Hot Potato: How Washington and New York Gave Birth to Black Basketball and Changed America's Game Forever

by Bob Kuska

"The players today are much better than we were.... But there is one thing that we could do better. We could pass the ball better than they can now. Man, we used to pass that basketball around like it was a hot potato."―Sam "Buck" Covington, former member of the Washington Bruins n a nation distinguished by a great black athletic heritage, there is perhaps no sport that has felt the impact of African American culture more than basketball. Most people assume that the rise of black basketball was a fortuitous accident of the inner-city playgrounds. In Hot Potato, Bob Kuska shows that it was in fact a consciously organized movement with very specific goals. When Edwin Henderson introduced the game to Washington, D.C., in 1907, he envisioned basketball not as an end in itself but as a public-health and civil-rights tool. Henderson believed that, by organizing black athletics, including basketball, it would be possible to send more outstanding black student athletes to excel at northern white colleges and debunk negative stereotypes of the race. He reasoned that in sports, unlike politics and business, the black race would get a fair chance to succeed. Henderson chose basketball as his marquee sport, and he soon found that the game was a big hit on Washington’s segregated U Street. Almost simultaneously, black basketball was catching on quickly in New York, and the book establishes that these two cities served as the birthplace of the black game. Hot Potato chronicles the many successes and failures of the early years of black amateur basketball. It also recounts the emergence of black college basketball in America, documenting the origins of the Colored Intercollegiate Athletic Association, or CIAA, which would become the Big Ten of black collegiate sports. The book also details for the first time the rise of black professional basketball in America, with a particular emphasis on the New York Renaissance, a team considered by experts to be as important in the development of black basketball as the Harlem Globetrotters. Kuska recounts the Renaissance’s first victory over the white world champion Original Celtics in 1925, and he evaluates the significance of this win in advancing equality in American sports. By the late 1920s, the Renaissance became one of the sport’s top draws in white and black America alike, setting the stage for the team’s undisputed world championship in 1939. As Edwin Henderson had hoped―and as any fan of the modern-day game can tell you―the triumphs certainly did not end there.

Paperback

First published March 1, 2004

Reviews

[Karen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but not as interesting as I thought it would be. In addition to interesting player stories, I learned why Bball players are called cagers, role of WWE McMahons in professional basketball, and the scores used to be way lower.

[James · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kuska argued that black basketball culture, developed as a result of being systematically shunned from college basketball and informally out of YMCA basketball in practice, was first built in 1907 in Washington DC into an amateur youngster team model, which was copied by black clubs in New York City, where it flourished and developed into popular entertainment. Clubs like the New York Renaissance and Harlem Globetrotters would build and eventually compete against white teams and win. The game flourished in big cities and the black basketball became more and more popular as black americans moved to large cities, especially after the 1919 race riots. The book is divided into four chapters. The first looks at its beginning as the game was pushed by PI teacher Edwin Henderson in Washington in order to promote black kids to be able to physically compete with white kids to eventually achieve equality on athletic fields, in 1907. Amateur leagues formed that competed in high school and colleges, especially Howard University. Fans enjoyed the “cagers” and showmanship was part of the game. Chapter two moves to the golden age of amateurism as New York adopted the Washington model and how New York’s infrastructure, especially in Harlem made for thriving and growing basketball community, especially as dance halls would serve as places for games and then would transform into dances. Chapter three looks to how, in the post war 1919 era, as race riots consumed the nation, professional teams began to eclipse the amateur circuits, which were in major decline. Here the Globetrotters and Renaissance initially rose as barnstorming operations. Chapter four argues that these triumphs, along with other great black athletics, helped cement basketball as a black urban sport which eventually produced star players in the NBA decades later.

Key Themes and Concepts
-Black basketball thrived in New York after the initial sparks were created in Washington. The ability to play in buildings made it a good city sport as black americans moved to northern cities.
-The black style of play specifically aimed at entertaining the audience as well as winning games.
-Black basketball play was initially not as good as white play because of lack of access to coaching and equipment but developed strong traditions in the 20s-30s that regularly beat the best white teams, especially the Original Celtics.