Philadelphia Panthers

Location: Philadelphia, Pa.
Nickname: “Philadelphia’s Representative Team”
Colors: Black, Gray

The Panthers grew out of the city’s Christian Street (a.k.a. Southwest”) Colored YMCA in the late 1910s, when Philadelphia emerged as a black basketball power base with such teams as nearby Lincoln University, the Vandals and Buccaneers of Atlantic City, the Briscoe Five, and the Southwest Scholastics.

They were so successful and popular that African Americans in the City of Brotherly Love, insofar as black basketball was concerned, embraced them as “Philadelphia’s Representative Team.”

The biggest stars on the semi-pro Panthers were tall homegrown center Charles “Tarzan” Cooper and Billy Yancey, a two-sport athlete who also played pro baseball as a shortstop for the New York Lincoln Giants and the Hilldale Club. Cooper later played for the New York Renaissance and was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 1970.

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