1908
The Smart Set Athletic Club basketball team of Brooklyn wins the inaugural Olympian Athletic League title.
The “Colored Basketball World’s Championship” is established; it begins as an unofficial term coined by a New York Age sportswriter to designate the best African American “five” in the country.
1909
The Twelfth Street Colored YMCA of Washington, DC forms a basketball team, known as the “12 Streeters”; almost every player is a current or former student of nearby Howard University. The 12 Streeters win the 1909-1910 Colored Basketball World’s Championship with an undefeated record.
1910
Most of the players on the Twelfth Street Colored Y team leave to form Howard University’s first varsity basketball team, led and coached by Henderson, which promptly wins the 1910-1911 Colored Basketball World’s Championship with an undefeated season.
The basketball manager of the amateur, church-sponsored St. Christopher Club defects with many St. Christopher players and other top stars to form a new semi-pro team, the New York All Stars, the first all-black pay-for-play team; their manager’s rogue tactics are labeled “unclean.”
The Manhattan Casino, a large ballroom across the street from the Polo Grounds in upper Harlem, becomes the destination of choice for music, dancing, and black basketball.
1911
Howard University wins the 1910-1911 Colored Basketball World’s Championship with an undefeated record.
1912
In a game that puts Pittsburgh on the black basketball map, a previously unknown African American team called the Monticello Athletic Association hosts and defeats “invincible” Howard University, the previous year’s national black basketball champion.
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