"The Secret Game - March 12, 1944"
This is the headline to an article on the North Carolina Central University Athletics site from 03/8/2011 that references a New York Times Magazine article from 1996 written by Scott Ellsworth about a pivotal but little known moment for some college basketball players and others.
The great coach John McLendon was only 28 years old but he had introduced the fast break and the full court press and had greatly increased the pace of the game. But in the Jim Crow United States of the 1940's many things could get you prison or death in the middle of the night. Duke was white and NCCU was black. There were different teams on the Duke campus and the medical school team was thought to be the best. Jack Burgess was the newest player for the Duke team. As the article points out:
"Jack Burgess, the team's newest member, had played guard at the University of Montana. As much as he liked Duke, Burgess despised the Jim Crow laws. Once, he was chased off a Durham city bus -- at knife point -- when he told the driver what he thought of the seating arrangements."
A vivid reminder to be sure of how it was. But that didn't mean that there weren't efforts to make change as the article notes despite great danger to people fighting Jim Crow and the article notes the effort of 2 YMCA groups. One white and one black:
" In early 1944, the Y.M.C.A. chapters at Duke and North Carolina College had begun to meet, at considerable risk from the police, who vigorously maintained the color line. "It was dangerous," recalls one former Duke student. "We had to lie on the floor of the car going to those meetings."
But good things come from people getting together and making change. Sometimes it can start with just a comment as noted in the article:
"At one meeting, a North Carolina College student overheard an idle boast about the Duke medical school basketball team. A challenge was issued: let's see who has the best team in town. It was an absurd notion. Convening a secret Y meeting was bad enough, but holding an illegal, racially mixed basketball game was courting disaster. That same year, a black G.I. had been killed by a white bus driver for not moving quickly enough to the rear of a Durham bus."
The danger of such a thought was very real but Coach McLendon liked the idea. He was an understudy somewhat of Dr. Naismith from his time at Kansas who also took steps to get us past segregation. The guys at Duke were more hesitant as noted:
"At Duke, the proposal fell on stunned ears. Jack Burgess wanted to play, but some of the others were hesitant. In the end, pride won out. "We thought we could whup 'em," David Hubbell says. "So we decided to find out."
So on March 12th of 1944 the unthinkable and dangerous act of defiance expressed through a sport took place. Coach McLendon had it well planned:
"McLendon had scheduled the game when most of Durham, including its police force, would be in church. He hadn't told the school administration about the game; when a reporter for The Carolina Times, Durham's black weekly, found out, he agreed not to write anything. No spectators would be allowed."
The Duke team was prepared as well:
"Just before 11 A.M., the Duke team piled into a couple of borrowed cars. "To keep from being followed, we took this winding route through town," Hubbell recalls. They pulled their jackets over their heads as they walked into the small brick gym."
The game began with some clankers from both teams but after awhile the NCCU guard Aubrey Stanley noted:
"About midway through the first half," Stanley says, "I suddenly realized: 'Hey, we can beat these guys. They aren't supermen. They're just men like us."
In the end the NCCU team won but the big prizes of the day were the statement above from Aubrey Stanley and this one from Jakc Burgess writing home to his family in Montana:
"Oh, I wonder if I told you that we played basketball against a Negro college team," Jack Burgess wrote to his family in Montana a few days later. "Well, we did and we sure had fun and I especially had a good time, for most of the fellows playing with me were Southerners. . . . And when the evening was over, most of them had changed their views quite a lot."
An even more incredible game took place right after the first when the two coaches and teams decided to mix players which could have brought beatings and death:
"Then came the day's second unlikely event. After a short break, the two teams mixed their squads and played another game, an even more egregious violation of Jim Crow. This time, it was skins and shirts."
"Afterward, the two teams adjourned to the men's residence hall for a bull session. A few hours later, the Duke students drove home."
No doubt everybody stayed safe because as the article notes:
"The Durham police never found out what happened. Nor did the city's two daily newspapers, and the black reporter kept his word. No scorecard exists, and as far as official basketball recordkeeping is concerned, the game never took place."
But as Ellsworth makes us aware it did happen and it shows us once again that the train of freedom has been going on a long way on the rails with many great stories of courage along the way. There is a book by Ellsworth about this game as well.
https://nccueaglepride.com/sports/2011/3/8/MBB_0308110905.aspx