The Traveler… NCAA champions breaks new barrier…

March 21, 2016 by · Leave a Comment 

Today I traveled to Springfield, Massachusetts, by the way of The Springfield Republican dated March 20, 1966. There I found a small report “Texas Western Tops Kentucky In NCAA”, upsetting Kentucky who had won for the previous four years. Blog-3-21-2016-Texas-WesternHowever, the significant of this game is noted on the website: “ESPN Classics” with: “Walking toward the red “M” at center court, in their orange uniforms and white Converse All-Stars, are the five starters for Texas Western. They are all black. Until that moment, at the height of the civil-rights era, no major-college team had ever started five blacks in an NCAA championship game. In fact, until Texas Western coach Don Haskins did it earlier that season, no major-college team had ever started five blacks in ANY game. For the first time that night, on the edge of the Mason-Dixon Line, a major American sports championship would be contested by one team that was all-white and another whose starters were entirely black.” As history would tell, and as reported in this newspaper, Texas Western would go on to win.

This newspaper is also from the founding city of basketball as well.

~The Traveler