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The Effect Of Racism's Impact On African American Sports

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On March 19th 1966, college basketball fans in the southern and eastern portion of the United States were glued to the television as the starting lineup for the 1966 National Collegiate Athletic Association basketball Division I national championship game was announced. At this moment, no Kentucky Wildcat fan could believe their eyes or ears; Don Haskins, head coach of Western Texas, was starting five African American players for this monumental game. This particular lineup, in terms of race, had never been done before in NCAA basketball tournament history. After the final buzzer, Texas Western defeated the heavily favored, previous three time National Championship winners Kentucky Wildcats, coached by basketball legend Adolf Rupp. In the Civil Rights Era, there were many brave African American men who were breaking through the color barriers in collegiate and professional sports. They paved the way for this extraordinary Cinderella story to take place; this game itself would have a massive effect in terms of area of desegregating collegiate and professional sports. The effect was neither quick nor painless but it …show more content…

There were many influential African American players who paved the way a long time ago for the Texas Miners African American players. African Americans were not completely shunned by every major sports team in the earlier racist part of American history. In fact, the first African American man to play in a professional level baseball team was a freed slave by the name of Moses Fleetwood Walker in 1884. He debuted his professional career on May 5th for the old Northwestern League in Toledo, Ohio. Even though Walker was African American, his presence in the college and the major leagues did not jumpstart a rapid movement in to accept African Americans into all

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