The Rochester Royals won the 1945-46 National Basketball League Championship in their first season with the league. The following year the Royals defended their title, with a new player named William “Dolly” King, the team’s first African American player.
Dolly King As A Rochester Royal
After racial integration of the NBA, many all-black teams were left with few choices besides sensational names, clowning, and comedic showmanship.
In addition to sharing tales of Isaacs’ life and memories, the panel distributed different media and news clippings of Isaacs’ historic career, as well as provided a display that shared more details and images of Isaacs’ life.
Brian Gaynor of the Des Moines Register copped some nice research about the breaking of the racial color barrier in the old National Basketball League, for a piece he wrote that appeared this week in the Sheboygan Press.
The success of the Monticello Athletic Association paved the way for other African American teams in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, by showing that any team from any city could produce a champion with enough desire and determination.
My earliest memories of him were of him teaching us basketball.
Rarely did he just stand by, he was always into it all.
The game was canceled as the result of strife between the Incorporators — a semi-pro team — and a local fundamentalist faction that advocated strictly amateur ideals and was against pay-for-play basketball.
Historically black colleges and universities (“HBCU’s”) were intimately involved in the history of the Black Fives Era of basketball.
John Isaacs, a Tinner Hill 2008 Living Legacy award winner, will be remembered. A panel will discuss the implications of Mr. Isaacs’ gifts to the world and basketball, and film clips of his visit with us at the game last year will also be shown.
The formal ceremony in the building’s vintage gymnasium was attended by Thurgood Marshall’s 81-year-old widow, Cissy, and by the great-grandson of former president Theodore Roosevelt.