Bob Lockley was the heroic forgotten pioneer and third Black KU basketball player in school history

After LaVannes Squires broke the racial barrier in Kansas and Big Eight basketball (along with Kansas State’s Gene Wilson) in 1951-52, African Americans began to find their way to Phog Allen’s and assistant coach Dick Harp’s Jayhawks. Next was Maurice King, KU’s first Black starter and a future NBA champion with the Boston Celtics who Harp recruited out of R.T Coles High School in Kansas City, Mo., in 1953. Most fans and observers think the third Black player at Kansas was Wilt Chamberlain, who they believe started the Philadelphia pipeline.

NOT SO.

The third African American basketball player at KU was a 6-foot-2, 160-pound forward from Northeast High School in Philadelphia named Robert “Bob” Lockley. Born in Saluda, Va., Wilson grew up in the “City of Brotherly Love” and attended Kansas on a basketball scholarship. KU sports publicity director Don Pierce described Lockley in the 1955-56 KU Media Guide as “Philadelphia sophomore who could become one of greatest jumpers in Kansas basketball history. Better than average defensive ability and attains aggressiveness to bid for playing time.”

Wilson played in eight games that 1955-56 season (KU went 14-9 in Allen’s last year as head coach), posting nine points (1.1 ppg) on 4 of 10 field goal shooting and 1 of 4 at the free throw line, while grabbing 11 rebounds (1.4 rpg). The 1956 Jayhawker Yearbook wrote about Lockley in previewing next year’s team: “Bob Lockley and John Cleland, two promising juniors-to-be, who were used often the last campaign, will have to be rated as highly potential material.”

Lockley, though, never played another game at Kansas. However, he seemed to lead a purposeful life after passing on Nov. 25, 2015 at age 85, according to his obituary in the Philadelphia Inquirer/Philadelphia Daily News.

 

“Robert, age 85, passed away peacefully …  He attended Northeast High School and the University of Kansas where he played basketball with the renowned Jayhawks. Robert was a faithful gov't. employee for 37 years. He is survived by his current wife Raquel, former wife, Patricia, son Robert Jr. daughters Robin and Ashley and many grands and great-grands.”

Lockley was one of two Black players on KU’s team with King, the 6-foot-2 junior guard who ranked second on the team in scoring behind Dallas Dobbs (academically ineligible second semester) with 14.0 points per game. Looking back at my 1988 KU senior honors thesis on Racial Participation and Integration in Kansas Men’s Basketball: 1952-1975, only 28 percent of the country’s basketball teams had Blacks on their roster in 1954 with 1.6 the average number of Blacks on integrated squads. From this data, KU was certainly far ahead of the national average with 72 percent of the country’s teams having no Black players.

We cannot forget about Robert “Bob” Lockley. He might not have the name recognition of LaVannes Squires and, of course, the Big Dipper, but he was a heroic figure who helped blaze the trail for Wilt and other Black players like fellow Philadelphians Wayne Hightower, Al Correll, and Ralph Heyward to follow at KU. Yes, Hightower, Correll and Heyward chose KU primarily due to Wilt, but it was Bob Lockley who started it all from Philadelphia. One can only imagine the deep racism and prejudice Lockley endured in being the third African American player at Kansas during the infested segregation in the mid-1950s in Lawrence and throughout America.

Sending much love to Robert’s family and all who knew this courageous pioneer!

Al Donaghue was a star high school player and key member of Jayhawks' teams

Al Donaghue was a superstar player at powerhouse Wyandotte High School in Kansas City, leading his team to two state championships while a two-time Kansas player of the year. Heavily recruited, Donaghue narrowed his choices to K-State and KU. While he admits to being a big KSU fan growing up, this all changed when KU’s Phog Allen and Dick Harp made an in-home recruiting visit. Allen, who had just retired (Harp was now head coach), made a huge impression on Al’s parents. 

After Allen’s amazing recruiting pitch, Al’s mother asked her son: “‘You are going to Kansas, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s where she wanted me to go, and that’s what I wanted to do after meeting Phog Allen and Dick Harp.”

Al,  nicknamed “Sam” by Harp, never looked back. He played a key role on Jayhawk teams loaded with talent, including Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Bridges and Wayne Hightower. He improved his scoring average from 5.0 points per game his sophomore year to 10.6 ppg as a junior before a career-high 10.9 points per game his senior season. Al, who was part of KU’s co-Big Eight championship team in 1959-60, finished his standout career with averages of 8.7 points and 4.6 rebounds per game. He scored 566 points in 65 games.

A very versatile player, Donaghue could score, rebound, defend and pass, the consummate team player ever squad needs.

The 6-5 forward loved playing for Harp and credits him for his great improvement.

“Dick was a fine man,” Al told me in the early 2000s during a Where Are They Now? interview for Jayhawk Insider. “He probably was a better human being than he was a coach. When you say that, that’s not to diminish his coaching ability. He was an excellent coach, but was just a very saltable, God fearing, very moral gentleman. Great guy to play for. I enjoyed playing for him. He probably did a lot for me in terms of helping me grow and develop, and was instrumental in my development.”

Al was a loyal Jayhawk throughout his life, attending all KU basketball games after moving back to Kansas City in 1980 and served with coach Roy Williams on the Jayhawks’ mentoring program.

His death in 2007 shook his family and Jayhawk Nation hard. The Lawrence Journal-World’s Bill Mayer paid tribute to Al in his July 20, 2007 column.

