On the Shoulders of Giants

by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

  The game was played on the ballroom’s dance floor, with two portable baskets erected at either end, and folding wooden chairs set up for spectators. “The floor was very slippery,” recalled future Rens star William “Pop” Gates, “and they outlined the sidelines and foul lines. It wasn’t a big floor. It was far from being a regular basketball floor. Other than high schools or armories, they had very few places to play at.” The Rens defeated the all-white Collegiate Five, 28–22. At the conclusion of the game, around eleven o’clock, the baskets were removed, the Theatre Orchestra began playing, and the fans, dressed in formal suits and gowns, danced far into the morning. Douglas’s new team—and business venture—were off to a great start.

  But there was no time to rest on his laurels. If he was going to keep the team profitable, Douglas would have to arrange games that would draw big crowds. Because the competition in Harlem was so fierce—and because the Renaissance Casino held fewer fans and therefore made less money—Douglas could not afford a bad night’s attendance. His pal Romeo Dougherty worried, “Two [financial] failures at the Renaissance and the team will go to pieces.”

  The Battle for Harlem

  Dougherty’s prediction was never tested. The Rens drew large crowds of around two thousand, even when they suffered a three-game losing streak. Even though new professional black teams seemed to be announced weekly, the Rens remained popular, defeating a vast majority of their opponents, most of them white. These “race matches” pitting black teams against white teams brought in much larger crowds in Harlem than when black teams faced each other. Romeo Dougherty was quick to hype the Rens’ second game, this time against the all-white Bridgeport Separates, as another opportunity for black players to prove themselves against whites: “Instead of picking easy ones for his men, Douglas is seeking the hardest combinations among white teams, and Bridgeport is truly representative of the best white teams. This action lends confidence to the local team, as the people [of Harlem] know they will do their best to stop these fast white players.”

  When it came to winning, especially against white teams, Douglas’s Rens and the McMahons’ Commonwealth Five were considered the two best teams in Harlem, making a showdown between them inevitable. Despite their successful record of wins, the Commonwealth Five were not pulling in the crowds that the Rens were, forcing the McMahons to lower the ticket price from seventy-five cents to fifty cents. If the team didn’t start becoming profitable, the McMahons would disband them. One step toward that profitability was a three-game series against the popular Rens team.

  The first game was scheduled for February 24, 1924. But first the Commonwealth team had to face the biggest obstacle of all professional teams, black or white: the Original Celtics. This all-white team seemed nearly unbeatable, and every time a black team lost against them, it seemed like a harsh reminder of what it was like for African-Americans to compete in a white world. The Original Celtics came to the Commonwealth Casino having just won 108 of their last 110 games. The McMahons didn’t have to worry about drawing a crowd for this game: three thousand fans paid a dollar each in hopes of seeing black faces jumping in victory. Instead, the Original Celtics defeated Commonwealth, then beat them again in the second game of the series.

  This made the McMahons’ team even hungrier when they finally faced the Rens for what was called the grand finale championship of Harlem. In the first game, the Commonwealth Five outshot the Rens to post a 38–35 win. In the second game, the Commonwealth team squashed the Rens by ten points, 31–21. Smilin’ Bob Douglas’s highly touted and popular Renaissance Five suddenly seemed poised for extinction.

  The Rens’ salvation came from the unlikeliest of saviors: the McMahon brothers. Defeating the Rens may have been a moral victory, but the McMahons were devotees of the bottom line. Despite a successful season on paper, the Commonwealth team had failed to defeat either Cumberland Posey’s Loendi team or the Original Celtics. Worse, they had failed to draw fans in large enough numbers to justify the expense. After only two seasons, the McMahons disbanded the Commonwealth Five to focus on their known moneymaker, boxing. Cumberland Posey’s Loendi team in Pittsburgh wasn’t faring much better. The Loendi Social and Literary Club, which had sponsored the team, complained that the players didn’t have regular day jobs and only wanted to “play basketball and [have] a good time.” They pointed out that all the players on the Coffey Club team worked full-time jobs, and yet the Loendi had failed to defeat them in the past season. Loss of the club’s support forced the team to disband. With the two top professional black teams now gone, the Rens went from the verge of dissolution to now being poised to take over Harlem’s basketball scene.

