Zachariah “Zack” Clayton, one of the all-time greatest basketball players of the Black Fives Era as a star for the New York Renaissance and other teams, was born on May 4, 1910 in Philadelphia.
This is a reminder that today is the anniversary of the date in 1939 when the all-black New York Renaissance (a.k.a. Harlem Rens) won the inaugural World Professional Basketball Tournament in Chicago.
Sacramento Bee: George Crowe, an elite athlete who broke racial barriers in basketball and baseball, died quietly in Rancho Cordova last week after living a remarkable life as a mid-20th century pioneer.
Kudos to Bill Rhoden of the New York Times for orchestrating this idea for NBA Commissioner David Stern to visit a Harlem barber shop. But, what’s the agenda?
Part 3 of a multi-part series on George Crowe, the last living New York (Harlem) Rens player, covers his stellar collegiate career and military experiences.
In 1939, Indiana high school basketball star George Crowe was involved in a race-related controversy — not his own doing — that received widespread newspaper coverage at the time but has been lost in history since, buried so deeply that even Crowe himself, today, can’t recall there was ever any fuss. But there was. And it revealed the ahead-of-its-time greatness of Indiana.
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