“The recent death of Al Donaghue, a Kansas University basketball player of note in 1958-60, left a sense of loss and grief in many a life, particularly those in his family,” Mayer wrote. “He had a tough battle with lymphoma, and I can only hope he's comfortable and enjoying himself again. Al, nicknamed ‘Sam’ while playing under Dick Harp, brought a lot to the table in many venues. One of his best contributions was the loyalty and love he displayed as a KU product, especially as a basketball alum. I'm sad that his passing will take away a little more of the warmth that the KU sports program seems to be losing in today's dash for dollars.

“Al and his wife, the former Mary Susan Eggleston, were constant attendees at Jayhawk basketball games, and they and a number of friends helped create one of those pods of camaraderie and delight that were so typical of KU fandom over the years. People who had adjoining seats for the game got to know each other, relished those associations and focused their pride on Jayhawk achievements.”

“... Al, a one-time Wilt Chamberlain teammate, and his clan stuck with KU and each other through thick and thin for years, and his loss creates just one more gap in the Crimson and Blue fabric of devotion and affection.”

I, too, was very sad to hear about his death, but comforted knowing our paths crossed that evening in the early 2000s during our phone conversation, where Al was so full of life, his robust voice reveling in talking about his favorite KU memories, his devotion to KU, and his great experience playing at Wyandotte with best friend Monte Johnson, also a fellow Jayhawk teammate and former Kansas athletic director.

It was truly a very enjoyable and memorable interview!

...

“I went to Wyandotte High School. Monte Johnson was one of my closest friends. Monte was best man at my wedding. Monte and I go back to Wyandotte, when he was playing there and have been friends since, oh Lord, 1953, I guess, and have maintained that friendship over the years. I first started playing organized basketball in junior high school in Kansas City, Kansas. So that was about the seventh or eight grade, I guess, other than playing in the playground. In the old days, you played everything out in the playground. You played baseball in the summer and you played football in the fall and basketball in the winter. That’s how kids grew up. Kansas City, Kansas, Wyandotte High School had a great program back in those days. It was started by Walt Shublom, who was the head coach at Wyandotte. He was there from 1960; in the 18 years he was there, he either won or finished second in the state every year. He won like 14 championships out of 18 years. We had a very good team, but it was a program in Kansas City, Kansas, that was pretty much developed. All the junior high schools ran the same kind of program that fed into Wyandotte. In junior high school, I was running the offense that Wyandotte High school was using. We were very successful. We won the state tournament two of my three years in high school, and lost it my senior year. We lost one game, and that was in the finals of the state tournament. We had a very good program-- it was a good school, some great players had come out of Wyandotte to play in colleges and the pros, some to KU. Some went to other schools. Wyandotte developed some nice players over the years from Kansas. Nolen Ellison, he was a sophomore my senior year. He was an outstanding, outstanding player. 

"Harry Gibson, who lives now there in Lawrence, played at Wyandotte. A guy named Pierre Russell played at Wyandotte. Cal Thompson, later. There were some great players that came out of Wyandotte and went to the University of Kansas. I was very highly recruited. I was voted for two straight years the player of the year in the state of Kansas. I could have gone a lot of places. Dick Harp, of course, did lot of recruiting. Phog Allen was forced to retire when he turned 70. My senior year of high school was his last year in coaching. I was kind of torn between KU and K-State, quite frankly. One of the in-home visits, Dick brought coach Allen to our house; he impressed my mother and father dramatically to the point that when they left, my mom said: ‘You are going to Kansas, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s where she wanted me to go, and that’s what I wanted to do after meeting Phog Allen and Dick Harp. With Chamberlain there, it was a nice chance for all intents and purposes to play for a national championship each year.

“Tex Winter, who was the coach at K-State in those days; he was a great recruiter. They had an excellent program at K-State. I was pretty much torn between KU and K-State. I grew up as a K-State fan because they had some great players. As I got to know more and more people (from KU), there was a gentleman with the name like Roy Edwards in Kansas City, who the Edwards campus at the junior college is named after. Roy was a very strong alum. He and I got to be very good friends. You start to change your allegiance as you meet more and more fine people from the University. I had a chance to meet Paul Endacott, who was president of Phillips. It was nice to finally make a decision. I made the right decision. After I met Dr. Allen in our home and my mom and dad met him, it was kind of a foregone conclusion that’s where we were going. It was a toss-up, they were both good schools, I know they both had good programs, I had to pick out the school I wanted to go to.

“As I said, I think KU was the best choice for me at that time, and I’m glad I went. I didn’t have an overwhelming desire when I was a kid growing up to go to KU because I really liked K-State when I was a young  man. You got to realize, K-State had a great basketball program back in those days. They were very, very strong. If you go back and look at some of the old archives, KU and K-State pretty much dominated the Big 7 in those days. KU would win it a year, and K-State would win it the next year. They were great schools, great competition and a great rivalry that went on. ... (Growing up), I was short; I was very small. I was the shortest guy on our junior high school team, so I played guard. I didn’t get a growth spurt until I was probably a  sophomore in high school. I went from about 6-0 to 6-5 in basically a year and a half. With it came the clumsiness. I think the chance to play guard as a young man helped overcome some of those difficulties. I could go out and pretty much do everything a guard could do, which helped in those days to be 6-5 and to do that. Six-five was big in those days, now it’s small. I started as a sophomore in high school, which was kind of unusual. That’s when I really became good. We won the state tournament my sophomore year. We had good seniors.  We won it my my junior year with Monte, and then my senior year, we were undefeated until the finals. I guess my sophomore year is when I really started to develop myself as a player.” 

Here is my Where Are They Now? story on Al Donaghue.

