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333 pages

English

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A groundbreaking, timely history of the largely unknown early days of Black basketball, bringing to life the trailblazing players, teams, and impresarios who made the game From the introduction of the game of basketball to Black communities on a wide scale in 1904 to the racial integration of the NBA in 1950, dozens of African American teams were founded and flourished. This period, known as the Black Fives Era (teams at the time were often called "fives"), was a time of pioneering players and managers. They battled discrimination and marginalization and created culturally rich, socially meaningful events. But despite headline-making rivalries between big-city clubs, the savvy moves of innovative businessmen, and the undeniable talent of star players, this period is almost entirely unknown to basketball fans. Claude Johnson has made it his mission to change that. An advocate fiercely committed to our history, for more than two decades Johnson has conducted interviews, mined archives, collected artifacts, and helped to preserve this historically important African American experience that otherwise would have been lost. The Black Fives is the result of his work, a landmark narrative history that braids together the stories of these forgotten pioneers and rewrites our understanding of the story of basketball.

Sujets

Baloncesto

History of sport

Basketball

Basket-ball

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Publié par	ABRAMS BOOKS
Date de parution	24 mai 2022
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781683359081
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,1166€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright 2021 Claude Johnson
Cover 2021 Abrams
Published in 2021 by Abrams Press, an imprint of ABRAMS. All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933480
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4436-5 eISBN: 978-1-68335-908-1
Abrams books are available at special discounts when purchased in quantity for premiums and promotions as well as fundraising or educational use. Special editions can also be created to specification. For details, contact specialsales@abramsbooks.com or the address below.
Abrams Press is a registered trademark of Harry N. Abrams, Inc.

