WEBVTT - Way Black History Fact - The First Interracial Basketball Game

0:00:01.200 --> 0:00:03.440
<v Speaker 1>Right now, it is time for the way black History fact.

0:00:03.440 --> 0:00:06.280
<v Speaker 1>In today's way Black History fact comes from Campus Echo

0:00:06.360 --> 0:00:09.160
<v Speaker 1>dot Com. Eighty years ago, in the depths of the

0:00:09.240 --> 0:00:13.480
<v Speaker 1>Jim Crow era, basketball teams from what is now North

0:00:13.560 --> 0:00:17.200
<v Speaker 1>Carolina Central University and Duke University broke barriers in the

0:00:17.239 --> 0:00:21.520
<v Speaker 1>South's first racially integrated college basketball game, known as the

0:00:21.560 --> 0:00:24.959
<v Speaker 1>Secret Game. It brought together the Eagles varsity men's team

0:00:25.200 --> 0:00:28.440
<v Speaker 1>and a squad from Duke's School of Medicine. Students in

0:00:28.480 --> 0:00:31.760
<v Speaker 1>the YW SORRY the YMCA chapters at Duke in North

0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:35.720
<v Speaker 1>Carolina College for Negroes as NCCU was known at the time,

0:00:36.080 --> 0:00:39.680
<v Speaker 1>had been holding clandestine prayer meetings. A conversation at one

0:00:39.720 --> 0:00:42.400
<v Speaker 1>of those meetings started it all. One of the ncc

0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.880
<v Speaker 1>students overheard some nineteen forties trash talk about Duke's medical

0:00:45.880 --> 0:00:48.040
<v Speaker 1>school team and issued a challenge to see who had

0:00:48.040 --> 0:00:51.440
<v Speaker 1>the best team in Durham. According to the author Milton

0:00:51.600 --> 0:00:57.160
<v Speaker 1>Katz on the documentary film Black Magic about the Secret Game, quote,

0:00:57.160 --> 0:00:59.960
<v Speaker 1>one of the gentlemen from Duke boasted about their medical team.

0:01:00.160 --> 0:01:04.800
<v Speaker 1>They said they were in the best shape and the

0:01:04.840 --> 0:01:07.400
<v Speaker 1>best in the state, if not even beyond the state

0:01:07.440 --> 0:01:11.280
<v Speaker 1>of North Carolina, said Katz, who wrote Breaking Through, a

0:01:11.280 --> 0:01:15.880
<v Speaker 1>biography of NCC's coach at the time, John mcclindon, quote,

0:01:15.920 --> 0:01:21.640
<v Speaker 1>another member of North Carolina College for a Negro, says, well,

0:01:21.640 --> 0:01:23.440
<v Speaker 1>you may be great, but you haven't played the greatest.

0:01:23.520 --> 0:01:25.720
<v Speaker 1>McLendon signed off on the idea and declared that the

0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:28.440
<v Speaker 1>game would be held at NCC's gym, with referees and

0:01:28.520 --> 0:01:31.920
<v Speaker 1>a legitimate game clock. The two squad scheduled the game

0:01:32.080 --> 0:01:34.400
<v Speaker 1>for eleven am on a Sunday because they knew most

0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:37.000
<v Speaker 1>Durham citizens, including the police, would be in church. The

0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:39.800
<v Speaker 1>teams didn't tell any staff, and when a reporter for

0:01:39.840 --> 0:01:42.480
<v Speaker 1>The Carolina Times found out, he agreed not to say anything.

0:01:42.880 --> 0:01:45.880
<v Speaker 1>That morning, March twelfth, nineteen forty four, Duke's team jumped

0:01:45.880 --> 0:01:49.640
<v Speaker 1>into borrowed cars, rode to NCC's gym, and put their

0:01:49.800 --> 0:01:52.360
<v Speaker 1>jackets over their heads to keep them from being identified.

