Once upon a time, people living in Washington D.C., were forced out of public pools and told that if they wanted to swim, they had to break waves in the Potomac River, which at the time was mighty polluted. But it wasn’t everybody, just African-Americans. This land wasn’t their land.
Without the brave raising the voice of injustice, it might have taken a lot longer before African-Americans could step out of the metaphorical cesspool reflected in the Potomac. But Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman moved things along, Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league sports in 1947, and today we celebrate their accomplishments. Still, there are figures in the movement whose deeds almost went unnoticed.
Sean Kirst, a columnist for the Syracuse Post-Standard, resurrected one such story, recently co-writing a book with Earl Lloyd, the first African-American to check into a National Basketball Association game in the 1950-’51 season. He broke into the league with the Washington Capitols before coming to Syracuse to play with the Nationals. The Nats left town in 1963 and became the Philadelphia 76ers. Kirst’s book, Moonfixer: The Basketball Journey of Earl Lloyd (Syracuse University Press; 142 pages; $29.95/hardcover), tells the tale of a man as important to his sport as Robinson but who never received the acclaim. Actually, he never wanted it.
“Don’t compare me to Jackie Robinson,” wrote Lloyd in the book. “It’s an honor but I don’t deserve that comparison. Jackie was unique. What he went through, no one should have to go through.” Kirst reflects on conversations with Lloyd in the next paragraph: “It is a comparison he refuses to accept, for reasons that say everything about Earl.”
Sean Kirst wrote the newly released Moonfixer about Syracuse basketball pioneer Earl Lloyd (above): “It seemed like a crime if there was never a story told about him.” MICHAEL DAVIS PHOTO
During a recent conversation with Kirst, he explained what drew him into seeking out Lloyd and illuminating one of the great unknown American sports triumphs. “I can’t remember how I found out he was the first,” said Kirst, “but I knew he played for the Nats before I knew he was the first African-American to play in the league. But to me it seemed like a crime if there was never a story told about him.”
While Lloyd was the first African-American to play in the NBA, two other African-Americans were drafted in 1950: Chuck Cooper and Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton. Lloyd believes there should be no distinction between them.
“Earl sees himself as carrying the torch for Cooper and Sweetwater,” continued Kirst. “It’s important for him when he looks back and sees both of them as part of that trio. All three were of enormous significance considering that when you look at the NBA today, 80 percent of the league is black and it breaks his heart that they’re not here to see the recognition that they’re finally starting to get.”
Indeed, Lloyd, who will turn 82 on April 3, is the only surviving member of that trio, and as Kirst exclaimed, he may just be the “last of the living great American pioneers when it comes to breaking the color barrier.”
Lloyd played in only seven games for the Washington Capitols before finances forced the team to fold. After a brief stint in the military, he joined the Nats in 1952 until 1958—which included their championship season of 1955—before retiring a Detroit Piston in 1960. Kirst said that like everywhere else in America at that time, Syracuse had its issues with race.
Housing wasn’t exactly open to all, so the hallowed 15th Ward, eventually bulldozed for urban renewal, is where Lloyd and the majority of African-Americans lived in the 1950s. The neighborhood where Interstate 81 now sits was the home of the Embassy Jazz Club, founded by Herby White, the inventor of the Lindy Hop, and was a favorite hangout of Lloyd and the rest of Syracuse’s black residents.
And, according to Kirst, if a visiting African-American player like Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor came to Syracuse, one of the obligations of Lloyd and the hometown blacks was to “care for each other, find the places they know they can go out to eat at, have dinner with them, then kill him on the court and then go out and have a good time afterwards.”
But, he said, Lloyd was, and still is philosophical about that denigrating time in America. “Earl looks at it being that was the way it was every place,” said Kirst, “and the way he was treated was just a product of the times.” He said there were some small, racially motivated skirmishes between teammates, but that Lloyd generally did not hear any invectives hurled his way while he was on the Onondaga County War Memorial court. Instead the raucous hometown crowd spurred the team to the playoffs all seven seasons he was here. But, life on the road was a little acrid.
“Places like Indiana and Boston had pretty harsh crowds,” said Kirst. “One of my favorite stories {Lloyd} told me was when he was walking around with {fellow African-American teammate} Bobby Hopkins in St. Louis and they noticed only white guys shining shoes, and they knew that if you’re in a town where they only let white guys shine shoes, that it was going to be a pretty rough time.”
Those kinds of incidents attracted Lloyd to politics, and although Lloyd has never run for office, Kirst joked that he wanted to write the book “so Lloyd could talk about politics as much as basketball.” Indeed, Lloyd wrote the prologue during and about the 2008 presidential election as well as the epilogue, written after Barack Obama’s historic nomination. Lloyd reported that he and his wife Charlita shed tears during the victory speech.
“From having to swim in that polluted Potomac, and having to sit in the ‘colored only’ section during Washington Senators games when he wanted to go to a baseball game in D.C.,” recounted Kirst, “the idea when he was 20 years old that there would one day be a black president sitting in Washington during his lifetime was inconceivable.”