ABRAMS The Art of Books 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007 abramsbooks.com
For my Mama, who had a book in her my Dad, who wanted to finish his book my Siblings, who have always been there my Sons, who inspire me to keep at it and keep at it my 5 x 7s
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1: AN UNMARKED GRAVE
CHAPTER 2: SURVIVAL
CHAPTER 3: SEEDS
CHAPTER 4: PITTSBURGH PEDIGREE
CHAPTER 5: RITES OF PASSAGE
CHAPTER 6: SATAN S CIRCUS
CHAPTER 7: 1901
CHAPTER 8: PHYSICAL CULTURE
CHAPTER 9: ST. CHRISTOPHER
CHAPTER 10: GREAT STRUGGLE FOR VICTORY
CHAPTER 11: A REAL CORKER
CHAPTER 12: AS OUR WHITE FRIENDS PLAY IT
CHAPTER 13: WABASH OUTLAWS
CHAPTER 14: SPORT FOR SPORT S SAKE
CHAPTER 15: A JANITOR S KEY
CHAPTER 16: VIRGIL
CHAPTER 17: MADDENING
CHAPTER 18: SUPREME COURTS
CHAPTER 19: LOENDI
CHAPTER 20: OUTLAWS
CHAPTER 21: DEMOCRACY LADS
CHAPTER 22: THE FUTURE OF BASKETBALL
CHAPTER 23: OUT-AND-OUTERS
CHAPTER 24: THE NEW NEGRO
CHAPTER 25: CHICAGO CRUSADERS
CHAPTER 26: TRUE WORLD CHAMPIONS
CHAPTER 27: WORLD SERIES OF BASKETBALL
CHAPTER 28: THE MISSING NBA TEAM
CHAPTER 29: VINDICATION
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
CHAPTER 1
AN UNMARKED GRAVE
On a Narrow Patch of grass and dirt in Tier 4 of the Villa Palmeras section at the back of Rosedale Cemetery in Linden, New Jersey, there is a flat chunk of rocky cement with 47 scrawled on it, as if written by hand using a crooked stick while the concrete was still wet. This is Plot Number 47, an unmarked grave. It contains the remains of William Anthony Will Madden. 1 He died at age eighty-nine on Tuesday, February 20, 1973, in the Greenwich Village section of New York City, alone, with no family or friends.
Rosedale is an old burial ground that occupies ninety acres of flatland along the New Jersey Turnpike, about thirteen miles southwest of Manhattan. Developed in 1900, it is one of the longest-running businesses in Linden, a town best known for its dozens of gigantic, white, million-gallon petroleum storage tanks, familiar to drivers using Interstate 95 in that section. Hiding behind those vast containers is Rosedale. Though its vintage buildings and tree-lined paths hint at better days gone by, no one famous was ever buried there.
In the early 1970s, New York City ran out of graveyard space and, as a cost-saving move due to financial troubles, began sending its unclaimed dead to various cemeteries in New Jersey. These unaccountable goners were people with no next of kin and nobody else who had known them. Rosedale was one of those sites and the Villa Palmeras section there became filled with the untitled graves of those voiceless souls.
By law, investigation of their cases had to be assigned to the city s Office of the Public Administrator. That s what happened to Will, after whose death the PA s office searched his last known residence for personal belongings that might offer clues about next of kin or acquaintances. That came up empty. No surviving spouse, children, grandchildren, siblings, cousins, or other relatives could be traced. No friends, acquaintances, or former coworkers stepped forward. He had left behind no will and no instructions for what to do with his body or his property. Its efforts having reached a dead end, the PA s office issued a final statement: Nothing was found among decedent s effects which would assist your petitioner in who the distributees of decedent were or where they might be located. 2
According to the city s legal terminology, Will had died intestate, not only without a will but also without anyone to speak on his behalf. Following protocol, the handling of his affairs and burial arrangements were sent to the Surrogate s Court, whose responsibilities included forwarding his mail, paying his bills, settling his debts, and closing out his accounts. The court selected the Gannon Funeral Home in Manhattan from New York City s list of approved funerary service providers for such cases, which were usually low-budget.
Even though Gannon prepared Will s body, there was no funeral service. No mourners gathered, no final farewells. The corpse was transported to Rosedale, but the cemetery s chapel went unused, and instead of a casket, he got a plain pine coffin.
Will was anonymous on the day of his interment, February 26, 1973. No obituary was published in any newspaper. No headstone was placed, then or later, which meant no epitaph would list his life s accomplishments. Just that jagged edged 47 slab to mark the spot where he was put into the ground. Only the gravediggers on duty were present at Will s burial. The nearby mound of displaced soil was twice as high as usual because the hole was double depth. To save money, graves for the city s intestate clients were dug deep enough for two coffins, stacked one on top of the other. 3 The box containing Will s remains went in first. Instead of resting six feet under, his coffin was placed twelve feet down, like being stuck at the bottom of a bunk bed. Forever.
Any last words spoken at the burial were purely symbolic. Even if we just say, We consign the remains to the earth, at least we give them a reasonably dignified sendoff and show respect, said Wilson Beebe, executive director of the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association, in a 1995 interview about the state s handling of all those unclaimed bodies. 4
The pile of dirt next to the grave was moved back into the open hole, one shovelful at a time. William Anthony Madden was the former king of the basket ball world and Beau Brummel of New York City, but as the pine box containing his remains gradually became covered up, the pioneering African American sports history to which he had contributed was buried with him, and this case of an elderly man from Greenwich Village who had died alone was officially closed. But the soul of the dearly departed had far to go before it could rest in peace. That history was Will s story, and it had never been unburied or fully told. Until now.
CHAPTER 2
SURVIVAL
Will Madden, the first rightful king of Black basketball in America, ascended to that throne because he came from a family of survivors. This was established during the Civil War, on the evening of Tuesday, July 14, 1863, in New York City, as bloodthirsty mobs of enraged working-class Whites roamed Midtown Manhattan armed with clubs, pitchforks, iron bars, swords, and many with guns and pistols, looking for any African Americans they could find. 1 Marching through the streets, those with weapons fired toward anyone in their way, even at New York City policemen. On the corner of Twenty-Ninth Street, a crowd who had been engaged all day in hunting down and stoning to death every negro they could spy lingered in plain view of the Twenty-First Precinct police station. It was undermanned because thousands of New York State Militia troops who would have served as backup had been sent to the Battle of Gettysburg. 2 Nothing was spared. The Colored Orphan Asylum at Forty-Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, home to more than two hundred disadvantaged Black children, had been burned to the ground. Horses pulling streetcars had been shot to death and the cars smashed to pieces. The homes of prominent abolitionists were being looted and destroyed. Railroad tracks had been torn up and telegraph wires cut. Dozens of public buildings, including churches, were ransacked and torched. Even the house of the New York City mayor, George Opdyke, was raided and set on fire. It was mayhem.
Ever since President Abraham Lincoln had issued the Emancipation Proclamation in January 1863, the city s poorest Whites feared that freed slaves would migrate to Manhattan and steal their jobs. Then in March, Congress passed the Enrollment Act, which made all able-bodied adult males immediately eligible to be drafted into the Union Army. This reality sank in when the names of New York City draftees were published leading up to Draft Week. Making matters worse was that under the Enrollment Act, any wealthy man could escape the draft by paying a $300 fee (the equivalent of more than $6,500 today). 3 He would be replaced by some poor fellow who simply couldn t afford to pay that. Over the weekend, what started out as heated protests escalated into angry demonstrations that gathered force and spiraled into raging mobs that, looking for scapegoats, became brutally violent toward African Americans. Terror seized pedestrians and storekeepers, one witness observed, the former hurried out of the way; the latter hastily closed and barred doors and windows. 4 Black people stayed indoors to remain safe. But mob instigators knew where they lived, not only from sight but also because the New York City Directory listed every colored resident with the abbreviation (col d) next to the name. 5 The rioters specifically targeted neighborhoods where numerous mixed-race families lived.
York Street, a short lane just below Canal Street in what is Tribeca today, contained two rows of small wooden and brick houses that were mostly occupied by negro whitewashers and ironers. 6 The surrounding neighborhood housed most of the 3,000 mulattoes in our city, according to a careful perusal of census returns by the