*On this date in 1955, the Attucks Tigers basketball team won the Indiana High School state championship. Attucks beat Gary’s Roosevelt High School, becoming the first all-Black school in the nation to win a state title. They included future professional star and National Basketball Association Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson. The Attucks Tigers made it to […]
learn more*Kelvin Sampson was born on this date in 1955. He is an African Native American college basketball coach. Kelvin Dale Sampson was born in the Lumbee Native American community of Deep Branch in Robeson County, North Carolina, where he excelled in the classroom and the athletic arena during his prep days at Pembroke High School in Pembroke, North Carolina. […]
learn more*Pearl Moore was born on this date in 1957. She is a retired Black woman’s professional basketball player. Born in Florence, South Carolina, Moore began playing basketball while attending Wilson High School. She started for all four years and earned the MVP award at the 1975 and 1976 AAU Junior Olympic Games. Moore began her collegiate career […]
learn more*Vida Blue was born on this date in 1949. He was a Black professional baseball player. Early life Vida Rochelle Blue Jr. was born and raised in Mansfield in DeSoto Parish, Louisiana. He was the oldest of six children born to Vida Blue, Sr, a laborer in a Mansfield iron foundry, and his wife, Sallie. […]
learn more*Jim Hines was born on this date in 1946. He was a Black track and field athlete and professional football player. James Ray Hines was born in Dumas, Arkansas; Hines was raised in Oakland, California, and graduated from McClymonds High School in 1964. He was a baseball player in his younger years until track coach […]
learn more*Lloyd McDermott was born on this date in 1939. Also known as Mullenjaiwakka, he was an Aboriginal Australian lawyer and rugby union player. Born in Eidsvold, Queensland, Lloyd Clive McDermott had links to the Mununjali clan and the Wakka Wakka people. Lloyd McDermott’s academic and sporting prowess, the son of a farm laborer, won him a scholarship […]
learn more*Errol Tobias was born on this date in 1950. He is a former Black South African rugby union player. Errol George Tobias was born on the farm Klipdrift, located outside Caledon, South Africa, in the Overberg district of the Western Cape. He played in the early 1970s for the Proteas when they toured in Britain. The […]
learn more*Herman Boone was born on this date in 1935. He was a Black high school teacher and football coach. Herman Ike Boone was from Rocky Mount, North Carolina. He attended Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, then the now-closed Booker T. Washington High School. While attending North Carolina Central University, Boone joined the Tau Psi chapter of the Omega […]
learn more*Willie E. Jeffries was born on this date in 1937. He is a Black former American football player and coach. Jeffries grew up in South Carolina, attending the segregated Sims High School in Union County. He played football there and started coaching in 1960 as an assistant at Barr Street High School in Lancaster, South […]
learn more*Emma Chambers Maitland was born on this date in 1893. She was a Black dancer, teacher, and boxer. Born Jane Chambers, she was from near Richmond, Virginia, the daughter of Wyatt Chambers and Cora Chambers. Her parents were sharecroppers, and she had seven brothers. She was educated at a convent school in Rock Castle, Virginia, and […]
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