All basketball folks his death do regret,
But none of those people will soon forget
His gliding ways up and down the floor,
And the side-line cry, “Here comes Gilmore!”
—Harrison.
Among Colored schools, Hampton, Howard and Lincoln form the big basket-ball right-angle triangle whose three angles each year are usually so constantly and rapidly twisted and turned to equal elevations of degrees, that it is not until the end of the season, when the three-sided affair finally settles on a steady foundation, that the spectators are really able to see and tell the base of this triangle from its hypothenuse and altitude.
Johnny Johnson, the Colored right-forward on the Columbia University varsity basketball team, in playing against the teams of Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, Pennsylvania and other big colleges, in nearly every case scored the majority of points for his college team. His playing against these colleges was so brainy, spectacular and effective that it caused the leading white sport pages to give him glowing compliments relative to his being one of the best basketball players in the country.
In several large cities Colored athletes have organized and wonderfully developed some of the swiftest and most efficient basketball teams in America. Among the leading teams are: Dr. Johnson’s Forty Club of Chicago, Cum Posey’s Loendi Club of Pittsburgh, Chas. Bradford’s St. Christopher Club of New York, Manager Accoe’s A. C. Lightning Five of Brooklyn, C. Cain’s Vandals, of Atlantic City, “Babe” Thomas’ Alpha Big Five of New York, Douglas’ Spartan Braves of New York, Moss’ Center Five of Toledo, Ohio, All-Scholastics of Harrisburg, the Alcoes of Washington, D.C., the Athenians of Baltimore and the Pioneers of Cleveland, Ohio.
Among those players on these teams whose names, through observation and information, the writer was able to get are: Betts, Blueitt, Sol Butler, Brown, Bundy, Capers, Cooper, Duff, Fial, Fields, Forbes, Gumbs, Howard, Hubbard, Jenkins, Moss Posey, Ricks, Sessons, Slocum, Young and Winters. The other players on these teams were always doing such tricky feinting dizzy ducking, dazzling dodging, sudden blocking, slippery sliding, magic dribbling, lightning shooting and bull’s eye caging that the writer was not able to corner them in, so as to trip them up and hold them down long enough to get their names.
PRIZE FIGHTING.
“Jack” Johnson.
Talk as you may of his private life;
“Jack” led the world in fistic strife,
And Johnson today has as keen a sense
As any new man in self-defense.
—Harrison.
The decisions the United States Government made during the World War, regarding the urgent necessity of including boxing in its all-round training in preparing the soldiers and sailors for war, at last brought the art of self-defense into its own and accorded it the proper recognition and value it should have officially received years ago. In private life prize fighting had its followers in both America and Europe as far back as a hundred years ago. About that time a Virginia Negro slave by the name of Tommy Molineaux whipped all American boxers who met him after which he went to Europe where he was beaten by the Englishman, Cribb, who was at that time the champion of Great Britain.