Exhibition 4

Will Anthony Madden’s Basketball Legacy

Will Anthony Madden (1883–1973) was born into poverty in the predominantly African-American section of Manhattan that was once called “Little Africa,” better known today as Greenwich Village.

Despite his challenging background, Madden was driven to succeed, first as a messenger working for Standard Oil Company at its headquarters in Lower Manhattan, and then in basketball. During the 1910s, Madden rose to national prominence to become known as the “King of Black Basketball.”

While striving in the sport, he made pivotal contributions to basketball that changed the way games were promoted, staged, played, and covered in the news.

A four-time winner of the Colored Basketball World’s Championship with two different teams (St. Christopher Club, New York Incorporators), Madden introduced to Black basketball the hiring of expert coaches (proficient at “scientific basketball”), inter-city rivalries, team nicknames, in-arena giveaways, marketing via widespread editorial coverage, stylish uniforms, an annual All-American list for top African American players, an annual black All-Star team, lengthy road trips that inspired the concept later known as barnstorming, compensation for players, and articles of incorporation for basketball teams to be run as businesses.

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Madden’s diminutive stature and authoritative style earned him the nickname “Little Napoleon.” His enduring legacy still informs not only basketball but all of sports today.

Off the court was another story. Madden seems to have been a brilliant yet complex figure. He lost his crown in basketball and left the game in 1919, a step that some Black sports journalists at the time equated to him being “exiled.”

After that, Madden tried for decades to make a name for himself as a stage actor, poem reciter, theater critic, and author. He was in the same orbits as some renowned entertainers and was a tireless self-promoter, but for the most part he never quite made it in that realm.

As the years went by, Madden gradually grew further apart from his self-made social and entertainment network.

But toward the end of his life, in the early 1970s, he reverted back to basketball and began visiting playground basketball games in Harlem. Madden would watch from courtside and critique players based on what he claimed was his extensive knowledge of “scientific basketball.” Few would listen, except for one man, a young Amsterdam News journalist named Howie Evans. Then one day, Madden stopped showing up. When he died in 1973, the former King of Black Basketball had no known next of kin or friends and was buried in an unmarked grave.

One week prior to Madden’s death, Evans had named the former King of Black Basketball as one of the four African-American sports pioneers who “made history in the basketball world” by establishing the game with a firm grip in Black communities. The others were Edwin Bancroft Henderson, Cumberland Posey, Jr., and Robert “Bob” Douglas, all of whom were subsequently enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame.