All Hail The Philadelphia Tribune Girls! (Happy Birthday Ora Mae Washington)


Black women’s basketball pioneer Ora Mae Washington was born on this date, January 23, in 1898. Washington was perhaps the greatest female athlete of all time, black or white. To help celebrate, let’s focus on a basketball team she led—the Philadelphia Tribune Girls, an all-black team that played during the 1930s and 1940s.

Philadelphia Tribune Girls

The Tribune Girls of Philadelphia, 1938. Standing (l. to. r): Marie Leach, Lavinia Moore, Myrtle Wilson, Ora Washington, Rose Wilson, Florence Campbell. Kneeling: Gladys Walker, Virginia Woods.

There are few teams in any sport, any place, that dominated so completely and for so long. The Tribune Girls won eleven straight Women’s Colored Basketball World’s Championships. The Tribune Girls were formed in 1930 with players from the Philadelphia Quick Steppers and the Germantown Hornets, two exceptional local all-black female basketball teams. The Quick Steppers featured Inez Patterson, a phenomenal sports star who also managed and coached the team.

Ora Washington

Ora Washington goes up for a rebound.

The Hornets’ lineup included two amazing athletes who were already nationally renowned as tennis players, Ora Washington and Lula Ballard. Both teams played at the Young Women’s Christian Association (Y.W.C.A.) Colored Branch in Germantown, a racially diverse suburban community in the northern section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Patterson, a record-setting Temple University athlete who was an All-Collegiate selection in many sports including basketball, was the Quick Steppers’ most talented player. A West Philadelphia native and the team’s captain, Patterson had led the Quick Steppers to a 15-1 record and the Eastern Colored Women’s Basketball Championship title during the previous season, in 1929.

More than a great athlete, Patterson, who also managed the team, was far ahead of her time as a black female sports promoter and entrepreneur. In 1930 she approached the powerful Philadelphia Tribune, a leading Negro newspaper, to propose a team sponsorship arrangement between the paper and the Quick Steppers. Patterson went to Otto Briggs, the newspaper’s circulation manager. He was also a part owner of the publication, and the husband of the president of the paper. The Tribune newspaper sponsored and promoted her basketball team, bringing free advertising, exposure, and financial stability to her club during a time of great uncertainty at the start of the Great Depression.

Philadelphia Tribune Girls headline

The Tribunes astonishing won-loss record was almost a joke.

In return, Patterson renamed her team, which increased the paper’s popularity as well as its local and national circulation. Thus, the Tribune Girls were born. Nicknamed the “newsgirls,” the Tribune women played most of their home games in the Wissahickon Boys Club gym in Germantown.

With the backing of the Philadelphia Tribune as her calling card, Patterson easily persuaded Ora Washington and Lula Ballard, the stars of the Germantown Hornets, to join the newly named Tribune Girls team. The acquisition of these two players paved the way for the Tribunes to dominate black women’s basketball for nearly two decades to come. Washington was a national headliner. She had just won her third of seven straight American Tennis Association women’s singles titles.

With these stars, the Tribune Girls reigned immediately. Their trademark was “snappy playing and sharp shooting.” By the end of December, Ora Washington was already being hailed as “the best Colored player in the world.” Despite a growing list of independent female African American basketball teams, the Tribune Girls had no rivals. So they looked to black colleges for competition.

Philadelphia Tribune Girls advertisement

The Tribunes were well-promoted.

During the Depression Era, while most black colleges were discontinuing their women’s basketball programs in favor of “refinement and respectability,” Bennett College for Women, a historically black school in Greensboro, North Carolina, did the opposite.

Bennett enthusiastically focused on basketball, recruiting top players nationwide to become the best African American women’s collegiate team – and perhaps the best overall black female squad – in the country, by the mid-1930s. Between 1933 and 1937, the Bennett girls lost only one college game. Naturally, people wanted to know which team was better. A showdown between the Tribune Girls and the Bennett College Five was scheduled in 1934 — a weeklong 3-game series in Greensboro to decide the national black women’s basketball championship.

One can imagine the atmosphere. For their first game the Tribune Girls showed up in new red and white uniforms with script “Tribune” lettering sewn onto sleeveless tops, and matching socks. At halftime they changed into fresh purple and gold outfits. Maybe their hot looks set the tone, because the Tribunes swept the series. The newsgirls’ scoring in the series was well balanced, while the team’s shooting was described as “almost supernatural.” “They just had it all together,” Bennett player Ruth Glover explained in a modern day interview. “They could dribble and keep the ball and make fast moves in to the basket which you couldn’t stop.”

