Harry Lew

[4] A member of an African-American family with a long history in Massachusetts, his great-great-grandfather, Barzillai Lew, was a freeman who served in the American Revolution.

[5] Barzillai was a fifer and served with Captain John Ford at the Battle of Bunker Hill on June 17, 1775.

[6] His great-great-aunt Lucy Lew and her husband Thomas Dalton were civil rights activists.

[1] His father, William Lew, was a delegate to the 1891 Equal Rights Convention in Boston, Massachusetts.

Years later "Bucky" Lew was interviewed by Gerry Finn for the Springfield, Massachusetts Union on April 2, 1958 about that first game.

"I can almost see the faces of those Marlborough players when I got into that game," said Lew, who was seventy-four when the article was published.

"Our Lowell team had been getting players from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and some of the local papers put the pressure on by demanding that they give this little Negro from around the corner a chance to play.

all those things you read about Jackie Robinson, the abuse, the name-calling, extra effort to put him down .

"The finest players in the country were in that league just before it disbanded and I always wound up playing our opponent's best shooter," Lew said.

That was 24 years before the Boston Celtics drafted Charles Chuck Cooper, the first African American for the NBA.

In 1928, he moved and relocated his dry cleaning business to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he lived until he died in 1963.

[4] Since 2016, Bucky Lew has been on the Basketball Hall of Fame, DIRECT-ELECT CATEGORY: Early African-American Pioneers Committee Nominations.