Here is a great follow up to my recent questions about whether James Naismith, inventor of basketball, was a racist. Take a look at what this guy has to say, in an email I got last week: Hi, Claude Based on Dr. Naismith’s book, I can see how you came up with the amusing “interview”. [...]
Here is a great follow up to my recent questions about whether James Naismith, inventor of basketball, was a racist.
Take a look at what this guy has to say, in an email I got last week:
Hi, Claude
Based on Dr. Naismith’s book, I can see how you came up with the amusing “interview”.
Our firm, Heritage Auction Galleries, had the honor of auctioning a massive Naismith collection just about one year ago. I was the person who spent the most time reading the more than 150 letters and manuscripts. Most of these have never been published.
Naismith’s original notes intended for his book on basketball would have taken about 1,000 pages to publish; the editors cut it way back.
In his manuscripts and letters , there were a couple of references to “young black men” playing basketball. The one I recall in particular was during his time in France in WWI and he says how delighted he was to see these men -presumably all soldiers — put on a great exhibition of the game of basketball just for his benefit.
I am not trying to defend Dr. Naismith or say that I know his thoughts on interracial relations and the sport of basketball. I can say that, aside from his family, I believe I am the only person to read all his manuscripts, letters to his wife and personal notes —-I saw no signs of any racial bias whatsoever.
John Hickey
Sales Development Manager
Heritage Auction Galleries
3500 Maple Avenue
17th Floor
Dallas, Texas 75219
This is precisely why I raised my original line of questions about Naismith. I mean, from this letter, if it’s not Naismith then we ought to find out more about the editors and publishers, don’t you think?
Why’d they leave out references to the history-making contributions of African Americans?
Meanwhile, for all of those people who thought my Naismith “interview’ questions were unfair or “too hard core,” isn’t there a lesson here?
Shouldn’t we always be finding out more?
Isn’t this something worth researching further?
Isn’t this a great research topic one of the students of Susan Rayl, or Larry Hogan, or Rob Ruck, or Joe Dorinson, or Arthur Kimmel, or Murry Nelson, all of whom love basketball and have vast expertise in sports history?
Now, what about the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame? … on second thought, never mind, their own people complain that it’s more arcade then archive …
Tell me, what do you think?
This is a great piece of information from Mr. Hickey, but… what if the family pulled any racist references out of the papers before releasing them to be auctioned? Guess this question can never be fully answered.
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Hey Steve,
That’s just it, that question can be fully answered with more research! I mean, the family itself likely wants to know what’s up.
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Are you, sir, suggesting to me that it is possible that a white individual born in 1861 may have potentially been a racist? That’s some mighty fine detective work.
Seriously, black people ALL the time call Elvis a thief and a phony because he got rich and famous for doing music that was invented by someone of a different race. Gee but if a white guy ever tried to apply the exact same standard to, say, Michael Jordan, he would be ostricized to the 9th circle of hell right alongside Hitler.
The world is filled with racists. It’s instinctive human behavior no matter WHAT you look like or background you are from. The fact that you are even sitting there trying to expose a guy born in 1861 as a racist, as if anyone would be surprised, or anyone would care, is lame. Find something better to do.
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Hey Booker,
I think you lost me. You seem conflicted.
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Just read all the past articles and comments – interesting stuff. My friend and I visited the Basketball Hall of Fame a few years ago, and were both pretty shocked at the character of the place. Our impression was that there was a clear historical narrative in the museum that prioritized the development of specific offensive and defensive plays and strategies, by mostly white collegiate coaches in the pre-1960s game, over the development of the game through the players themselves. There’s no doubt that both are important, but the whole thing was massively skewed towards the former. (Though I admit that the “massive skew” I’m describing could be relative to my expectation, and not an objective measure.)
Would I call the museum “racist”? Definitely not, but there was clearly a racial bias at work, one that was enacted through a set of assumptions that had nothing to do with race. What a lot of white people – and I’m white, so do with that what you will – often fail to understand is that racial bias often, in our day and age, works without anyone making an overt, racially biased decision. So if the people at the HOF decide that the history of basketball is best told as mostly a strategic history, then the end result will be a history that places a greater importance on white people. No one involved in that decision needs to be even slightly racist in their thinking for that to happen. The question is, how will that play out in visitors’ experience of the HOF?
I’m sure that people have wildly different impressions of the HOF than we did, but really, we’re not the kind of people who were going in there looking for some kind of target to bully. We were both surprised by what we found, mostly because we felt like the players who drew us to the game in the first place were seriously underrepresented, and the people who were there in their place had little to do with our experience of basketball. It’s great to learn about history, and that was certainly cool, but I also feel that there’s a certain undercutting of Black accomplishment that goes on when the narrative is pushed too far in that direction. Even in my relatively short lifetime as a basketball fan, I’ve seen the effect that players have on the game itself – people like Magic and Bird and Hakeem and Jordan and Shaq created new conditions for their own teams and for their opposition. Right now, the game is more international than ever, and it’s amazing to see the different styles that people like Nowitzki bring to the floor. It’s really not about race at all, except that to make “progress” or “change” in basketball tied predominantly to coaching decisions, as opposed to playing style, is to have an inherent racial skew in the story.
