"The father of Black basketball... brains, brawns and teamwork"
Uncovering the story of a physical educator, civil rights activist, and chronicler of Black athletes and sports
I was born in Texas, but reared in Prince George’s County, Maryland. It’s the place I call home; where I spent the majority of my childhood and adolescence years. It’s also the place that introduced me to the game of basketball.
To be fair, my mother purchased a Little Tykes basketball hoop for my seventh birthday while we still lived in Texas, so I wasn’t completely clueless. But I didn’t touch an actual basketball until I reached the Youth Center on Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland of ‘99. Basketball is and will always be my first love.
Unbeknownst to me, hoops was massive in that area, and still is to this day. And we all have Edwin Bancroft Henderson to thank. We know the game was invented by Springfield College instructor and grad student James Naismith in 1891. But only one man can be attributed to bringing the game to the Black community.
Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson was born November 24, 1883 in Southwest Washington to working-class parents born in slavery. As a child, Edwin was curious and energetic. His mother taught him to read at a young age and he was so invested, he started reading and studying at the nearby Library of Congress.
Outside of his studies, sports also drew a young Edwin in. He was an honor roll student at M Street High School in Washington, D.C., as well as a member of the school’s baseball, football, and track and field teams. He earned a B.A. degree from Howard University, an M.A. degree at Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in athletic training from Central Chiropractic College in Kansas City, Missouri.
In 1904, Dr. Edwin began his teaching career in the Black public schools of Washington, D.C., while continuing his study of physical education by attending the Harvard Summer School of Physical Education. It was at Harvard where he was introduced to the game of basketball. The school was affiliated with the International YMCA Training School in Springfield, Mass., where James Naismith had invented the sport just a decade earlier.
After finishing his studies, he returned to Washington D.C. In 1907, he tried to attend a basketball game at a Whites-only YMCA in D.C. along with his future brother-in-law, but they were rebuffed and shoved out the door by the athletic director.
But Henderson was undeterred.
He took the game to cities along the East Coast, mainly in New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore. It led to the creation of the first fully organized and fully independent Black basketball team in America, The Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn, and the beginning of the Black Fives era. Black Fives teams played in church basements, armories, meeting halls and dance ballrooms, because they were banned from gyms. There was no formal championship game or tournament played; the honor was given by consensus of the most prominent Black sportswriters in America who covered basketball.
Dr. Edwin started the D.C.-based Basket Ball League, where his 12th Street YMCA team went undefeated in 1909-10 in competition and won the unofficial title of Colored Basketball World Champions. It was the first time Blacks had played basketball on a wide scale basis, prompting many to label Dr. Edwin as the “Father of Black Basketball” and the D.C. as the “Birthplace of Black Basketball.” Sorry New Yorkers!
His playing days came to an end in 1910 when he was 27. Henderson’s work continued off the court, as he formed the Public Schools Athletic League, the country’s first public school sports league for Black students, which included basketball, track and field, soccer and baseball. For 25 years, he served as the Director of the Department of Physical Education for D.C.’s segregated Black schools. He coached, taught, or mentored students including Duke Ellington and Dr. Charles R. Drew. He was also the first academic researcher of Blacks in sports, with articles appearing in a number of Black periodicals including Crisis, The Messenger, and the Negro History Bulletin.
In 1939, Dr. Edwin published The Negro in Sports under Carter G. Woodson’s Associated Publishers, the publishing arm of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). The Negro in Sports was the first major study of Black athletes and athletics.
He established a branch of the NAACP in Falls Church, Virginia, and led the fight to end the segregationist seating policy of Uline Arena, the sporting facility that housed the games of the Washington Capitols of the Basketball Association of America. When the Capitols joined the newly formed National Basketball Association (NBA) in 1949, they drafted Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd who became two of the NBA’s first Black players.
“It all started with E.B. Henderson. He fell in love with the game because it was a mix of brains, brawn and teamwork.”
-Penny Greene, a D.C. basketball historian
Throughout his life, Dr. Edwin fought both individually and in affiliation with organizations against various forms of racial discrimination. He waged war against Jim Crow transportation facilities in Virginia, led campaigns to eradicate segregated recreational and organized sports programs on the local and regional levels, and fought to prohibit Southern states from excluding Blacks from participation in local AAHPER (American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation) chapters.
Henderson was dynamic as a public speaker and prolific as a writer. He wrote hundreds of "Letters to the Editor" on various topics to newspapers across the country and published numerous articles in well known professional journals. He was Sagittarius to the core: adventurous and a risk-tasker. Intellectual and charismatic. Driven and passionate.
Edwin passed away on February 3, 1977 at the age of 93. He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 and the UDC Athletic Hall of Fame in 2018.
To learn more about Dr. Edwin’s life: pre-order for “The Grandfather of Black Basketball: The Life and Times of Dr. E. B. Henderson” by Edwin Bancroft Henderson II is available now! Release date set for February 14, 2024.
Super informal. 💪🏿