George Crowe, Part 2: A Life In The Right Place At The Right Time
Part 2 of a multi-part series on George Crowe, the last living New York (Harlem) Rens player.
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In Part I of this series of articles, last week, I mentioned a little known controversy that surrounded George Crowe just after the final game of the 1939 Indiana state high school basketball championships.
Indiana high school basketball star George Crowe gained unsolicited support from a popular white sports columnist after what many believed was a racially motivated snub, leading to widespread public outcry.
I want to expand upon that, because it brings to light a remarkable story.
It involved the apparently racially motivated snubbing of Crowe by the review committee for the coveted Gimbel prize. The prize was awarded annually to the one player in the Hoosier schoolboy basketball championships who — essentially — exhibited the best all-around skills and mental attitude.
The incident received widespread newspaper coverage at the time but has been lost in history since, buried so deeply, in fact, that even Crowe himself has difficulty today recalling that there was ever any fuss.
But there was.
Much of it was stirred up by a white sports columnist for The Hammond Times named John Whitaker, who wrote under the nickname “The Speculator.”
Whitaker accused the Gimbel organization of racism, in a column that’s republished below.
As you will see, he went way beyond just sticking up for Crowe.
In almost every conceivable way, Whitaker seems to have been far ahead of his time. On the other hand, as I described in Part I, the reaction to his column was so overwhelmingly positive, that it’s clear his readers — Indianans — were also, in many ways, far ahead of the times.
In fact, some of Whitaker’s language — remember, this was in 1939 rural Indiana — sounds a lot like the language of Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960s and of President Barack Obama today.
Speculating in Sports
by John Whitaker
The 15,000 who saw the Frankfort-Franklin finale in Indianapolis Saturday night thought that a colored boy … George Crowe of Franklin … had clinched the Gimbel award. The 15,000 said so many during the afternoon and evening and especially during the waning minutes of the championship game when colored George Crowe returned to the game.
Yes, the crowd said so in those waning minutes by standing as one and cheering a boy whose superior at defensive play and good sportsmanship has never been seen in Butler Fieldhouse. But the board said no by naming Meyers.
The Speculator wonders if the board of control lacked the courage to become the first board voting a Gimbel prize to a colored boy. The Speculator also wonders if there’ll come a day when a Tonkovich, a Yablonowski, a Kovacich, or a Ziemba from the plant districts of the north will be denied the Gimbel award because he didn’t have the opportunity to select a father named Jones or Smith.
And why not wonder about it after what happened Saturday night to the surprise of at least 75 per cent of the 15,o00 bleacherites?
The five men who ignored colored George Crowe of Franklin muffed a swell opportunity to prove — at least to all Indiana basketball fans — that Indiana does have racial tolerance. They apparently did not hear the crowd which yelled its approval of the colored marvel. They either did not hear or were too preoccupied with their own self-importance to recognize the pleadings of a crowd that really believed in democracy and sportsmanship.
They’re high school principals … those five men who passed up George Crowe … men intrusted with the teaching of tolerance … men who are supposed to strengthen our democratic institutions … men probably of the type which never passes the chance to wave the flag and point out the faults of countries in Europe.
Teachers? … Teachers, hell! They need to go back to school and study under a faculty selected from the plain folks … Catholic and Protestant … black and white … rich and poor … who comprised the 15,000 crowd on hand Saturday night when George Crowe was reminded by five little men that his color wasn’t right.
Remarkable, I think.
Whitaker was fairly new to the job back in 1939, but he would outlast any critics he might have had, writing for The Hammond Times for some 35 years before finally retiring in the early 1970s.
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Part 3 of this series on George Crowe, the last living New York (Harlem) Rens player.
what a fascinating story. Thanks for sharing the details of Mr. Crowe’s remarkable journey.
