Basketball, 1959: The End of an Era
The 1959 NCAA basketball finals pitted West Virginia University, with Jerry West as a forward, vs. California, with Daryl Imhoff (who?) at center. Cal won, 71 to 70.
Here are the teams.
Notice something odd?
I was rummaging through my last box of memorabilia. I found a copy of the program for the Southern California large school basketball finals: March 6-7, 1959. This was long before today's March Madness of the NCAA playoffs. The networks did not bother to televise the NCAA basketball finals in 1959. Only in 1963 did that begin.
These schools did not include the city of Los Angeles.
Here are the teams.
You can guess what happened next.
You would be wrong.
Glendale defeated Fullerton for the championship. I don't recall if Compton beat Centennial.
The previous week, Compton had barely defeated the all-white Mira Costa team. It won by one point, based on a desperation shot from 20 feet by sophomore Fred Goss. I recall this vividly. I was the student body president of Mira Costa. What if he had missed? Think of three all-white teams playing for the regional championship in Southern California today. Fantasy.
The Los Angeles City schools were separate. There, inner city black schools dominated. They played a separate style: full-court press defense, run-and-gun shooting, and ball-stealing. So did Compton and Centennial. But in 1959, this was not enough outside of Los Angeles.
There were no more finals with all-white teams after 1959 -- not in Southern California, and not in the NCAA.
In 1960 Ohio State defeated California. Ohio State had two top black players, although Jerry Lucas and John Havlicek were white. Ohio State lost to mostly black Cincinnati in 1961 and 1962. Cincinnati lost to Loyola of Chicago in 1963. Then came UCLA with back-to-back victories. UCLA had always fielded mixed-race teams. Jackie Robinson played in 1940 and 1941. (He was a far better basketball player than baseball player. He played pro basketball before he joined the Dodgers. But there was more money in baseball.) Finally, the coup-de-grâce: the all-black starting lineup of Texas Western vs. all-white Kentucky in 1966. There is a Hollywood movie on this: Glory Road.
What happened in 1960? No one knows. Without warning, teams with black players started winning the finals.
In that year, the first sit-in began in Greensboro, North Carolina. The technique spread. It was basic to the civil rights movement.
Of course, there had been the University of San Francisco teams with Bill Russell and K. C. Jones in 1955-56. USF had set a record: 60 straight wins. It won the NCAA twice. There was Kansas with Wilt Chamberlain in 1955. But these were statistical anomalies in the 1950's, or so it seemed. They were in fact the wave of the future.
In the year before USF's legendary team, the Supreme Court handed down Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas. It overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had established the legal principal of separate but equal. That was the year that USF coach Phil Woolpert became the first major college coach to start three black players. In the year that USF first won, 1955, Emmett Till was murdered. One month earlier, in July, Rosa Parks had gone to the Highlander School to receive training in non-violent activism. That December, Parks refused to move to the back of the bus.
There had been no warning for any of this. Everything was about to change. There were no connections linking these events. But they launched a social revolution.
Lenin talked of transmission belts of causation. Here, there were none -- none visible, anyway.
In 1959, Press Maravich, Pete's father, persuaded local coaches to allow an unsanctioned post-season game between Pete's team, which was number-one in the all-white South Carolina league, and the nearby black team, which was also number-one. It is the culminating scene of the movie on the young Maravich, The Pistol.
On December 26, 1964, the Boston Celtics made history. Red Auerbach started five black players. The bench was all-white. Auerbach later said this was not self-conscious on his part. He had not known he had done anything unprecedented. The press did not notice until weeks later. Why not? Because it wasn't 1959 any longer. The previous July, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law.
From that time on in basketball, the white guys steadily moved to the bench -- "the back of the bus."
I had seen Los Angeles City basketball in 1958. I could see what was coming. By 1961, it had become difficult not to see. Fred Goss, a senior at Compton, scored 32 points a game, and led his team to the championship. I was in the stands to see the semi-final game. The opposing team was all white. It was well drilled. It scored the first 8 points, as I recall. A white fan close by commented: "This is a rout." I responded: "It will be." It was. Goss went on to play for Wooden at UCLA.
For a rare artifact from an ancient civilization, click here: //www.garynorth.com/public/15389.cfm
FIGHTING BACK
Perhaps you missed this report:
The All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) was announced on January 19, 2010 by Don "Moose" Lewis as an all-white basketball league, with players reportedly required to be "natural-born United States citizens", and whose parents must both be "of the Caucasian race". The initial roster of the league was intended to include teams from twelve cities in the southern U.S. Lewis, who was interviewed by Scott Michaux of the Augusta Chronicle, said that one of the objectives of the AABA was restoring "court sanity" to the game of basketball.Lewis claimed that local contacts in each of the twelve targeted cities, including Augusta, Georgia; Albany, Georgia; and Chattanooga, Tennessee, would pay $10,000 to become "licensees" of the league.
Lewis also hinted at a possible reality television show, "Snow Ball vs. Bro Ball," involving the league.
There is no evidence that Lewis ever followed through on any of these plans.
Mr. Lewis is a man with what could be a world championship straight face, if there were recognized playoffs.
One of the cities intended to be a part of the AABA was Augusta, Georgia. Augusta's mayor, Deke Copenhaver, stated that he did not support the idea: "As a sports enthusiast, I have always supported bringing more sporting activities to Augusta. However, in this instance I could not support in good conscience bringing in a team that did not fit with the spirit of inclusiveness that I, along with many others, have worked so hard to foster in our city." Clint Bryant, athletic director at Augusta State University, described the idea for the league as "absurd", and noted that it "gives you an idea of the sickness of our society." Dip Metress, head men's basketball director at ASU, also opposed the idea, saying "nobody is going to put money behind this. Basketball is an international game." Chattanooga, Tennessee was another city targeted by Lewis' plan; a spokesman for Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield described Lewis' plan as "absolutely ridiculous", but also added that he was unaware of anything the City could do to actually stop it.
Mr. Lewis follows in the grand tradition of Jim Moran, one of my heroes as a teenager. He still is.
CONCLUSIONS
My point: established traditions can fall. They fall fastest when (1) there are ways to measure results, and (2) winning matters. This is true in sports. It is true in the free market.
It was also true in Montgomery, Alabama, in December 1955, when blacks boycotted the local bus company. In December 1956, the U.S. Supreme Court made illegal the racial seating rules of municipal bus companies.
Men can hang onto the old ways, the way that Swiss wristwatch makers hang onto their craft in a world of Casios and Swatches. But they eventually die out, due to lack of buyers.
Think of a man who wears a three-piece suit to church. His son won't.
"This is not your grandfather's Oldsmobile!" Or your grandson's.
Cultures are package deals. Sometimes they change overnight. We do not know why.
The biggest change of all came in 1800. It made the world rich. We do not know why or how.