Black Fives

Location: Harlem, New York
Established: 1910
Affiliation: Alpha Physical Culture Club
Coach: Conrad Norman

The New York Girls were formed in early 1910 as the country’s first independently-run female all-Black basketball team. The squad was organized, managed, and coached by Conrad Norman, a Jamaican immigrant who headed the Alpha Physical Culture Club in Harlem, the first African American athletic club in history.

The Alpha men’s basketball team was known as the Alpha Big Five, and the Girls were their sister organization. It was common practice for the men and women of these clubs to collaborate in hosting social activities in honor of visiting squads, win or lose.

One of the New York Girls’ stars was a captivating twenty-three-year-old stage actor named Dora B. Cole, a sister of the famous performer Robert Allen Cole, Jr. of the wildly successful African American vaudeville act Cole & Johnson. She played a crucial role in helping the new squad dominate all competition.

History was made on February 26, 1910, the date of the first recorded game between two independently organized all-Black women’s basketball teams, the New York Girls and a newly organized cross-river rival, the Jersey Girls. The Saturday afternoon game was played at the Douglass Auditorium in Orange, New Jersey, in front of a “delighted audience” attracted by “the novelty of the affair.”

Each team had its own “large following” of fans. “It was New York versus New Jersey,” the New York Age reported, “with Miss Dora Cole of Manhattan and Miss Goode of Orange as opposing captains.” Miss Goode was eighteen-year-old right forward Brookey Goode, or “B. Goode” as she was known.

Her team was affiliated with a new African American men’s athletic and social association in that city called the Independent Pleasure Club. “The players, winsome and charming in their dainty white blouses, showed up well in practice,” said the Age, describing their pregame warmup routines. “But it was when the referee’s whistle started the game that the real surprise came,” the admiring newspaper gushed. “These lassies demonstrated that they could play!”

In this particular Saturday night game, the audience “expected to be amused,” according to the Age. “However, they were agreeably surprised when the young women put up a clever and even scientific game.” Beyond just posing, they played “fast and vigorously, as several hard falls on the floor attested.”

The game went back and forth with the Orange five taking the early lead. “The New Yorkers were heavier, but the Jersey girls were more familiar with the baskets,” explained the Age. “Then the New York team by good headwork and clever passing evened up the score.” Led by Dora and her “excellent” teamwork, New York turned it up a notch, playing “such an aggressive game that by the end of the first half the score was 8–2 in their favor.” The New York Girls ended up winning 12 to 3, and although New Jersey lost, they “took their defeat in a most sportsmanlike spirit.”

There was, after all, a bigger picture. The game was described as “a pleasing innovation” and considered a historic success.

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