  The Rens Take on the World (1924–29)

  Douglas took immediate advantage of the breakup of the Commonwealth team by snagging two of their top players, Georgie Fiall and Clarence “Fats” Jenkins. The Rens were strengthened further with the addition of Pappy Ricks, the “Jersey Kangaroo.” Freshly motivated, the Rens went on an exceptional winning streak, taking every game at home. Dougherty praised the team, writing, “No colored team today stands a chance with the crack players under guidance of the astute Bob Douglas.” No one doubted Douglas’s drive to win, but what made him such a respected manager was that he didn’t want to win at any cost (as was often said about Cumberland Posey). When a game against the all-white Xavier Five proved too violent, Douglas took his team off the court after only nine minutes and forfeited the game. His style paid off. The Rens steamrolled over most teams. Wrote Dougherty of the Rens’ winning streak, “It is a race between white teams to see which one can defeat the colored players on their home court, but so far, none of them have been successful.” Though the Rens lost a few games on the road, they won every game they played at the Renaissance Casino. Except one. The Original Celtics, who had defeated them earlier in the season, defeated them again at home, 49–38. Despite the Rens’ impressive record, the bigger, stronger, more experienced Celtics still loomed over Harlem.

  Douglas agreed to yet another game against the Original Celtics. Three thousand fans, five hundred of them black, crowded into the Orange Armory in New Jersey on a cold December evening to root for their race as much as for any team. Once again, the Original Celtics defeated the hopes of blacks everywhere when they beat the Rens, 31–29. Another game with the Original Celtics was scheduled for later in the month, but two additional losses to other teams by the Rens brought a scolding by Dougherty in the New York Amsterdam News, blaming the losses on the team’s off-court behavior, including carousing with women, frequenting nightclubs, and missing practice.

  Three thousand anxious fans pushed into the Manhattan Casino to witness this meeting between the Rens and the Celtics, in what was being called “the battle of the gods.” Another thousand fans that had been denied entrance, huddled outside in the cold, waiting for the results. Their long wait—and faith—was finally rewarded as the Rens defeated the Celtics, 37–30. After all this time, Romeo Dougherty wrote the column he’d been waiting three years to write: “Championships in those lines of sports where the color line is drawn remain with the whites, because they deny the colored brother a chance to compete with them, but once they let down the bars they prove the fallacy of their claims of a superiority which only the white race enjoys. All Negroes have asked is a fair chance, and when given that chance, they have more than made good.”

  A month later, after twenty-six consecutive wins at home, the Rens again played the Original Celtics at the Orange Armory in New Jersey, the site of their last defeat at the hands of the Celtics. The Celtics jumped out to a quick lead, but the Rens fought back to win, 32–28. Now black Americans everywhere were counting on the Rens.

  But the Rens and the Celtics were not yet finished with each other. In February they met again, this time at the Regiment Armory, which was large enough to hold the ten thousand spectators, the largest crowd ever to watch a black basketball team. This time, the Rens were unable to overcome their rivals, and the Celtics han
ded the Rens a devastating loss, 46–21.

  During this time, the country’s first real professional basketball league, the American Basketball League (ABL), was formed. While the National Basketball League (NBL) consisted of teams from rural small towns, the ABL was made up of teams from urban areas. Even though their players were mainly the sons of first-generation Irish, Jewish, and Italian immigrants, league officials banned blacks from joining. Supported by numerous editorials and columns in black newspapers, Bob Douglas attempted to join the ABL on several occasions, but each time he and the Rens were refused. (They would be denied membership for twenty-two more years, until 1948.) Though the Original Celtics’ owner, Jim Furey, had been invited to join the ABL, he turned them down. Some basketball historians claim that Furey’s refusal was based in part on the ABL’s rejection of his friendly rivals the Rens. Perhaps so, but undoubtedly a bigger incentive was that, by staying out of the league, he could book the Celtics to play anyone he chose, which translated into much more money than he would make in the league.

