Sports Odds and Ends
The feel-good classic film “Hoosiers” (1986) is about an unheralded underdog high school basketball team that won its first state championship by beating an all-Black team from Indianapolis. However, this classic movie was fictional: Milan High School (on which the Hickory High team was based) did defeat the all-Black Crispus Attucks team in 1954, but in the state semifinals, not the finals.
“The Real Hoosiers” (Hachette Books) unveils the real story of Attucks, who won back-to-back Indiana state championships led by Oscar Robertson, a future Olympic, college and NBA legend.Veteran sportswriter and author Jack McCallum’s latest book, released in March, describes the segregated times of that era and provides insights from those who witnessed it or experienced first-hand the housing discrimination, school segregation, and anti-Black violence that shaped mid-20th century Indianapolis. He recently talked to the MSR.
“It seemed like a very timely story,” said McCallum.
Indianapolis in the early 20th century was becoming a migration home for Blacks from the South who came there and to other northern cities for a better life, he pointed out. “The White population of Indianapolis was scared that they were being overtaken, according to many people, by too many African Americans in the 1920s,” McCallum learned.
Crispus Attucks was built as a result. “The school board, which was dominated by Klan members or those with Klan sympathies, decided that the segregated school had to be built in that area of Indianapolis that was not very hospitable.”
Despite the low expectations, Attucks defied them all both academically and athletically, said McCallum. “It ended up succeeding beyond everybody’s wildest expectations for a variety of reasons before Oscar Robertson came along in the 1950s,” he said.
“The Real Hoosiers” is a must-read for sports enthusiasts, history buffs, and anyone interested in social justice. “I didn’t sign on to do a book about the life of Oscar Robertson or the likes of Indianapolis, Indiana. Or even the total life of Crispus Attucks High School,” admitted McCallum.
“I’m not a history professor. I’m a White guy that covered basketball for many years for ‘Sports Illustrated,’” said McCallum. “I didn’t want to explain the history of Black America to people who know it better than I do. So, I figured out a good way, the only way for me to do it was to make it both a basketball tale and a tale of the culture.
“I was qualified enough to try to delve into that story,” said McCallum. “And so, it ends up as kind of a multi-layered story [and not] just a basketball story.”
Although Robertson is prominently mentioned in “The Real Hoosiers,” the legend did not want to speak with the author for his book. “I feel bad that Oscar didn’t cooperate. This is America, and people can make their own choice. But I think in the end, the book did not suffer from it,” McCallum surmised.
“I want to do this the right way… I want to tell the story. I wasn’t going to prove there was racism in America. People would find that I tried to do that in an honest way.”
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