1913
The St. Christopher Club regains full strength with the help of a new manager who introduces “scientific basketball” techniques and novel marketing promotions, leading the team to its first Colored Basketball World’s Championship.

1914
Will Anthony Madden, the manager of the strictly amateur St. Christopher Club, and most of his players break away from the St. Christopher Club in a dispute over money for play. They form a new semi-professional all-black basketball team, the St. Christopher Club of New York, Inc., whose mirror-image name is so confusing that the public eventually dubs them simply the New York “Incorporators.” The Incorporators enjoy immediate success.

1917
Chicago joins New York and Pittsburgh as a prominent black basketball power when the Wabash Avenue Colored YMCA “Outlaws” travel to New York City to play the Incorporators. A New York-Chicago black basketball rivalry is born.

1920
The Amateur Athletic Union formally certifies a black basketball referee from New York City, Chris Huiswoud, who becomes the first African American to officiate an AAU-sanctioned basketball game.

The black-run Metropolitan Basketball Association becomes the first governing body to preside over amateur black basketball. When the MBA bans all “unclean” pay-for-play teams and players, they miscalculate the popularity of such teams, opening the door for a wave of professionalism in black basketball.

1922
Two white sports promoters in Harlem form the Commonwealth Five, an all-black team playing out of the Commonwealth Sporting Club and Casino, using guaranteed full-year contracts, thus making it the first fully professional African American basketball team.

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