  The ABL’s racism seemed contagious. In 1927, the National Basketball Officials Committee suddenly, and without explanation, failed to renew memberships for four black officials. Jesse McMahon, the white owner of the defunct Commonwealth Five, was suspended from his job at Madison Square Garden as boxing matchmaker. Before McMahon’s tenure at the Garden, few black fighters were booked; since he’d arrived, nearly half the fighters were black. Most white newspapers, including the prestigious New York Times, ignored black sports altogether. The Rens’ Clarence “Fats” Jenkins was continually singled out by black and white sportswriters as one of the greatest, but over-looked, players in a game that reportedly involved 15 million people. Lamented the Pittsburg Courier, “Were his epidermis the color of alabaster he would have so many offers from basketball teams to play that he could write his own ticket and name his own price.” Even the white newspaper the New York News declared Jenkins to be “a basketball team within himself.” But, no matter how good he was or who sang his praises, he was black and could therefore only play on black teams. Meanwhile, the Original Celtics had been bought by the Madison Square Garden Corporation and forced to join the ABL. They would play home games at the Garden, where only white teams were permitted to play basketball. The idealists of the Harlem Renaissance still had a long way to go in convincing white America to tear down the color barrier. And a lot of African-Americans were betting their hopes that, if anyone could smash that barrier, it would be the Rens, who, according to Douglas, had already proven themselves to be the best black team: “The Renaissance does not CLAIM to be the World’s Colored Champions. They ARE the champions because they have defeated in home and home series every recognized colored basketball team in the country.”

  The Rens justified many of those hopes as they faced every top white team available—and beat them. For Bob Douglas, beating white teams wasn’t so much a political statement as it was a financial necessity: nine out of ten games that the Rens had won against other black teams had been financial failures. Playing white teams was the only sure way to make money. And the white team that was most profitable to play was still their nemesis, the Original Celtics. Early in their 1927 season they had defeated the Original Celtics, 38–25. At the end of the season, after the Celtics had won the ABL championship, the Rens faced them again in a three-game series for what many considered the unofficial world championship. The Celtics beat the Rens at the Renaissance Casino, 37–28, then beat them again a week later, 47–31. African-Americans would just have to do what they had so much practice at doing. Wait. Wait and hope.

  By the 1928–29 season, the Rens’ popularity was so great that their home games were broadcast on the radio by New York City’s WPCH. Their popularity had spread beyond Harlem to such a degree that Bob Douglas decided that, in addition to their weekly home game at the Renaissance casino, the Rens would now also play every Monday night at the Palais Royal in Philadelphia, making them the “home” team for blacks in two cities. Despite the extensive traveling and the brutal schedule, the Rens won 95 of their 107 games. So, when the season was over, they were again ready to face the Celtics, once again managed by Jim Furey, in another postseason unofficial championship duel.

  The crowd of ten thousand, the most spectators ever at a professional basketball game in New York, watched as Celtics Nat Holman, Dutch Dehnert, Joe Lapchick, and Pete Barry led the team to a 38–31 victory over the Rens. A few days later the Celtics beat the Rens 30–25, and four days after that the Celtics defeated the Rens for the third time, 26–23.

  And Harlem waited.

  The Long and Winding Road: The Barnstorming Years

  Harlem had other, more serious problems. The year 1929 was the beginning of the America’s Great Depression, the longest and most devastating economic catastrophe that any Western industrialized nation had ever faced. So severe was the Great Depression that it would last for ten years, during which eleven thousand of the twenty-five thousand U.S. banks would fail, stocks would lose 80 percent of their value, manufacturing output would be cut in half, and 25 to 30 percent of the workforce (12–15 million people) would be thrown out of work, with little hope of finding jobs elsewhere. Harlem felt the impact immediately. Rents were nearly doubled, forcing tenants to move in together in ever-increasingly crowded apartments. Unemployment rose to nearly 50 percent.

