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Location: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Nickname: “The Rifles”
Colors: Ivory, Varsity Red, College Blue
Manager: Jim Dorsey
The Monticello-Delaney Rifles
® were one of the top all-black basketball teams in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania during the 1910s.
When Cumberland Posey formed his world champion Monticello Athletic Assocation team in 1911, two of his players – Jim Dorsey and Sellers Hall – also belonged to the all-black Delaney Rifles Athletic Club, a tough semi-pro football team that dominated the local sandlot circuit.
Dorsey also worked for the city’s Recreation Department and had keys to Washington Park Field House in the Lower Hill District, Pittsburgh’s only public gymnasium with a full basketball court, so he was a key ally for Posey.
The court was only available two nights a week, for two hours, and according to Posey, “every colored boy in Allegheny County who owned a pair of rubber soled shoes was on the floor at the same time.”
Dorsey was the answer: he let in his friends after hours for practices three nights a week, with the Monticellos scrimmaging against the Delaneys.
Soon the teams just merged into one: the Monticello-Delaney Rifles.
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