Philadelphia Panthers
Location: Philadelphia, Pa.
Nickname: “Philadelphia’s Representative Team”
Colors: Black, Gray
The Philadelphia Panthers were an all-Black basketball team of the 1910s and 1920s.
It grew out of the city’s Christian Street (a.k.a. Southwest”) Colored YMCA in the late 1910s, when Philadelphia emerged as a Black basketball power base with such teams as nearby Lincoln University, the Vandals and Buccaneers of Atlantic City, the Briscoe Five, and the Southwest Scholastics.
They were so successful and popular that African Americans in the City of Brotherly Love, insofar as Black basketball was concerned, embraced them as “Philadelphia’s Representative Team.”
The biggest stars on the semi-pro Panthers were tall homegrown center Charles “Tarzan” Cooper, Jackie Bethards, Zack Clayton, and Billy Yancey. Clayton and Yancey were two-sport athlete who also played pro baseball in the Negro Leagues. Clayton was a first baseman with the Philadelphia Stars, Bacharach Giants, New York Black Yankees, and Philadelphia Giants, while Yancey played shortstop for the New York Lincoln Giants and the Hilldale Club.
All four men later played for the New York Rens. Cooper, Clayton, and Bethards all won Pro Basketball World Championship titles, with the Rens in 1939 and with the Washington Bears in 1943. Cooper and Clayton were subsequently inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970 and 2017, respectively.
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