The Hidden Story: Rens Break Pre-NBA Color Barrier, 1948
Dayton Rens, 1948.
Was this symbol of racial progress a bad move for Bob Douglas and his New York Rens? Did it lead to their imminent demise? And, what can we learn from this today?
On December 19, 1948, the Rens made history by replacing the Detroit Vagabond Kings of the National Basketball League and debuting as the renamed Dayton Rens.
The game took place at the Dayton Coliseum, making the Rens the first all-black basketball team to play in a professional league.
Turns out it wasn’t such a good deal. Here’s why. The Vagabond Kings were replaced because they were financially troubled and, well, they sucked.
The league not only moved the franchise from Detroit to Dayton (where the New York Rens previously had drawn big crowds as an out-of-town barnstorming team) but also forced the Dayton Rens to inherit the Kings’ won-lost record in the standings.
So, before playing a single game the Rens were in last place with a 2-17 record. Having an outside shot at the playoffs would have meant winning every single remaining game (40 total).
Wasn’t it really just a royal pimping of the “famous Negro team”? For one thing, Dayton’s basketball fans didn’t support or even like their new all-black team. Rens owner Douglas recognized all of this, so he often split his squad and continued touring as the “old” New York Rens with one half of the roster, while the other half played as the Dayton franchise. This strategy had regrettable results, with the Rens winning only 14 of their remaining games.
The move by the Rens made headlines.
But the N.B.L. was failing as a league and needed the Dayton Rens. Their best team, the 1947-48 N.B.L. champion Minneapolis Lakers featuring future Basketball Hall of Fame member George Mikan, had jumped to a competing league, the Basketball Association of America. So did the Fort Wayne Pistons, Rochester Royals, and Indianapolis Kautskys.
The N.B.L.’s Eastern Division was down to just 3 teams. Balance was needed. And money. The Rens’ had been wildly successful defeating earlier versions of these same teams since the early 1930s. For example, the 1932-33 Rens won 88 straight games in 86 days. The Rens were known far and wide. They were ubiquitous throughout the Midwest and synonymous with winning, so the league invited them “in”.
Few anticipated that the 1948-49 season would be the N.B.L.’s last. However, the B.A.A. was also collapsing, and they were pimping the Rens as well, often booking Douglas’ team to play the front end of scheduled twin games featuring its own franchises.
According to historian Susan Rayl, “with the Rens, B.A.A. doubleheaders drew 7,000, but without the Rens, they barely drew 2,000.”
“The lily-white B.A.A. will gladly use the Globetrotters or the Rens to draw in the crowds, but draws a rigid line on Negro players or Negro teams playing in the league,” complained the People’s Voice, a black newspaper, according to Rayl.
The 1948-49 season would be the B.A.A.’s last one too. That’s because the two whites-only leagues – the N.B.L. and the B.A.A. – agreed to merge the following season, forming a new league, the National Basketball Association.
In the merger talks the N.B.L. – which included the Dayton Rens – pushed its weight around, insisting “only on a merger, not any other type of agreement.” But when it came to insisting on which of its teams would be included in the merger, the N.B.L. chose only 8 of its 9 teams.
Care to guess which franchise was left out? Yes, the Dayton Rens. To justify their omission, the N.B.L. simply voided the franchise agreement it had with Dayton, citing their last place finish.
This was shameful trickery, effectively robbing history of the chance to answer one of the biggest “what if’s” in the archives of sport. The lineup of the Dayton Rens included future Basketball Hall of Fame member William “Pop” Gates, future N.B.A. players Nathaniel Clifton and Hank DeZonie, future New York City Basketball Hall of Fame member Eddie Younger, all-time great Harlem Globetrotters player Roscoe “Duke” Cumberland, future Long Island University Sports Hall of Fame member William “Dolly” King, and future Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame member George Crowe.
This makes me wonder … what if Douglas had saved his best lineups for those regular season N.B.L. games? The New York Rens had won 88 straight games once before as an independent team; why not give your best shot at trying to win 40 straight in the N.B.L.? Instead, the Syracuse Nationals made the Eastern Division playoffs with only 40 wins.
