Remembering Earl Lloyd:
Earl Lloyd, who became the first African American to play in the National Basketball Association, died at age 86, on Thursday in Crossville, Tenn. (A few days after Lloyd broke the NBA's color barrier, Chuck Cooper and Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton -- one of my childhood heroes -- took the court for the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks respectively.)
The New York Times pointed out that when Lloyd, "took the court for the Washington Capitols in October 1950, [it was only] three and a half years after Jackie Robinson broke modern major league baseball’s color barrier." Lloyd played nine years in the NBA and is a member of the basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Massachusetts -- a must-see trip for any basketball fan.
The New York Time obituary can be found @ http://www.nytimes.com/...
Some compelling quotes from NPR interviews with Lloyd:
From 2000, speaking to NPR's Linda Wertheimer:
"Here I am, a young black kid — from kindergarten right through graduating from college, I never had a white classmate. And you're born and raised in the den of segregation, you've been treated third-class all your life. So you tend to believe that you're inferior. And when you walk into a pro training camp ... the first thing you ask yourself, very quietly, [is] 'Do I belong here?' And at training camp, where it's on, and you start scrimmaging these guys and playing against them, you know — then the bulb lights up, and tells you that you belong."
From a 2013 talk with NPR's Gene Demby:
"My parents used to say it only matters if other people think you're special. What you think is only as important as a rat's behind."
"I always say that if someone had to handpick a place to play their first game as a black player, it would be Rochester, N.Y. In that part of the country in the wintertime, no one hates anyone. You see black folks and white folks pushing each other's cars through the snow. But the next day we were in St. Louis. That was not a nice place to be in 1950. That was not a nice place to be. But there was no Klansmen [at that first game] and all that, with signs and ropes. It was too cold for all that."
From a 2010 talk with NPR's Liane Hansen:
"Jackie made things a lot easier for me. But what happened, if you think about it, Jackie Robinson played first base. The guy playing left field, he can call him all the names he wants to call him and their paths will never cross. But in pro basketball, you stand on a foul line and some guy who might want to call you a name is less apt to — because the proximity is kind of immediate. And there's a little danger involved in calling a guy a name who's standing right next to you."
"One kid said to me, he said, Mr. Lloyd, we really owe you. And I explained to him, man, you owe me absolutely nothing. I said, whatever kind of career I had, it has served me well, but you do owe some people. And the people you owe are the folks who are going to come behind you. It's incumbent upon each watch — when you play your 10, 11 years and you're in your group — when you leave, I truly hope that you've done all you can possibly do to leave it a better place for the folks who come behind you."