NY Newsday: Barclays Center Honors Early African-American Basketball Teams, Players
Newsday published this cool article by Bob Herzog. The piece is insightful, thoughtful, and thorough.
Here is an excerpt:
The images stare at you from the main concourse of Barclays Center. You stare back, entranced.
Of the six large photos, fittingly in sepia-toned black and white but depicting a colorful, long-ago epoch, five are century-old basketball team photos and one captures a single player, coiled to throw a baseball-style pass with his muscular right arm.
There are men and women, all posing, all wearing serious expressions. They were pioneers of African-American sports whose contributions went largely unrecognized. But in a celebration of Black History Month, the Black Fives have come back to life.
“We were very excited about the idea of bringing professional basketball to Brooklyn,” said David Berliner, executive vice president of Forest City, the company that owns the Barclays Center. “But to think that it was already here, that was amazing. These photos are of real people, and their legacies live on.”
Two of the six mural-sized pieces in a new compilation of vintage Black Fives Era photographic images now permanently installed in the concourse of the Barclays Center in Brooklyn.