Had the Dayton Rens made the playoffs instead, then maybe the N.B.L. brass wouldn’t have had any excuses to let them go. If that had been the case then, as a result of the N.B.L.–B.A.A. merger, the Rens would have joined the N.B.A.
Wow!
Except for one minor detail. Douglas and everyone else knew that racism had already neutered the B.A.A. into inaction. They had turned down Bob Douglas’ effort to have the New York Rens join the league during the previous season, despite pleas from future Hall of Fame member Joe Lapchick, then the head coach of the B.A.A.’s leading franchise, the New York Knickerbockers.
Douglas, who had played it straight and done everything by the book during his entire 25-year tenure as the Rens owner, and who had every reason to believe his team would be accepted, was at the meeting and was asked to leave the room for the owners’ vote.
He waited patiently outside the conference room door. It was a door, symbolically, which he would only ever be able to knock upon, but never enter. The answer was “no.” Not surprisingly, Douglas was reportedly crushed by the decision.
New York Rens owner Robert “Bob” Douglas, circa 1940.
Was his effort just too much of an uphill struggle? Apparently so. Behind the scenes, Globetrotters’ owner Saperstein had vested financial ties to both the N.B.L. and the B.A.A. He wanted a lock on pro African American basketball talent and therefore had an unwritten agreement with the owners of both leagues.
In return for the Globetrotters’ participation in their doubleheaders, they would never hire black players. Meanwhile, an essential – and popular – aspect of the Globetrotters’ approach was to “clown” during games. Douglas wanted no part of this for the Rens. Yet, the ‘Trotters were succeeding financially and Saperstein could afford to dangle attractive contracts. As a result, the best black players were jumping to his team.
The Rens couldn’t compete with Globetrotter salaries. Meanwhile, adding to his lockdown, Saperstein’s back room agreements with those same owners effectively blocked Douglas from booking large capacity arenas they controlled.
So that’s how it went down.
On the surface, the New York Rens entré into the National Basketball League was a breakthrough for Bob Douglas and for the race. In reality, the team masqueraded as the Dayton Rens for half of a failed season and was shut out of the real deal – the chance to join the N.B.A.
After that, Douglas retired from pro basketball ownership and the team known as the New York Renaissance aka “Harlem Rens” folded.
Meanwhile, the N.B.A. operated its inaugural 1949-50 season without any African American players, as planned. However, during the off season, certain owners had changed their minds. One of them, New York Knicks owner Ned Irish, threatened to abandon the league if he were not allowed to sign blacks.
Despite strong internal objections the N.B.A. eventually relented, adding three African American players for its 1950-51 season. They were former Rens and Globetrotters player Clifton, former Duquesne University and Globetrotters star Chuck Cooper, and West Virginia State University star Earl Lloyd.
Without a monopoly on black talent, Saperstein, for survival, veered sharply in the direction of comedy, which eventually brought him and the Globetrotters to levels of success that no one ever could have unimagined.
Though shut out and heartbroken, Douglas’ work was not in vain. His passion and resolve over the course of a generation had created the chance to knock on that door. Though that door didn’t open right away, his knocking made the hinges come loose.
The 1932-33 New York Renaissance basketball team was enshrined collectively into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1963. Robert “Bob” Douglas was enshrined as a contributor in 1972.
[…] it was ultimately a raw deal for Rens owner Douglas, because his team had to assume Detroit’s pitiful 2-17 record, the move was hailed as a race […]
[…] in 1946) and the National Basketball League (formed in 1937) merged most of their existing teams (except the all-black New York Rens) into a new league they called the National Basketball […]
I wonder if Mr.Crowe is any relations to Coach Crowe of Indianapolis Attucks, who coached Oscar Robertson.
Yes he is. Also, George Crowe was a major player in race relations in 1950’s baseball. Also, Bob Gibson gives him significant credit for his own successs.
Len Ford is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame and played college football at Michigan, but did not play basketball there.
its too bad these were the best players during that era of basketball-also i think len ford played football if it is the same person..for the cleveland browns..
