The first episode of our new Make History Now podcast is dedicated to basketball pioneer Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the NBA.
Remembering NBA Pioneer Earl Lloyd (1928-2015)
Fare thee well, 2015. Looking back we raise toasts to the greatest wins as well as to the toughest losses of the year.
We are mourning the loss of basketball pioneer and Hall of Fame member Earl Lloyd, the first African American to play in the NBA, who died today at age 86.
In addition to being banned for life, Donald Sterling also should be forced to visit the Black Fives exhibition now at the New-York Historical Society, which reveals that blacks and whites have been working together in basketball for a very, very long time.
At the March 2014 unveiling of the Earl Lloyd statue at West Virginia State University in Charleston, West Virginia.
NBA pioneer and Hall of Fame member Earl Lloyd (left) with Claude Johnson, Founder & Executive Director of the Black Fives Foundation, at the Smithsonian Institution in 2011.
Duquesne honors Chuck Cooper, among first blacks in NBA, by staging inaugural Chuck Cooper Classic, a hoops doubleheader featuring HBCU teams. How cool is that?
The NBA celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1996. The problem is that it didn’t exist until 1950 when the BAA merged with the NBL. This new book clears that up.
Henry “Hank” DeZonie, who was a star basketball player with the Harlem Yankees, New York Renaissance, Dayton Rens of the National Basketball League, and Tri-Cities Blackhawks of the National Basketball Association, died January 2, 2009, at Lenox Hill Hospital in Harlem. He would have been 87 years old yesterday.
Though news coverage of the NBA’s upcoming racial integration was limited, there was enough to get a glimpse of what the milestone meant at the time.
Latest Post
Unseen Stitches: The Black Fives x Gee’s Bend Masterpiece QuiltNovember 1, 2026The Black Fives x Gee’s Bend Masterpiece Quilt, created by the Gee’s Bend Quilters Collective from Black Fives throwback basketball jersey remnants, brings together two extraordinary African American cultural traditions. Its more than 68,000 stitches reveal a powerful metaphor for the often unseen contributions that hold families, communities, and American history together. […]
From Our Online Museum
One of the over 150 historical items from the Black Fives Era of basketball that was in the Black Fives exhibition at the New York Historical Society Museum from March–July 2014. (Black Fives Archives)
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