...

Al Donaghue scored. He passed. He defended. Donaghue, quite simply, did it all for Wyandotte High School in Kansas City. He led Wyandotte to two state championships, while culminating his scintillating high school career in 1956 as a two-time Kansas player of the year.  

Recruited nationally by big-time colleges, Donaghue was “pretty much torn between KU and K-State.” He actually grew up cheering more for the purple Wildcats than the crimson and blue Jayhawks. This all changed, though, when KU made an in-home recruiting visit his senior year with former head coach Phog Allen (he had just retired due to mandatory age requirement) and current head man Dick Harp.

“He (Allen) impressed my mother and father dramatically,” Donaghue said, “to the point that when they left, my mom said, ‘You are going to Kansas, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s where she wanted me to go, and that’s what I wanted to do after meeting Phog Allen and Dick Harp.”

Donaghue had another important reason for choosing Kansas. It seemed there was a pretty talented freshman 7-footer already making a name for himself at Mount Oread.

“With (Wilt) Chamberlain there, it was a chance for all intents and purposes to play for a national championship each year.”

So yes, after becoming eligible his sophomore year, Donaghue got the prized opportunity to play with Chamberlain in 1957-58. It was the season after KU lost the national championship to North Carolina in triple overtime, and expectations were sky high with Chamberlain and fellow junior Ron Loneski returning. However, Chamberlain became injured and missed a couple of key games, as Kansas (18-5) finished second in the conference to K-State. 

“It was a disappointment not going to the tournament,” Donaghue said.

But Donaghue (6-5 forward), who was a part-time starter, still relished his time on the court with the “Big Dipper.” The two actually roomed together during road trips and maintained a friendship over the years.

“He was a unique player, probably the greatest athlete I had ever been around and probably the greatest basketball player in college that ever lived,” Donaghue said. “The rules of the game were changed to accommodate him, the dunking rules, things like that. He was an awesome athlete, the strongest man I ever met.”

Chamberlain (30.1 ppg), of course, was a dominant force in the paint.

“Knowing that you got the best player in the college game with you, you passed to him a lot,” Donaghue said. “There’s no doubt about that. You didn’t work offensively for your own shots as much as you were looking for him to pass to. That was smart. I think all of our players realized they had to do that. Our coach (Harp), he was a smart man in the fact that he came to all the players and said, ‘We’ve got two rules. We have a rule for the team, and we have a rule for Chamberlain. You need to understand that.’ He actually said, ‘You guys can vote on it.’ We all voted that Chamberlain could kind of, if he wanted to miss a practice, could miss a practice. He didn’t very often, but he could if he wanted to.”

A rugged rebounder and defensive stopper, Donaghue (5.0 ppg) was an invaluable supporting player to Chamberlain, and in ensuing years to stars Bill Bridges and Wayne Hightower. Donaghue loved playing defense.

“I wasn’t real fast, but I was smart and I worked hard at it,” he said. “I wasn’t a great player. I was just a good contributor. I rebounded fairly well and passed fairly well. I was a good team person.”

When Chamberlain left KU after his junior season to join the Harlem Globetrotters, there was a huge void in the middle. With Bridges the tallest player at 6-6, Kansas struggled and went 11-14. Donaghue, though, improved his scoring average to 10.6 ppg and pulled down 5.0 rebounds a game as well.

“As you get older and become used to the system, sure you get better,” he said. “My senior year (10.9 ppg), the same thing. You mature, your body matures, and you’re a better player.”

As the 6-8 Hightower joined the 1959-60 Jayhawks (19-9), an inspired Kansas team received some much-needed height and won a share of the conference title. The Jayhawks won their last 10 of 11 games before falling to No. 1 Cincinnati in the Midwest Regional finals. Unfortunately, Kansas didn’t have the services of Donaghue, who became academically ineligible after semester break.

“In those days, we didn’t have an academic program that they have now where you knew where you stood all the time,” Donaghue said. “You just didn’t know. It was very sad. In fact, Dick Harp used to say if the unfortunate things hadn’t happened to me, we might have won the whole thing.”

Despite not winning a national championship, it was indeed a memorable career for Donaghue. In addition to the games, he loved competing against the likes of Bridges and Chamberlain in practice.

“Bridges was probably the most intense rebounder I’ve ever met in my entire life,” Donaghue said. “He was just an animal. I use that as a lovable form. He was just great on the court as an intense rebounder. Chamberlain was just big and very powerful. If Wilt wanted the ball, he just went up and got it. He had a tremendous height advantage over we little people. It was a real treat to battle against them in practice. They made you better.”

After graduating from KU in 1960, Donaghue, 65, spent a year and a half in the Air Force before working for two years in sales with Phillips Petroleum Co. The former Jayhawk then joined Johnson and Johnson in 1964, a large pharmaceutical company on the East Coast. Donaghue lived all over the United States while working for Johnson and Johnson, and finished there in 1979 as director of field sales in New Brunswick, NJ. He then accepted a job with Russell Stover candies in Kansas City, and retired as vice president of sales and marketing in 1996.

Donaghue said he was fortunate for the opportunity to return home to Kansas City in 1980.

"It gave me a chance to reactivate myself with the university (Donaghue spent time serving with KU basketball coach Roy Williams on the Jayhawks’ mentoring program) and our kids had a chance to grow up in Kansas City and become reacquainted with their grandparents, which was important to us,” he said.

In all, it was more than 30 great years in the business world for Donaghue. He credits Harp, in large part, for his success and the lessons he gained playing basketball for Kansas.