What that says about Naismith, I don’t know. Thanks for the interesting line of questioning, in any case.
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Judd, dude, you sure you don’t wanna write a blog post for us?
I appreciate the comments and sharing, and I don’t know the answers either, but I do know you are right that things can happen along racial lines and still not be due to malicious intent.
However, that still constitutes bias, or, if you like this word better, “skew.” But it takes someone with your level of consciousness to get that.
Thanks.
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Nice follow up, Claude. Your right that this sort of real talk, no matter the method, does spur debate and understanding.
It’s kind of funny that Judd above says that the Basketball Hall of Fame is skewed toward coaching, when Naismith intended to invent a game that didn’t require a coach.
I’d like to leave you with my favorite Naismith quote – I am sure that no man can derive more pleasure from money or power than I do from seeing a pair of basketball goals in some out of the way place – that to me, is the essence of the man.
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Yup!
JR, that really is the essence of the game, right? Something the NBA doesn’t realize, which is why people are getting bored with them.
Whenever I travel, I always take my camera looking for backboards, baskets, rims, or anything similar.
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What if he was racist? Are we supposed to stop playing basketball?
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Thanks for the offer, even if meant in jest. I don’t know anywhere close to enough about early Black basketball players to get involved, but feel free to re-post anything I wrote if you like.
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It was the black players of the past who originally introduced the slam dunk, the greatest dunkers of all-time have been black athletes. This book and others must and should pay homage to these people, they created history.
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Simon’s comment is interesting. For many years at APBR (Association of Pro Basketball Researchers) we’ve researched the history of the stuff shot and no black player has been found to have “originally introduced” the shot. Certainly the Black Fives-era players disdained the dunk, as did their White Fives contemporaries, as hot-dogging it.
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there are a lot of famous individuals from history that made incredible contributions about whom we find out something negative about years later – after they are long gone and we can examine their legacy. whatever we find out doesn’t eliminate their contributions, it just adds a perspective. we also have to be careful to view what we find out in the context of the times in which they lived. what if naismith was racist, that was a common and acceptable attitude in his day. things he may have said or done might be considered racist now, but were not back then. Remember, Abraham Lincoln owned slaves.
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A man by the name of Stephen Overbury, of Canada, and now residing in Hokkaido, Japan, bought all of the Naismith items at the Heritage Auction, last year. He out bid the NBA at every turn. Overbury, contacted me about purchasing the books I own titled, “Vintage NBA- The Pioneer Era”. He Emailed me asking me to represent the items he bought because he knew I had high NBA connections. In addition, his great great grandson, James Naismith, lives in Corpus Christi, Texas, and I knew him when I lived there for 15 years. Naismith, was multi-cultural. He even set up a program for the Chinese, as well as European countries…he just plain loved and sold basketball. If there be anybody interested in buying certain items of his collection …which totaled over $250,000..contact me.
Bill Tosheff, President, Pre-1965 NBA Players Ass’n..619-234-3500
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Of note. I am to be a consultant on a movie soon to be shot called “Sweetwater”, the life of Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton, originally played with the New York Renassaince and Globetrotters, and then New York Knicks & Detroit in the end. I played against “Sweets”. Rode in his cab in 1990 in Chicago, his home town. His real name was Clifton”Sweetwater” Nathaniel….Ned Irish of the New York Knicks flipped the name around when he bought “Sweets” from Abe Saperstein…Globetrotters, for publicity reasons…price of the purchase… $25,000…1950.
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Claire ‘reminded’ us that Abraham Lincoln owned slaves. She is certainly misinformed. Honest Abe was born in the slave state of Kentucky, true, but at the age of seven moved to free-soil Indiana, where lawyers like Amory Kinney fought the likes of William Henry Harrison to enforce the NorthWest Ordinance banning slavery north of the Ohio River. The Illinois that old Abe emigrated to at the age of 21 was no more a slave state than Indiana was. Lincoln’s father’s prime reason for leaving Kentucky in the first place was his dislike of competing against slaveowners as an independent farmer.
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Oops – Sorry Keith. I meant Jefferson. But my point remains the same. Jefferson had slaves and simultaneously could be the architect of the Declaration of Independence which posited the idea that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL – words that changed the entire construct of our government and society for the better, indeed for the greater good of all.
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[...] be an exhaustive account of the origin and development of the game of basketball, but there is an interesting discussion here on Naismith’s family, the Publisher’s influence on the final manuscript, and also [...]
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[...] be an exhaustive account of the origin and development of the game of basketball, but there is an interesting discussion here on Naismith’s family, the Publisher’s influence on the final manuscript, and also [...]
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