First All-Black Athletic Conference Began In D.C., Anniversary This Week
On May 30, 1906, the Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association of Middle Atlantic States (I.S.A.A.) took root with its first event, a track meet, at Howard University.
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The I.S.A.A. was the first all-black athletic conference.
The event and the conference were masterminded by Edwin Henderson.
The meet itself was a great success, drawing hundreds of athletes from the entire surrounding area.
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Edwin B. Henderson,Henderson and his main collaborator, Garnet C. Wilkinson, had tapped into a vast, unsatisfied craving for formal sports training and athletic competition among black students in the racially segregated Washington, D.C. Public Schools.
For example, black athletes were not allowed to compete in local white-run Amateur Athletic Union events. Yet, because their priorities were elsewhere, schools didn’t offer their students much as far as recreational activities and couldn’t financially support their own athletic programs.
“Too little attention has been given to physical education by institutions of learning for colored youths,” Henderson complained.
Wilkinson was a $675-a-year Latin and mathematics teacher who had been Henderson’s instructor at the illustrious M Street High School in D.C.
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Garnet C. Wilkinson,An 1898 graduate of M Street with degrees from Oberlin College and the Howard University Law School, Wilkinson was a brilliant promoter and organizer – he would eventually become a principal of Washington’s highly regarded Armstrong Technical as well as M Street (by then renamed Dunbar High School).
In addition to his highly academic background, Wilkinson also had a passion for sports, so he was a natural fit with Henderson’s efforts in physical education.
As the result of the formation of the I.S.A.A., various African American basketball teams and players from schools, athletic clubs, churches, colleges, and Colored Y.M.C.A. branches began to emerge in and around Washington, and along the East Coast.
I.S.A.A. basketball games launched the spread of the young sport among African Americans.
“Black basketball” was born.
A thought had become a thing, in a beautiful expression of how the mind can manifest reality.
When you watch the often self-absorbed players, owners, commentators, league big shots, and front row celebs during the N.B.A. Playoffs this week, remember these humble pioneers.
This week, 102 years ago, they made history now.
Sidat-Singh cover stories, “Sweets” Clifton films, “Black Magic” on ESPN- perhaps the entertainment world is slowly embracing our early edutainers.
Hey Ed, as always it’s an honor to have you visit here. And thank you for your encouraging words.
You hit the nail on the head, writing that getting into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is “it is an empty honor anyway.” You, me, Bill Russell, and many others share that view, for various reasons.
But I disagree that “our hard work is for nothing.” Remember — and this is probably on a poster on a wall at the middle school in Falls Church named after your grandmother — “Character is who you are when no one is watching.”
Because, actually, someone is, and many people are, indeed watching. What you give, what we give, it’s about the giving. It feels good, don’t it?! :-) That’s the secret of success.
Claude,
I would like to thank you for this attention to the Black Fives Era that has been written about, but not greatly publicized until recently by people like yourself, Arthur Ashe, David Wiggins, Bob Kuska, and several others that are interested in the truth about how basketball became a game, and why Edwin B. Henderson belongs in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.
If the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame is not a place for Basketball Pioneers, then it is an empty honor anyway, and all of our hard work is for nothing anyway. If celebrity is more important to the hall than history, then we have become a nation not connected to core values that have made this nation great. And, that would be a shame. But, not unlike the course that the current administration of this nation has set us on in the 21st century.
Thank you Claude for your courage and commitment.
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