0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:55.920
<v Speaker 1>There were no spectators. Cats said in the documentary the

0:01:55.960 --> 0:02:02.200
<v Speaker 1>first moments of the game were misshots turnovers. I think

0:02:02.360 --> 0:02:04.200
<v Speaker 1>they just had to get the bugs out, and they

0:02:04.200 --> 0:02:07.400
<v Speaker 1>obviously did. Duke began to get going midway through the game,

0:02:07.440 --> 0:02:09.639
<v Speaker 1>but in the second half the Eagles scored on nearly

0:02:09.720 --> 0:02:12.880
<v Speaker 1>all of their possessions, pulling away to triumph eighty eight

0:02:12.919 --> 0:02:16.880
<v Speaker 1>to forty four. Quote. Literally, they ran Duke's team out

0:02:16.880 --> 0:02:21.760
<v Speaker 1>of the gym. Black College Sports Encyclopedia author Fred Whitteld

0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.600
<v Speaker 1>said in the documentary the whole event was kept completely

0:02:24.639 --> 0:02:27.560
<v Speaker 1>quiet because of a Jim Crow law prohibited competitions between

0:02:27.680 --> 0:02:32.280
<v Speaker 1>HBCU's and p wis. Even the Durham Police Department never

0:02:32.320 --> 0:02:34.880
<v Speaker 1>found out. This game helped pave the way for how

0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:37.480
<v Speaker 1>modern basketball is played from high school to the NBA.

0:02:37.720 --> 0:02:40.440
<v Speaker 1>Athletes from different backgrounds can compete against each other at

0:02:40.480 --> 0:02:43.560
<v Speaker 1>the highest level without the fear of violence. Quote. History

0:02:43.600 --> 0:02:45.640
<v Speaker 1>will never tell what they really did. It was just

0:02:45.919 --> 0:02:48.280
<v Speaker 1>a ripple in the pond, with Bild said in the film.

0:02:48.600 --> 0:02:51.079
<v Speaker 1>But the fact is that the ripple came and then

0:02:51.240 --> 0:02:54.440
<v Speaker 1>pretty soon it became a title weight. All right, A

0:02:54.440 --> 0:02:57.760
<v Speaker 1>couple of things I want to share here. This game

0:02:58.080 --> 0:03:03.720
<v Speaker 1>came after Duke had won a national championship. So Duke

0:03:03.919 --> 0:03:08.160
<v Speaker 1>was indeed you know that team until they played the

0:03:08.760 --> 0:03:12.400
<v Speaker 1>Black team, and then they found out that they they

0:03:12.400 --> 0:03:15.679
<v Speaker 1>barely got half as many points. Okay, this was back

0:03:15.680 --> 0:03:18.840
<v Speaker 1>when there was no shot clock, and back when games

0:03:18.840 --> 0:03:21.320
<v Speaker 1>were very low scoring. And so when we talk about

0:03:21.320 --> 0:03:24.440
<v Speaker 1>how this this game fundamentally changed how basketball's played, that's

0:03:24.440 --> 0:03:26.760
<v Speaker 1>one of the things to know. Nowadays there's sort of

0:03:26.800 --> 0:03:30.400
<v Speaker 1>a razzle dazzle style of play. John mcclinnon from the

0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:33.680
<v Speaker 1>North Carolina College for Negroes. He's known as the author

0:03:33.760 --> 0:03:36.720
<v Speaker 1>of the fast Break. As I mentioned, games used to

0:03:36.760 --> 0:03:39.960
<v Speaker 1>be very low scoring, but Duke ultimately borrowed the style

0:03:40.000 --> 0:03:43.040
<v Speaker 1>of play from the North Carolina College for Negroes. And

0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.040
<v Speaker 1>then you know, because they regularly used to score one

0:03:46.080 --> 0:03:49.720
<v Speaker 1>hundred point games, once even having one hundred and fifty

0:03:49.720 --> 0:03:52.520
<v Speaker 1>point game, they ultimately again changed the course of basketball.

0:03:52.520 --> 0:03:57.560
<v Speaker 1>So if you're a basketball fan, this game has ties

0:03:57.680 --> 0:04:00.200
<v Speaker 1>to perhaps why you love the game in the first place. Yes,