“I think a lot of that can be related back to some of the things I learned as an athlete,” Donaghue said. “Some of the work ethic I learned being an athlete, the goals you set for yourself, the things you do to achieve those goals. I think that was all very important. I maintain that the University of Kansas had a great deal to do with it in developing me as a person  It was a wonderful experience, and I wouldn't trade it for anything.”

Currently, Donaghue lives a rich and satisfying life in retirement. He spends his free time socializing with friends, golfing, walking and traveling. And when Donaghue reflects back to those KU wonder days of yesteryear, he remains forever grateful for the recruiting pitch Allen made in his home nearly 50 years ago. 

For this one-time K-State booster, there is now no question where his allegiance lies.

“I’m a loyal Jayhawk,” Donaghue said. “I bleed blue.”

A Closer Look at Al Donaghue

Years at KU: 1956-60

Career Notables: Member of Big Eight conference co-champions in 1959-60 and Big Seven Holiday Tournament champs in 1957-58...Averaged a career-best 10.9 ppg in 1960...Career-high 27 points versus Colorado on Jan. 31, 1959.

Family: Wife, Susan, and two children — Amy, 36, and Paul, 33.  Donaghue also has two grandkids.

Education: 1960. B.S. Education

Since Leaving KU: Donaghue spent a year and a half in the Air Force before going to work in sales for Phillips Petroleum Co. in 1964. He spent the rest of his business career with Johnson and Johnson (pharmaceutical company) and Russell Stover candies. He retired from Russell Stover in 1996 as vice president of sales and marketing.

Currently: Donaghue is retired and lives in native Kansas City.

Hobbies: Golf, cooking, reading, walking, traveling.

Favorite Memories: “Off the court, obviously is the chance to get an education at the University of Kansas. The campus, the people I met, the friends I met and developed, it was awesome.”... Scoring a career-best 27 points at home versus Colorado in the first nationally televised game on Jan. 31, 1959. “Of course, all my relatives around the United States got a chance to see it. It wasn’t a good memory to lose, but it was a good memory to be on the first national televised basketball game.”... “I guess the thing I’m proudest of is the fact that in the three years I was there, we never lost to Missouri. That was always nice to say.”... Playing with Chamberlain. “He was a very quiet man. He broke a lot of the racial barriers in the Midwest in those days. There had been other black players before Wilt at KU, but he was the first true star. ... I could see that he faced a great deal of discrimination from the fans and media in those days, which was unfortunate. But that was the time we lived in. Thank God, times have changed now.”

On the Jayhawks today: “I’ve enjoyed them this year. I’m at every home game, so my wife and I still support the university very much. They’re fine young guys. They’re the kind of young guys you want representing your university. Roy runs the right kind of program.”  

Dick Harp takes over for Phog Allen as KU head coach

In Phog Allen’s last year as KU’s legendary head coach in 1955-56, the Jayhawks finished just 14-9 before Allen was forced to step down at 70 years old, the age of mandatory retirement. While he appealed all the way to the Board of Regents, it was to no avail.

Allen dearly wanted to have one season coaching his prized recruit Wilt Chamberlain, who would become eligible during the 1956-57 season.

“It would be the thrill of my life to end a long coaching career with a truly great team,” said Allen,  who called his just completed last season “very disappointing.”

The Lawrence Journal-World’s Bill Mayer summed up how close Allen came to his dream of coaching Chamberlain, only to see it never fulfilled.

“Phog was like Moses, who got to see the Promised Land but never was allowed to enter,” Mayer wrote. “The Kansas retirement rule said professors, coaches and other faculty-type people had to retire after the academic year in which they turned 70. Phog Allen hit 70 that night of the freshman-varsity clash in 1955 and gave way to assistant Harp for Wilt's sophomore year of 1956-57.”

Allen’s loyal assistant Dick Harp, though, told John Hendel in “Kansas Jayhawks: History-making basketball” that he actually believed Allen didn’t care to return for the 1956-57 season.

“A lot of people said he wanted to coach Wilt Chamberlain just one season,” Harp said. “But he never told me that. I think it was a case of some people wanted him to do it and he got caught up in it. He was flattered and so let it go on.”

Before Allen’s resignation became official, Harp spoke to the University Daily Kansan about the possible vacant head coaching position:

“As for applying, if the job were open, I presume (athletic director) Dutch Lonborg knows I hope to continue coaching here,” Harp said.

Still, even in the last moments, Harp was pulling for Allen to keep the job.

“If it is possible for Dr. Allen to remain as coach if that is what he wants and thinks is best, I will be happy for him,” Harp said. “No one has had more joy or reaped greater benefits than I have in eight years coaching under Dr. Allen.”

Harp continued talking to the paper about Allen and himself.

“There has been no change in the type of fundamentals we teach here, not in Dr. Allen’s insistence that fundamentals get perfected," Harp said. "Dr. Allen says fundamentals never change. Dr. Allen was years ahead of other coaches in his techniques of teaching and realized before others that without perfection of fundamentals, you can’t play the game well. He’s still a great stickler for doing things correctly.” 

While Harp admitted he had other coaching offers in the past, he has always been happy to remain at Kansas.

“Maybe I’m a sentimental guy--this is our school and I wouldn’t have taken a coaching job anywhere but here,” Harp said. “Sure I’ve been approached by other schools but the most attention I have ever give to another offer was to once an overnight looking at it. I enjoy coaching--particularly the association with the kids. That will keep me in coaching. I could be happy doing a lot of things, but probably not as happy anywhere as in coaching.” 

