Trivia Question - African-American history at Bradley

[tornado]

Mike Brooks was just hired as the first African-American head coach ever at Bradley...

http://emergepeoria.blogspot.com/2012/07/first-african-american-coach-in-history.html

We have certainly had assistant coaches, and Bradley was one of the first colleges back in the 1950's to break the barriers and have African-American players.

Here are some trivia questions - courtesy of a very well researched book by Arvin D. Smallwood, PhD, Director of African American Studies at Bradley...
and the book chronicles the history and breakthroughs of Blacks in all areas at Bradley - but I will ask a few questions from the athletics points of view....and the answers are documented with pictures and names...

See how many of these you can get...I will post the answers later....

1) Who was the FIRST Black person on the Bradley basketball team - note he was not a player!

2) Who was the very first Black player ever to play basketball at Bradley at any level?

3) Can you name any other Black players on BU's freshman team of 1955-56?

4) Who were the FIRST African-American players on varsity?

5) Who were the first Black athletes in any sport to compete for Bradley?

[Braves4Life]

Here's the book -- http://books.google.com/books?id=Psn...page&q&f=false

[tornado]

uh oh - now you're gonna make it easy for people...

anyway -- I will start to reveal the answers........

Question #1 was:
Who was the FIRST Black person on the Bradley basketball team - note he was not a player!
The answer - as noted in a picture on page 69 of the book....
The first Black person on the team was designated only in the team picture..
he was listed as "Porter" - manager...in 1951.

[tornado]

Questions #2 & #3 were...
2) Who was the very first Black player ever to play basketball at Bradley at any level?
3) Can you name any other Black players on BU's freshman team of 1955-56?



Here are the answers.....
2) Leroy Jackson was part of the 1954-55 Freshman team at Bradley

3) A 1955-56 freshman team picture shows Tony Davis and they even have a picture of him playing in a home game against Illinois State but he never played varsity according to the BU all time roster. The picture is from a freshman game since we never played ISU in a varsity contest at the Fieldhouse between 12/1/53 and 12/3/57.

[tornado]

Here's the final two answers to the trivia questions....


4) Who were the FIRST African-American players on varsity?

5) Who were the first Black athletes in any sport to compete for Bradley?




4) Both Curley Johnson, Sr. - (the father of the Globetrotter player), and Shellie McMillon were on the BU varsity in 1955-56, but since McMillon was a starter and Johnson was not, in all likelihood McMillon would hold the distinction of actually playing first.

5) In 1926 African-American woman Anna Campbell graduated and the photo in the 1926 Bradley yearbook states she played women's basketball and field hockey. That is the very first athletic denotation associated with an African American Bradley student that is documented.
Those would have been considered club teams or intramurals as there were no varsity teams for women back then.

In 1933 a Black player designated as "Fields" was on the freshman baseball team.

In 1938 Erskine Parker was on the school's boxing team.
In 1947-48 there were two Black members of the track team designated in the photo & school yearbook as "Frank Owen" and "George C. Connor"
In the 1952 track team photo there were five Black team members, there were also five Black members of the 1952 football team.

[tornado]

One last comment about this remarkable book - the author goes into great detail telling how Lydia Moss Bradley
(the University's founder for those who don't know)..was a tremendously generous and "philanthropic" woman who did plenty
to benefit, support, and provide monetary help for Black churches in and around Peoria and to fund scholarships for African-Americans.

Here's a quote...

"From providing money for Black churches to funding Black scholarships for
education, Mrs. Bradley recognized the needs in the Black community and
assisted where she could...
...it is not surprising that when she founded Bradley, she founded an open
institution where women and men, rich and poor, Black and White could
obtain an education that would improve their quality of life their community,
and their nation."


As far back as the turn of the 20th century, Bradley had Black graduates, and several pictures of
graduating classes from BU's schools of Horology and other departments depicted Black graduates -
at a time when most other colleges were not even admitting non-whites.

[Braves4Life]

Lydia Moss Bradley was a great lady who was a visionary, pioneer, and philanthropist ahead of her time. It's no surprise that Bradley was also ahead of other universities with regard to race relations and equal opportunities. Her story and her history (and Bradley's) is truly a remarkable tale. Thanks for sharing tornado!