Ora Washington, tennis player

Washington was a tennis champion with no equal, black or white.

Ora Washington was intense. “I didn’t believe in long warm-ups; I’d rather play from scratch and warm up as I went along,” she once told a reporter. “She wasn’t a huge person, or very tall,” recalled Glover. “But she was fast.” Washington was the core of the lineup. “The team was built up around her,” said Glover. The Tribunes-Bennett series of 1934 was a landmark in building interest and enthusiasm for black women’s collegiate and interscholastic sports programs.

By 1936 the Tribunes had achieved “a string of victories that have overshadowed anything done by any other bunch of girls in either race.” During the 1937-38 season the team reportedly traveled over 5,000 miles to fill their schedule, which included a tour of Southern states.

But in the summer of 1941, as the newsgirls were set to start their 12th season, a shakeup at the Philadelphia Tribune newspaper headquarters caused the departure of Otto Briggs. Then in December, America’s entry into World War II stalled the momentum of all major sports, particularly women’s basketball.

Ora Washington headline

Ora Washington led the team.

Without Briggs, the Tribune Girls soon fell apart and disbanded. Briggs, an ailing World War I veteran, died in 1943. Following the war, support of women’s participation in sports never quite reestablished itself and neither did the Tribune Girls basketball team.

However, by then, many of the barriers to African American female involvement in sports had already begun to collapse thanks to the pioneering efforts of Ora Washington and Tribune Girls. Despite her accomplishments, little had been written about her until Sky Kings and more recently, Shattering the Glass.

Furthermore, many believe that the Basketball Hall of Fame ought to consider Washington for enshrinement in Springfield.

(Part 4 of a 4-part series of team profiles celebrating Black Women’s Basketball History Month.)

Editor’s Note (Added October 23, 2016) Please listen to this Podcast that includes a discussion of Ora Mae Washington:

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9 years ago

What a treasure to find out this information! I am a huge basketball fan from the 1980’s Laker/Celtics era, but I didn’t know anything about this. Will support the Black fives foundation in its research and promotional efforts which are greatly needed so that more people can know about this.

R. D. Griffith
10 years ago

My name is R.D. Griffith and I am writing a book on the history of women’s basketball tournaments. Any info you could send me on the Women’s Colored Basketball World Championships would be greatly appreciated. Like years, Finals teams, dates, and scores and MVPs if any. Also may I have your permission to use the team picture of the Philadelphia Tribunes that is at the top of this article. The only picture the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame sent me was a newspaper clipping of Ora Washington and I don’t think it does her justice. If you have any other pictures of Ora or any other players I would gladly put them in the book.

Thank You for your time

R.D. Griffith

Lenora Rose Johnson
11 years ago

I see my grandmother’s image standing second from the right. Her name is Rose Johnson. Ms. Inez Patterson and she were friends and team members. Both were raised in Eastwick, a small community near the Philadelphia airport. I was just amazed with the picture.and the teams accomplishments.

Nancy Washington
11 years ago

Hi I am the grandniece of Ora Mae Washington’s father, James “Tommy”Washington he was the oldest brother of by grandfather
Eugene Washington. Tommy was married to Laura O. Young.

I am the genealogist for the Washington/Young familty of Caroline County, Va.,

I hope that we can connect, because I am looking for additional information on Ora’s family.

Thank you

Nancy Jean Washington

Candice
14 years ago

Hi Regina:

Thanks for your reply! I would definitely like to coordinate a conversation with you. This is such a beautiful story. Please feel free to email me dramatica1214@yahoo.com.

I truly look forward to hearing from you!

Karen
15 years ago

Ora Mea Washington is my great aunt. I thank GOD that she is finally getting the recognition she so greatly deserved by the WNBA Hall of Fame.

My prayers go out to the families of those forgotten hero’s that have not as yet been recognized. May their time of recognition and glory come quickly.

I also pray that the “Tennis Hall of Fame” will one day see the light and honor Ora Washington for her even greater accomplishments in Tennis History.

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15 years ago

James, you hit the nail on the head. Is she the only female double sport Hall of Fame candidate?

James Skinner
15 years ago

Informative article! I am a big Tennis and Hoops fan and was vaguely familiar with ora Washington’s athletic prowess. Seems to me that she should be considered for both the Basketball and Tennis Hall of Fame.

16 years ago

Great story. Great lady. Great team.