The student paper wrote that “Harp believes the Allen-built tradition of championship team has stood Kansas in good stead often...and will continue to bring the school victories.”

The paper called Harp an “avid student of the game” whose “studies have included everything I can get my hands on in the way of reading and lectures.”

Off the court, the University Daily Kansan wrote that Harp’s “music desires can be satisfied with a pop concert. It is a sore spot with his wife that he’ll not go dancing, not even at the annual Christmas faculty party.” 

“We’re always playing basketball then,” he grins. 

And KU basketball has always been a central part of Harp’s life, a dream to play for the Jayhawks since he was just 9 years old. Finally, on March 30, 1956, the Kansas Board of Regents named Harp as KU’s new head coach, effective July 1. The Regents also made a statement concerning denying Allen’s written request appeal.

“This board has nothing but the highest respect for Dr. Allen and his desire to serve. This unhappy dilemma always occurs when the retirement rule is applied to a man or woman of vigor, ability and national stature. However, the benefits resulting from the retirement rule far outweigh its disadvantages and the board unanimously feels that it must be applied to all.”

Allen concluded his legendary 46-year career with a 746-264 record, tops in the NCAA before his former pupil Adolph Rupp first broke it. Allen, who had won or shared 31 conference championships, coached at KU for 39 years with a 590-219 record and 24 league titles.

But his coaching career was now over. 

The torch had been passed from the game’s inventor James Naismith, to W.O. Hamilton, to the Father of Basketball Coaching Doc Allen, to now Dick Harp, just the fourth head basketball coach in the Jayhawks’ illustrious history.

It was the job he dreamed of in high school growing up in Rosedale, where his life revolved around KU basketball 365 days per year.

Now, it was his. Dick Harp was the new man in charge of Kansas basketball.

When Harp was announced as the new head coach, it was the beginning of a third chapter in his life and another dream fulfilled. First, he realized his dream of playing for KU. Next, he got the opportunity to become Dr. Allen’s assistant. And now, he was running the program as head coach at his beloved alma mater. He was looking forward to beginning his duties and continuing the rich tradition at Kansas.

“I am greatly honored by my appointment as basketball coach at the University of Kansas,” Harp said in a statement. “However, I cannot help being somewhat saddened by the realization that my intimate relationship with Dr. Allen will no longer continue. I shall certainly look to him for guidance and counsel during my tenure as basketball coach.

“There is not greater basketball heritage in the United States than at our university, and it will be my constant effort to maintain this tradition which has been foster so long and well by Dr. Allen.”

While he was succeeding a legend, Harp didn’t feel any extra pressure to perform. At least he didn’t admit so publicly.

“I never put it in terms of following Doc because that’s not possible,” Harp told Hendel. “It was not possible for anyone to follow Doc Allen. If you knew (Allen) at all, you know that would not be possible. I never gave that a thought.”

In a June 7, 1956 letter to friends, Allen wrote that KU and Harp would seemingly coast with Chamberlain on the team.

“Wilton could make a successful coach out of anyone.” 

Chancellor Franklin Murphy was happy to have Harp on board. He made a statement thanking Allen for his service while also lauding the hiring of Harp.

“The long and distinguished career of Dr. Forrest C. Allen speaks for itself. The records made by his basketball teams, and what is even more important the records made subsequently by members of his teams in their business and professional lives, are eloquent testimony to his unique abilities in not only building championship teams but also building first-class citizens. 

“It is entirely appropriate that his great contributions to the University of Kansas will be forever memorialized in the great field house which bears his name. I believe that the university is fortunate indeed to have obtained, as Dr. Allen’s successor, Mr. Richard Harp, generally recognized as one of the brilliant young basketball coaches in the country today. It is entirely appropriate he is an Allen-trained man. It is our conviction that he is especially equipped to continue the great tradition established by Dr. Allen and indeed to enlarge and further develop it.”

Harp expressed his sentiments to Hendel on what Allen meant to KU basketball.

“The experiences of competition and the the people you meet and the opportunities you have from that should be instrumental in your life as an athlete and not just the winning and losing of the game, he taught that in many different ways.

“In the game itself that is when his competitiveness surfaced. As long as you’re in the game, you may as well do your very best to win that. But he thought there was more to athletics other than the outcome of the game.”

Harp, who like Allen believed in a higher purpose for basketball, had the good fortune of further developing the great KU basketball tradition his first season with the arrival of Chamberlain to Mount Oread.

“I think Kansas will have a good 1956-57 basketball team,” Harp said in a glaring understatement.

It would turn out to be a magical run to the national championship game.

Former KU head coach Dick Harp’s enlightened change from Phog Allen in recruiting the black athlete

When Dick Harp became the KU head basketball coach in 1956, he brought a new, enlightened change to Kansas basketball as to the recruitment and treatment of black players than Phog Allen, an old-fashioned man with prejudices.

"Doc Allen had his biases," said Jerry Waugh, Harp's assistant coach from 1956-60 and a great defensive player under Allen who was nicknamed "The Sheriff."  "

"It was the times. It wasn’t that he was different from anybody else at that time. When I was playing there, we had a meeting, maybe ‘48 to decide whether we would accept a black player on our team. Doc discussed and presented to the team that there was to be a vote whether we could take them. (Allen said), 'This changes the travel arrangements, changes eating accommodations and it presents so many problems.' Most of us, I didn't give any thought to that. I thought we’d go with Doc. Later on, I thought about it, why what was the problem then, and I didn’t see a problem, when maybe I should have seen the problem.” 

