As the NCAA’s “March Madness” approaches, it should be of interest to the hundreds of black basketball players seeking the fame and fortune of making the “big dance” and those youngsters who aspire to be there one day to note the name, William Leon Garrett.
Never heard of him? Well, that’s not surprising, given the 64 years that have passed since this slim, young African American completed his collegiate career having changed the face of basketball in the Big Ten, arguably the nation’s premier league at the time, and in much of the great white wasteland between the seas.
It was an odyssey that required not only enormous talent but more courage, more mental toughness, more character and more dignity than most of us can ever muster. It was a lonely journey. During the three years he was never out of the starting lineup at Indiana University as an improbable 6-foot-2 center even then, he never played with nor against another member of his race.
In 1947, Garrett had been chosen as the best high school basketball player in a state where the game was and perhaps still is more of a religion than a sport, yet he was not recruited by any college team.
Even IU and Purdue University, still operating under an unwritten league agreement among coaches and administrators not to recruit blacks, ignored his achievements. These included scoring a sizzling 91 points in the last four games of the legendary Indiana High School free-for-all, the most in the tournament’s distinguished history at that time. Garrett’s chief adversary that year, 6-9 Clyde Lovellettte, later the leading scorer in Kansas University history, scored only 73.
But a group of African-American leaders aided by a prominent Jewish businessman and sports figure, Nate Kaufman took their case for Garrett to a receptive IU president, Herman B. Wells.
From the moment he joined the varsity in his sophomore year (NCAA rules precluded freshman from varsity play), Garrett was watched with microscopic intensity by Big Ten coaches, civil rights leaders, fellow African American players and the black press, which gave him as much coverage as Jackie Robinson.Garrett suffered all the expected indignities from opponents, referees, hotels, and restaurants with grace, answering them with achievement. His social and academic life at IU was exemplary.
After college, Garrett was named to the college All-Star team, drafted by the Boston Celtics (the Army intervened) played for the Harlem Globetrotters but found that circus not to his liking and ultimately coached Crispus Attucks High School of Indianapolis to a state championship. He died at 45 while a college administrator.
Only a few years after Garrett graduated, every team in the Big Ten had black players. But sometimes injustice comes full circle.
This time it is from the Naismith National Basketball Hall of Fame which found Bill Garrett’s nomination recently to its hallowed numbers unworthy.
William Leon Garrett was a superb athlete but he was much, much more than that. He was a symbol of what Martin Luther King so eloquently depicted later, a young man who, when “judged by the strength of his character,” was a legitimate American hero.
Every black player at least should pause momentarily at some point during the tournament to pay him the homage the so-called “hall of fame” refused.
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