Claude … You have to understand that we in the northern part of the state especially along the 26 miles of steel mills were a separate part of the rest of the State, and not gererally acceptted by the southern corn producing hicks.. The area outside of Chicago was known as “the region”…only we always called it “da region”. Cities like Whiting-Hammond-East Chicago-Munster-Hyland-and especially my home town of Gary , made up “da region”. Fact is that my high school Froebel was integrated in 1928. Those starting southward below Lafayette to the Ohio River were hot beds for the Klu Klux Klan. The clan started in Anderson Indiana. This is the crux of the argument why George didn’t receive the Gimble Award. There were some great black ball players south…The Harmon Brothers, Washington High School; Davage Minor, Doc James, Simmy Isabel, J.D.Schaifer, all were by passed as far as what they accomplished in sports. This was the sign of the times. When Crowe played baseball for the Indianapolis Indians of the American Ass’n in 1950-51, he started getting a little publicity at that time. Just think how much time was wasted. Can’t tell you the number of time black men in articular migrated to “da region” from the south just to work in the steel mills. I can recall many times as a high school kid being approached by a black man and saying that he was happy to be north where a white man wouod take car of his needs…like a job. Still, even in gary, there were barriers areas where at certain times like in the evening a black could not cross the Calumet River and enter a community called Glen Park. Many timers did I watch Joe Louis play golf at the nine hole course that ran along the river. Remember too, America was built on steel…railroads, car bodies, girders for large buildings. It WAS the melting pot of a multitude of nationalities, yet there were barriers set by those who tried to control..politics……
Nail on the head, Claude! Giving the Gimbel Award, or naming the first Mr BasketBall, to a black Hoosier cager was made conceivable when future Crusader/Rens Jack Mann and David DeJernett squared off in two legendary Finals Center-Jump matchups. In working-class Hammond, writer Whitaker was acutely aware of the condemnation of Catholics the Klan spewed throughout Indiana. Three days before dying in a plane crash Knute Rockne was featured speaker at a Unity banquet honoring the two previous years’ public and Catholic school champions. After speaking Knute dramatically extended his hand for Big Dave to shake, two weeks after a typewritten Klan letter had threatened death to DeJernett if he “so much as touched” rival players in the regional. Indiana’s Depression-era alliance of Catholics, Blacks, and intelligent Protestants like Burl Friddle extended beyond sports and is woefully under-mentioned today.
Oops! William, us “southern corn-producing hicks” (like Larry Bird from French Lick, whose neighboring West Baden featured the Negro Leagues’ ABCs) produced the first integrated black-led ballclubs to win state hoops championships, not only in Indiana but everywhere else. A southern hick like Burl Friddle took Dave Minor to Toledo to team with Chuck Harmon and Art Grove on the all-Freshman team that runnerupped to Joe Lapchick’s St John’s in the NIT. No doubt Northern Indiana’s steel mills and other industries encouraged Southerners to seek opportunity up there, but we in Southern Indiana were mixing it up before the turn of the 20th century. Southern Indiana produced an integrated state track championship team in 1914. Thanks to the Crowes, Fuzzy, Friddle, and many others in the Twenties and Thirties, the state south of Indianapolis set an example for others to follow.
Claude:
Thanks for sharing an amazing article about George Crowe. I am truly enjoying this series and applaud your research.
Sportswriter John Whitaker was well ahead of his time and–let’s not overlook the fact–obviously had an editor who believed in allowing Whitaker’s words to appear in print or this would never have seen the light of day in 1939. Whitaker had the courage to write it, but without an equally courageous editor, we would not have this remarkable account.
Whitaker’s reference to the possibility of a boy from the “plant districts of the north” someday being denied the award “because he didn’t have the opportunity to select a father named Jones or Smith” really hits home for me, and I’m sure that was part of Whitaker’s intent–to reach a broad audience of not just African-American readers but ethnic minorities who would understand the sham and disgrace of the committee’s decision. While I was born in the U.S., three of my four grandparents were not and I know the real stories about my Italian relatives who dropped the last letter–an “a” or an “o” from the end of their last name–and effectively denied their heritage just to have chance to get a job at factories like Kodak that otherwise would not have hired them back between the World Wars.
Whitaker knew that the folks who called the shots for the Gimbel Award back then would not have selected a “Tonkovich” or a “DeMaria” any more than they would have selected George Crowe because they wouldn’t have fit their image of the Gimbel Award winner either.