A revolution changed when Harp replaced Allen.

“How adamant Dick was when he took over the black athlete would not be denied,” Waugh said in 2008. “Dick was just adamant that we will go after (blacks in recruiting). He was a forerunner, a great guy and felt very strongly about (recruiting the black athlete and keeping the team together on road trips).

"When Dick took over," Waugh said, "that ended," he added about players all staying together.

Indeed, if a hotel refused service to Harp’s black players, then the team would not stay there. That’s what happened in Dallas during the NCAA Midwest Regional in 1957 as the hotel denied Maurice King and Wilt Chamberlain.

“At that time, one of my responsibilities was to make sure I handled travel arrangements,” Waugh said. “It was understood if a hotel couldn’t accommodate for us lodging or eating accommodations, (then we would stay somewhere else). When we won the NCAA regional in Dallas in Texas, we didn’t say at the hotel, the headquarters. We had to go in-between Dallas and Fort Worth (in Grand Prairie) because we would not, if they wouldn’t take our black athletes and feed us, we couldn’t stay there. We got on the bus to go to the game, and had to drive one car and we had three escorts.”

After Chamberlain and black walk-on Jerry Johnson left KU in 1958, thanks to Harp, black players followed in droves. Players like Bill Bridges from Hobbs, New Mexico, Al Correll, Ralph Heyward and Wayne Hightower from Philadelphia, Jim Dumas from Topeka, and brothers Butch and Nolen Ellison from Kansas City, all made their way to Kansas. Other blacks like guards Eddie Douglas (he scored 84 points in a high school game) from Philadelphia and Johnny Redwood from New York also came to KU, but left after becoming academically ineligible.

While it may have been unpopular with many prejudiced KU boosters, Harp was making a statement about giving blacks an equal opportunity to succeed. And he implored Waugh to help him with his cause.

“I went back to Nashville (to recruit),” Waugh said shortly after he was hired by Harp in 1956. “John McLendon (former KU student and first African American to graduate from KU in 1936 with a physical education degree) was the coach at Tennessee A&I, and he had that national all-black tournament at A&I. All the schools in the south were segregated. There was another white coach in the tournament that was in attendance.

“There was a young man, Ronny Lawson, father was in the physics (department) at Fisk University and his mother worked at A&I. He later goes to UCLA. We were there to look at Ronny and also look at the players. Kansas at that time, was one of the forerunner in the recruitment of black athletes. Because of this, Dick’s stance on how we handle it as part of our team, great guy, felt very strongly (about this).”

Correll, who had known Chamberlain from childhood, attended West Philadelphia High School and was a 12-man letterman in four sports. Hightower, from Chamblerlain’s high school at Overbrook, led his team to three city championships.

Both idolized Wilt and wanted to follow in his footsteps at KU.

“The reason we went to Kansas was because of Dip,” Correll told Robert Cherry in his book, “Wilt: Larger than Life.” “He sent me a letter and said I ought to come out (with Wayne).”

Correll told Cherry about he and Hightower’s recruiting trip to KU.

“We visited Wilt’s room,” Correll said. “He had a thesaurus and said that every day he tried to learn a new word. He did that so people wouldn’t think of him as a dumb jock. We were there for four days and he took us everywhere. We’d go to the Blue Room or the Orchid Room in Kansas City. They used to say he spent more time on the Kansas Turnpike than anyone else.

“One night he took us to a club in Topeka, Kan. He was doing about 110 miles per hour in that Oldsmobile he had. We were scared as hell. He had the top down, and he was flying. It was me and Wayne Hightower. We didn’t make a sound. He was flying so fast it was very scary. But that’s the way he did things. Everything was to the extreme.”

With Harp’s first team featuring two black players in Chamberlain and King, his second team in 1957-58 having two African Americans (Chamberlain and walk-on Jerry Johnson from Chanute) and 58-59 (Bill Bridges) teams comprising just one black player, the 1959-60 team boasted four black players, including Wayne Hightower, Bridges, Al Correll and juco transfer Butch Ellison, the most African Americans of any Jayhawk squad in school history at the time. KU, which looked to bounce back after last season’s disappointing 11-14 campaign (Bridges was the team’s tallest starter at just 6-5), was boosted with the additions of Hightower and Correll, who became eligible second semester.

KU started the season at just 5-3, including a 66-59 loss at St. Louis. Harp wasn’t pleased with the play of rising star Hightower, who was taking too many ill-advised outside set shots.

“Dick got pissed off and put his butt on the bench in the second half,” said Butch Ellison, who roomed with Hightower at the time. “Wayne gets on the telephone in the hotel, calls an alum in Philadelphia and tells (him), ‘I didn’t come to god damn Kansas to sit on the god damn bench. Fucking coach sent me down. You call that son of bitch and tell him I’m going to play every minute from now on.'

“And he did.”

Harp was angered and frustrated by the influence of alumni, and felt like a victim. So he was pressured to continued to play Hightower “every minute”, and the Philadelphia native blossomed under his head coach’s tutelage. Hightower led the league in scoring at 21.8 points per game, while also grabbing 10.1 rebounds per game. His play drew rave reviews from opposing coaches around the league.

“Hightower is the best sophomore we’ve ever had in the Big Eight,” KSU coach Tex Winter said. “I said basketball player, not most effective basketball player. Wilt was a wonderful physical specimen. But he can’t do all the things Hightower can do. Hightower is a mature player as a sophomore. He’s got a lot of experience. He can do a lot of thing. Yes, he’s the best sophomore we’ve ever had in the league.”

