Obscure Stars
History has hidden some female African American basketball players who were the greatest of their time.
The New York Girls of Harlem featured Dora Cole, who later married Conrad Norman, the team’s head coach who was one of the founders of the Alpha Physical Culture Club.
The Spartan Girls Athletic Club of Brooklyn, the sister squad to the Smart Set Athletic Club, featured the Harris sisters, Bernadette, Mary, and Genevieve.
Edith Trice was the star of the Younger Set, whose first game, played in late October 1912, was at Pierson’s Hall in Newark, New Jersey against the Crescent Girls, who they defeated 4 to 2. The Younger Set, “under the able leadership of Miss Edith Trice, outwitted and outplayed the Jerseyites at every stage of the game.”
The Roamer Girls of Chicago featured Isadore Channels and Kate Bard.
Helen “Streamline” Smith was billed as the “tallest woman in the world” when she barnstormed with the Club Store Co-Eds of Chicago, who were known as the Chocolate Co-Eds when they were on the road.
Ora Washington, a future member of the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame, starred with the Germantown Hornets before joining the Philadelphia Tribune Girls.
The Hartford, Connecticut Tigerettes began as a touring women’s softball team, but after expanding into basketball, their athleticism quickly translated onto the hardwood court when they dominated the Connecticut Girls Basketball League.
Jamaica, Long Island Golden Arrows featured star players Louise Woods, Shirley Farnum, and Ruby Perlotte. Ruby later played with the New York Cover Girls, a nationally touring mixed-race squad from the early 1950s that featured former actresses, models, and celebrities and “opposes male quintets only.” Ruby was “the team’s only Negro, who is billed as the female Goose Tatum,” wrote the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin. According to the newspaper, that squad also included “Betty Sternkopf, about whom the only information given is that she is blond.”
(Black Fives Foundation Archives)