It’s puzzling as to why the 1949 Rens went 14-26 against the NBL field. They shouldn’t’ve felt like fish out of water in MidWestern Dayton; a number of Rens like Big George Crowe, Lenny Ford, & Wee Willie Smith were natives of Indiana, Michigan, & Ohio respectively. Perhaps they were worn thin professionally — the team split to make previous commitments from the barnstorming days — & financially — the players were never paid their final month’s salary.
Keith, Please email me your contact info., I have came across some really neat items on my great uncle, George Chestnut who played against the Rens, when he played for the Kautskys. Thanks, Dave Chestnut
It was due to their split squad, otherwise we would agree because they had a killer lineup.
Claude,
In your statement, “Was it racism, or just the profit motive?” My question is, “…or was it both?”
The exclusion of Bob Douglass from the room while the other owners cast their votes, which excluded the only Black professional basketball team from the league seems racist to me. And, when looking at the lucrative business of owning a professional sports franchise in terms of ticket sales, media revenue, merchandising, etc. How could it not be about economics.
We all applauded when Jackie Robinson shattered the color barrier in baseball. However, if we look at what that meant to the Negro Baseball League, it was beginning of the end. In the 1950’s, with the advent of television, professional sports began to become cash cows for the owners of these teams. The Negro Baseball league folded after the 1955 season. Leaving all ownership of professional sports teams in the hands of white owners.
The old Negro Baseball League was a economic girdle to the black communities, in that it infused dollars into the black communities around the country. The problem with integration in America is that old standing black institutions (The Negro Baseball League included), was that blacks stopped supporting them. When blacks were no longer restricted to living in all black communities and were able to buy into communities that had previously “whites only”, look at the decay that then followed.
This was not only the case in sports and real estate, but all black institutions were effected. Everything from businesses, to churches, to colleges, and all black segregated institutions started to decline. Once those who could afford to move into white communities did so, Only those who could not afford to move were left behind. Is it any wonder that inner cities in America fell into decay?
Maybe it is a case of not knowing what you have until you lose it. Today, many of those formerly black inter city communities are the trendy places to move into from the outer limits of the suburbs. Look at Harlem today. Look at the U Street corridor in Washington, DC. Today, most blacks cannot afford to move back into these communities where it would have been rare to even see whites a decade ago.
Don’t get me wrong. Integration opened a lot of doors for blacks to work, but black ownership of institutions has declined since integration. At least per capita. And, in capitalistic society, ownership not only has it’s privilege. It is the privilege.
With ownership comes control. Control of ones destiny. Control of ones earning power and potential. Everyday, blacks own less and less. And because of that, they are less and less in control of their day to day lives.
Integration started a trend of decline for African Americans. One that must be recognized and reversed. And with the price of everything going higher and higher, reversing the trend is getting harder and harder.
I would wish that those of us who are making the big bucks, such as athletes and musicians and the like, would stop buying “Bling Bling” and starting buying land and buildings and starting businesses that will help to employ the masses that need to earn a living, so they can survive in these inflationary times. That is why I really admire Magic Johnson.
I wish more athletes, who are earning the multi-million dollar contracts would somehow grow a conscience, and give back in ways that would help to rebuild and reverse the trends that have torn down the communities where they came from.
Edwin Henderson says black ownership of institutions has declined per capita since integration. We should add all per-capita ownership, black as well as white, of institutions has declined since integration. Not so long ago America was a land whose population was 1/3 farm families. Rural folk, white as well as black, used to hoop it up in the cold winters!
Keith:
The great Len Ford was an East Coast boy, he’s a product of the strong football tradition at DC’s Armstrong Vocational H.S.
BCB:
Thanks for the info. Dr Rayl’s dissertation/thesis/bound volume labels Lenny Ford from Michigan. Wonder where she got that from — college ball? At any rate, the point remains that the Dayton Rens weren’t composed entirely of New Yorkers playing in shock over MidWestern racism.
Claude’s mentioned a “split squad” as if the Dayton Rens went 14-26 at half-strength. I don’t have my Neft & Cohen handy, but thought the squad was split only on a few occasions to honor previous commitments for exhibition games. How many exhibition games did the NY/Dayton Rens play after they took on the NBL commitment?
I would love to read Dr Rayl’s dissertation