Feb 11 Blk History Black Fives
Just after the game of basketball was invented in 1891, teams were called \u201cfives\u201d in reference to their five starting players.
Basketball, like American society, was racially segregated. Teams made up entirely of African American players were often known as \u201ccolored quints,\u201d \u201cNegro cagers,\u201d or \u201cblack fives.\u201d
The sport remained divided from 1904 \u2014 when basketball was first introduced to African Americans on a wide scale organized basis \u2014 until the racial integration of the National Basketball League in the 1940s and the National Basketball Association in 1950.
The period in between became known as the Black Fives Era, when dozens of all-black teams emerged, flourished, and excelled.
African Americans were making moves in basketball generations before the N.B.A. was born.
At first, those teams \u2013 sponsored by churches, athletic and social clubs, \u201cColored\u201d YMCAs, businesses, and newspapers \u2013 had few places to play, since gymnasiums and athletic clubs were whites-only.
But when the phonograph emerged in the early 1900s, black music \u2013 ragtime, jazz, and blues \u2013 became so popular that a dance craze swept America. Almost overnight, sheet music and player pianos in the parlor gave way to dance halls and ballrooms.
Positive and culturally affirming opportunities in the entertainment industry replaced the insulting, degrading minstrelsy of the past.
For observant and enterprising African American sports promoters, these spaces became ready-made basketball venues on off nights, featuring music by top black musicians and dancing afterward until well past midnight.