” Forbes, was the captain/manager. When they defeated the Monarch Lodge of Elks team, led by Cumberland Posey and banned Spartan Brave James Sessoms, black professional basketball had clearly arrived. And black amateurs everywhere took that final whistle as a call to arms to join the ranks of the pros.
Ironically, Bob Douglas remained with the MBA for the 1922–23 season. But tightening restrictions by the MBA resulted in lackluster play from his team, finally forcing Douglas to withdraw the Spartan Braves from the amateur league and turn professional. Afterward, a domino effect set in, with other teams and players turning pro. By 1923, most amateur players turning pro were hired guns, offering to play nightly depending on who offered the most money. This practice was already common among pros, with many playing on several competing teams in the same season. Between 1918 and 1922, Joe Lapchick, the white powerhouse who eventually played for the Original Celtics, was commanding $75 to $100 per game and playing for four different teams. Before this, he’d earned a total of $33 for two years’ work.
The Renaissance of Bob Douglas
The two-story redbrick Renaissance Casino and Ballroom at 138th Street and Seventh Avenue opened in 1923 to the clamor of controversy between two of Harlem’s most famous political leaders. Built by the black-owned Sarco Realty Company, the building was lauded by acclaimed activist and scholar W. E. B. Du Bois for being a black-owned business. Not only was the second-floor ballroom one of the finest in Harlem, the bottom floor boasted the only black-owned department store in New York City. However, in his publication Negro World, Marcus Garvey, the charismatic leader of the popular “back to Africa” movement, accused Sarco Realty of being a front, and that the Renaissance building was instead owned by Jewish investors. Sarco Realty angrily denied the charge and demanded a retraction.
Where others saw controversy, Bob Douglas saw opportunity. He quickly made a deal with Sarco Reality Company owner William Roach, a fellow Caribbean immigrant: in exchange for practice and playing space, Douglas would pay Roach a generous percentage of the admission take. In addition, the Spartan Braves would now be called the Renaissance Big Five, thereby providing advertising for the casino. Privately, Douglas admitted that he didn’t like the new name, which he felt was too long and awkward to pronounce. But business was business and the simple name change brought them a new home where every Saturday night his “Rens” could play against the best teams while patrons danced to the orchestra before, after, and at halftime of each game—all for only fifty-five cents admission. Douglas knew just how important that fifty-five cents was to his business plan, because he wasn’t throwing together just another black basketball team, he was making history: the Rens were the first ever black-owned, full-salaried, black professional basketball team. The rest of the world—especially the world of black basketball players—were watching to see whether Douglas’s venture was a solid business plan that they could copy, or a romantic pipe dream to be crushed and forgo
tten.
Douglas’s new enterprise was significantly helped by Romeo Dougherty, the sports and theater editor of the black New York Amsterdam News. Known as the “Sage of Union Hall Street,” Dougherty was well respected as a journalist for his efforts to support black artists and athletes in the community. Also an immigrant from the West Indies, and an admirer of Douglas’s business savvy, Dougherty used his column to promote the Rens. Certainly part of the team’s success was due to many years of Dougherty’s unflaggingly loyal articles about Douglas and his Rens. When the formation of the Rens was first announced, Dougherty endorsed Douglas.
Douglas took advantage of it on Saturday, November 3, 1923, when the Rens (also called the Renaissance Big Five, the “Big R” Five, and the Harlem Rens) played their first game as a team in their new home. The team consisted of Leon Monde, Hilton “Kid” Slocum, Frank “Strangler” Forbes, Zack Anderson, Hy Monte, Harold Mayers, Tucker Wardell, and Harold Jenkins. Even though these players were well-known in Harlem, the newspaper advertisements didn’t carry their names, but rather promoted an even greater selling point, stating that the team was “under the personal management of Smilin’ ‘Bob’ Douglas.”
On the Shoulders of Giants Page 16