  The beginning of the Great Depression also brought the greatest challenge ever to the Rens, but not in the form of racism or a superior team. Jim Furey, manager of the Original Celtics (who were now owned by the Central Opera House), tried to lure several Rens players away from Bob Douglas in an effort to start a new team called the Original Renaissance Five. When word of this was made public, fans from all over offered both moral and financial support to keep the Rens together. Although a few players did sign contracts with Furey, Douglas was not about to go gentle into that good fight. He told the New York Amsterdam News, “It is indeed strange that the same people who bought the franchise of an almost defunct athletic club [the Original Celtics], but because we are Negroes failed to do us the honor of making an offer for the franchise of the Renaissance Five.” While the Rens fought all comers on the basketball court, Douglas fought off the Celtics raiders in the legal court, beating them soundly. The Rens quickly put the controversy behind them and went on to win a string of consecutive victories over the top white teams.

  The Original Celtics did not fare so well. Even though they were a championship team, they were not as profitable as the Rens, losing almost $20,000 in the first two weeks of the new season. Jim Furey was forced to replace his top players with rookies who were less experienced but a lot cheaper. Even then, the Celtics weren’t able to generate enough income and were disbanded. This made clear to everyone that Furey’s attempts to start an Original Renaissance Five team was a desperate move for solvency. Basketball’s most unbeatable team finally fell, not to the color line that the Rens faced, but to the bottom line, which the Rens had consistently defeated.

  But a healthy bottom line came with a healthy price. The Depression was getting worse: 38 percent of African-Americans were unemployed (compared to 17 percent of whites). With unemployment in Harlem rising, basketball attendance began to diminish. Where before the Rens had drawn as many as ten thousand fans in a single night, now they were drawing less than two thousand over five nights. Douglas lamented in a letter that “basketball in New York is not what it used to be. I don’t know whether the people are tired of the game or whether it is the economic conditions of the City. My crowd has fallen off more than 50%, even at reduced prices.” Perhaps he saw the irony that his letterhead bragged, “Greatest Drawing Card in Basketball Today. Book the ‘R’ and Increase Your Gate Ten-fold.”

  The Rens played almost every night of the week just to keep the team afloat. The Renaissance Casino suddenly found itself on the verge of bankruptcy due to poor management. Bob Douglas had to do something or the Rens would go the way of so many other black bask
etball teams—into oblivion. And the casino also needed saving, not just because it was the Rens’ home, but because it was the only nightclub in Harlem entirely owned and managed by African-Americans. Douglas made two crucial decisions: first, he convinced the owners to let him take over as manager of the Renaissance Casino; second, he sent the Rens on barnstorming tours for weeks at a time. Although the Rens were used to playing games on the road, they had never before gone on such extended trips. And never before had the tour included the Southern states. On previous tours, Douglas had usually accompanied the team, but now that he had management duties at the casino, he would have to stay home and do all his booking from there.

  “We’d leave [Harlem] right after New Year’s and wouldn’t come back until April,” said Rens player John “Boy Wonder” Isaacs (1936–41). “We were barnstorming.”

  Road Rage: Racism on Tour

  On the road, the Rens faced much more racism than they had at home. During one game in Chicago against the Bruins, the Rens had eighteen fouls called against them, while the Bruins had none. This was so common that, whenever the Rens played against white teams, they knew they had to jump to at least a ten-point lead as quickly as possible due to the bias of the white referees. “You got ten points as fast as you could,” said John Isaacs, “because you assumed those were the ten points you weren’t going to get from officiating.” After one particularly violent game, in which Rens road manager Eric Illidge protested a ref’s unfair call, Illidge remembered, “That’s when all hell broke loose. We had to form a circle in the middle of the floor and fight back to back. I had my pistol out and Fat Jenkins pulled out the knife he kept hidden in his sock. We were ready to fight our way out, but the riot squad came and saved our lives.”