By 1915, African-Americans played basketball in high school physical education classes, on college and university squads, and on club teams representing major urban cities.
In 1916, the all-black Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association (CIAA) was formed, uniting Virginia Union, Shaw University (Raleigh, North Carolina), Lincoln and Howard in competition.
George Gregory, Jr., the 6'-4" captain and center of the Columbia University team from 1928–1931, became the first African American all-American college basketball player, in 1931.
One notable exception was Jackie Robinson, a multi-sport star (1939–1941) at UCLA just before World War II, who went on to greater fame for breaking Major League Baseball's 20th-century color line.
Robinson's honors at UCLA were impressive: for two years highest scorer in basketball competition in the Pacific Coast Conference, national champion long (then "broad") jumper, the school's first athlete to letter in four sports, All-American football halfback and varsity baseball shortstop.
While enduring taunts from opponents and pervasive segregation at home and on the road, Garrett became the best player Indiana had ever had, an all-American, and, in 1951, the third African-American drafted in the NBA.
But in the late 1940s, Indiana had a leader of the largest black YMCA in the world, which viewed sports as a wedge for broader integration; a visionary university president, who believed his institution belonged to all citizens of the state; a passion for high school and college basketball; and a teenager who was, as nearly as any civil rights pioneer has ever been, the perfect person for his time and role.
The Loyola University (Chicago) teams of the early 1960s, coached by George Ireland, are thought to be responsible for ushering in a new era of racial equality in the sport by shattering a major color barrier in NCAA men's basketball.
[2] In 1963, Loyola shocked the nation and changed college basketball forever by starting four black players in the NCAA Tournament, as well as the Championship game.
[5] Clem Haskins and Dwight Smith became the first black athletes to integrate the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers basketball program in the Fall of 1963.
A controversial foul called against Greg Smith during a jump ball put Cazzie Russell on the free throw line for Michigan, where he scored the tying and winning baskets.
[6] Archived 2007-10-31 at the Wayback Machine In 1984, John Thompson Jr. became the first African-American head coach to win the NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship when the Georgetown Hoyas defeated the University of Houston 84–75.