Starting with their July/August issue, I became a regular contributor for Bounce Magazine. It’s an honor to be associated with an organization that includes the off-the-hook basketball works of Bobbito Garcia, Alejandro “Ali” Danois, Bobby Ciafardini (mentioned here earlier this week), Jesse Washington, Sean Couch, Stanley Lumax, and many others, as well as an affiliation with highly respected Dime Magazine and all of its talented players. My column in Bounce is an opportunity for me to go into more detail on some of the history covered here in the Black Fives Blog.

Below is a brief excerpt from my first article that includes in introduction to one of the greatest teams you’ve never heard of …

THE CIRALSKY MEAT PACKERS LED TOLEDO’S GOLDEN ERA OF BASKETBALL

By Claude Johnson

The Ciralsky Meat Packers.

The NBA has no current players from Toledo, Ohio.

No doubt, the “Glass City” has sent its share of basketball stars to the League, including Ohio State legend Jimmy Jackson and former All-Star forward Steve Mix of the 76ers. But during a single decade that began in the early 1930s, Toledo produced a ridiculous pool of professional ball players unmatched by any other city since.

For fifty years – from when basketball was invented in 1891 to the early 1940s – with few exceptions, major professional basketball leagues in America were whites-only.

Then, beginning in 1941, something amazing happened … in Toledo.

The professional barnstorming Toledo White Huts – named after a local hamburger chain – became the first racially integrated team to compete in the prestigious World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago. Their lineup included two African Americans: a Toledo star named Bill Jones and a player from Akron, Ohio, named Jimmy Johnson.

“Billy Jones and Jimmy Johnson will have a lot to say about who wins the title,” bragged the Defender, Chicago’s black newspaper, amid the racial hysteria that defined America at the time.

The White Huts defeated the Sheboygan Redskins and Chicago Bruins to place fourth overall in the tournament.

When America entered World War II, the White Huts switched sponsors, became the Jim White Chevrolets, and dropped their black players so they could join the racially segregated National Basketball League. But by the beginning of the 1942-43 season, the Jim Whites had to reverse their racial stance. The military had drafted more than 50 percent of the white players in the NBL, including the league’s leading scorer. With few new players available, Toledo owner Sid Goldberg broke the league’s color barrier by signing four local African-American players: Bill Jones, Casey Jones, Al Price, and Shannie Barnett, all from Toledo.

The NBL’s Chicago Studebakers signed black players too, six total. Four of them were also from Toledo: Wyatt “Sonny” Boswell, Roscoe “Duke” Cumberland, Tony Peyton, and Bernie Price (Al Price’s brother).

That meant eight of the 10 black players who integrated the NBL in 1942 were from Toledo.

What did Toledo have that Detroit, only 50 miles away, didn’t? Why not Chicago, Gary, Cleveland, or Columbus?

What they had was the Ciralsky Meat Packers, an all-black semi-pro basketball team that made a difference …

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