Doyle Parrack of Oklahoma chimed in:

“He could do more than Wilt Chamberlain could at the same point. He isn’t as big physically, but he plays like a cat. Why, he could step into the professional ranks today and make the team as a guard, that’s how well he moves. He can do more to help a team than any sophomore I’ve ever watched.”

While Hightower was a great athlete and sinewy scoring machine, Bridges complemented at center as a rugged rebounding force and capable scorer. He became a two-time All-Conference center and rebound champion, averaging 13.8 rebounds and 11.4 points per game. Bridges’ 386 rebounds in two seasons ranked as a new school mark in league play, eclipsing Chamberlain’s 371. The 1960-61 media guide described him as a “tremendous jumper, despite 229-pound bulk....Great hustler under boards, often making second and third efforts....Often runs every steps to climb in rebound fight.”

With Bridges and Hightower leading the way in 1959-60, KU got hot and won its last eight of nine games in the regular season to capture a tie with KSU for the league crown. Kansas also got help over the stretch run from Correll after becoming eligible second semester. The 6-4 forward was a great role player who averaged 6.3 points and 3.5 rebounds during the final 11 games.

To earn an NCAA tournament berth, KU had to first get by K-State in a playoff game in Manhattan on March 9. Behind Hightower’s 28 points and 21 from sophomore guard Jerry Gardner, KU beat the Wildcats 84-82 in overtime.

After beating Texas two nights later, 90-81, this set up a huge match with Cincinnati and its do-it-all All-American Oscar Robertson for the right to go to the Final Four. But Cincy was too good and KU too tired. Robertson was dominant with 43 points, while Hightower and Bridges both scored 22. Cincy won, 82-71, rallying from a 57-51 deficit with 13:45 in the game as the Jayhawks only scored eight points in the final 8:10.

“With just six players going most of the way, Kansas just didn’t have the gas to go the entire route against classy Cincinnati and the great Oscar Robertson,” the Lawrence Journal-World wrote.

Hightower, who told the Philadelphia alum he wanted to play "every minute" of every game, admitted he was extremely fatigued.  

“I couldn’t move toward the end,” he told the Journal-World. “I just wore out.”

Despite losing in the tournament, the Jayhawks gave inspired effort. The school’s yearbook, the 1960 Jayhawker, certainly took notice:

“Looking back at the 19-9 season record, the Big Eight co-championship and second place in the midwest NCAA regional, the 1960 basketball season can be remembered as one of the most inspiring in recent Jayhawk annals.”

It didn’t help the short-manned Jayhawks’ chances that 6-5 starting forward Al Donaghue was ruled academically ineligible the second semester. Donaghue, the team’s third-leading scorer at 10.9 points per game, would have helped tremendously. Starting guard Dee Ketchum was also academically ineligible the second semester.

“That was unfortunate,” Donaghue once told me during a Where Are They Now? interview. “But in those days, we didn’t have an academic program that they have now where you knew where you stood all the time. You just didn’t know. I think Dee missed being eligible like I did by just 2/10th of a percent or something like that. It was very sad.

“In fact, Dick Harp used to say if the unfortunate thing hadn’t happened to me, we might have won the the whole thing.”

Donaghue, a two-time Kansas player of year at Wyandotte High School, ended a fine career after initially choosing KU over K-State. He actually grew up cheering more for the Wildcats than the Jayhawks. This all changed, though, when KU made an in-home recruiting visit his senior year with former head coach Allen (he had just retired due to mandatory age requirement) and current head man Harp.

“He (Allen) impressed my mother and father dramatically,” Donaghue said, “to the point that when they left, my mom said, ‘You are going to Kansas, aren’t you?’ I said, ‘Yeah, I think so.’ That’s where she wanted me to go, and that’s what I wanted to do after meeting Phog Allen and Dick Harp.”

While the retired Allen impressed Donaghue’s parents, it was Harp who transformed Donaghue as a person and player during his KU career. After averaging just 5.0 points his sophomore year, Donaghue boosted that average to 10.6 points per game as a junior in 1958-59 and then a career-high 10.9 ppg his senior year.

Donaghue credits Harp for everything he accomplished, and said it was a joy to play for him

”Dick was a fine man,” Donaghue said. “He probably was a better human being than he was a coach. When you say that, that’s not to diminish his coaching ability. He was an excellent coach, but he was just a very saltable, God-fearing, very moral gentleman. Great guy to play for. I enjoyed playing for him. He probably did a lot for me in terms of of helping me grow and develop, and was instrumental in my development. He added a lot to my development as a person.”

While the 1959-60 campaign was a great season after Harp was previously burned in effigy on the KU campus, little did he and the Jayhawks know they would never return to the NCAA tournament during his tenure.

Recalling when pioneer LaVannes Squires broke KU basketball's color line

Part II in racial integration in KU basketball history:

Just in 1947, Kansas basketball coach Phog Allen said that African Americans shouldn’t play basketball at KU, but instead compete in track and field, because that sport “didn’t require as much body contact as basketball.” And a year later when Allen called a team meeting explaining all the problems it would cause for an African American to play basketball at KU, the legendary coach had a change of heart in 1950 when he finally signed his first black player — LaVannes Squires from Wichita (Kan.) East High School, a 6-1 slender guard who played for KU graduate and former star player Ralph Miller under Allen. One year later, he and Gene Wilson from Kansas State became eligible and were the first black players in the Big Seven.

