Calendar photo caption: Bill Russell, Muhammad Ali, and Kareem Abdul Jabbar at a meeting of the Negro Industrial and Economic Union on June 4, 1967. (Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images)
For decades, Black athletes faced discrimination, humiliation, and abuse in professional and amateur sports.
Before Jackie Robinson integrated major League Baseball in 1947, he and other Black players were humiliated at a sham tryout for the Boston Red Sox, whose managers hurled racial slurs at them and sent them home without a contract. The Red Sox would not have a Black player for another 14 years.
Chuck Cooper, the first Black player in the NBA, played in college for Duquesne University. In 1946, at a game against the University of Tennessee's all-white team, Tennessee's coach and players walked off the court and forfeited the game rather than play against a Black player. Tennessee did not have a Black player for nearly two more decades.
The Black athletes who bravely broke down these barriers were subjected to persistent abuse, harassment, and even death threats. Even after most sports were racially integrated at the professional level, racial segregation persisted in many parts of the country, barring Black and white players from dining or lodging together, and, in some instances, from even appearing on the field together.
Despite the abuse they encountered, Jackie Robinson, Chuck Cooper, Bill Russell, and countless other pioneers bravely stood up for racial equality and civil rights in American sports and beyond.
These courageous Black athletes inspired generations of athlete activism, from Olympians like Wilma Rudolph to tennis stars Arthur Ashe and Serena Williams.
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