Squires was an exceptional gentleman and outstanding citizen and student, but played sparingly at KU. According to Butch Ellison, a black player at KU in the late 1950s and early 1960s and a KU sports historian, Kansas and Allen actually were more interested in Cleo Littleton, who was Squires’ teammate at Wichita East and also a black player.

 “They wanted Cleo Littleton," Ellison told me in 2007. "They wanted a package deal.”

It didn’t work out. While Squires signed with Kansas, Littleton opted to play for Wichita State the next year in 1951 when Miller was hired by WSU. He became an All-American and one of the best players in WSU history. Littleton was the forerunner who helped Wichita State break into national prominence in college basketball. He was the first college player west of the Mississippi River to score more than 2,000 points in a career and finished with 2,164, which still ranks No. 1 all time at WSU.

Littleton’s jersey (No. 13) is one of only four retired in the Shocker basketball program. He remains the only men’s basketball player in Missouri Valley Conference history to be named first-team all-conference four times. In 1953-54, Littleton led WSU to a 27-4 record and the team’s first-ever berth in the NIT.

As for Squires? 

He earned a Freshman Basketball Award in 1950-51 before scoring 32 points in his three-year career in 33 games for 1.0 points per game. The Wichita native also battled lung ailments. According to the KU Media Guide, he was actually supposed to contend for a starting guard position his junior year in 1952-53 before being sidelined by his lung problem. KU marched to the national finals that season before losing to Indiana while winning the national title the previous year.

The Jayhawks had another reason, and arguably an even more important one, for signing Squires in 1950. With KSU’s signing of Wilson, Allen wasn’t about to let the Wildcats and head coach Jack Gardner have the upper hand.

In Jesse Newman's 2009 book, "Local Sports Hero: The Untold Story of the University of Kansas Sports and Wesley B. Walker," longtime KU radio announcer Max Falkenstein said:

“Doc Allen used to joke, You’ve got to fight fire with fire. If the other team has a Jewish player, you’ve got to get a Jewish player. ... if they’ve got a Polish player, we’ve got to get a Polish player...if Kansas State has a black player, we've got to get a black player.”

While KU matched Squires for Wilson, Wilson was a player who Falkenstein said “did so well, no one could touch him, he ran circles around everybody.”

Wilson’s career was interrupted by military service and averaged 4.2 points and 3.8 rebounds in just six games during the 1954-55 season.

Falkenstien talked previously to the Chicago Tribune on March 28, 1986 about Allen’s signing of Squires. Mike Kiley of the Tribune wrote that “Kansas` team in the early 1950s was integrated, in part, because of the idiosyncratic nature of legendary coach Phog Allen.”

Falksenstien said: ''Doc (Allen) said you matched an Italian against an Italian, a Jew against a Jew. So, when Kansas State signed a black player (Gene Wilson), he courted LaVannes Squires from Wichita.''

Squires, who didn’t make the traveling team until his junior season, came from humble beginnings. According to his Wikipedia page, he was born in Hartsdale, Mo., as the eighth of 12 children to parents Arthur and Charlotte Squires. Squires’ dad died when he was age 3, and his mother just had a fifth-grade education. Still, she inspired LaVannes and her children with her unwavering and courageous work ethic. Squires grew up filling coal bins, working in wheat fields, doing construction work, and digging graves in a cemetery.

He served as a captain for Miller at Wichita East, earning All-City and All-State honors his senior year. Nicknamed “Felix the Cat” for his quickness and slender build, Squires graduated in the top-10 percent of his class and became the first in his family to attend college.

In his first game as a Jayhawk at Hoch Auditorium in KU’s 57-46 victory over Baylor on Dec. 3, 1951, Squires scored four points on 2-of-3 shooting. He was listed as the 10th man on KU’s box score in the Lawrence Journal-World.

Here’s Bill Mayer comments after the game:

“Coach Allen used 10 boys last night in an obvious attempt to develop a second platoon to spell his regulars. Johnson, Dyer, Squires, Heithholt and Born show promise of becoming a capable set of shock troops and may give the Jays the depth they didn’t have last year.”

Mayer also wrote specifically about Squires:

“LaVannes Squires, the Wichita sophomore who last night became the first Negro to perform on a KU varsity cage team, may be one of the boys who will help Kansas this year if his initial effort is any criterion.”

“LaVannes played high school ball under Ralph Miller when he was at Wichita East,” Coach Allen said. “He shows fine early coaching and has a lot of fire, enthusiasm and ability. If he continues to improve as he has in the past few weeks, he’ll play a lot for us.”

Mayer wrote that, “Squires, according to the Kansas coach, is well-liked by his teammates, so it appears there will be absolutely no antagonism there. The crowd in Hoch Auditorium last night also went for the hustling 6-2, 165-pounder.”

Squires did not play much that season or his entire career. He played in just 13 more games (14 total for what would be a career high in games) during that 28-3 NCAA championship season and scored 11 points all year. Squires scored a career-high 12 points his junior season, and then just nine points his senior year. He made 11 career field goals and 10 career free throws.

He was a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity and the Owl Society, an honorary organization for junior men.

In Squires' Wikipedia page, "Coach Allen came under fire in 1953 from sports editor Jim Hall when he left Squires at home in Lawrence when the Jayhawks were set to play Tulane and LSU. The prestigious Jayhawks lost both games and their prestige by bending over to Southern Jim Crow laws."

While Squires was mainly a practice and role player who pushed his teammates tirelessly in practice, he was a groundbreaking player and set the foundation for future black athletes like Maurice King, Bob Lockley (the third black player at KU who played in eight games during the 1955-56 season and scored nine points) and Wilt Chamberlain to be recruited, in addition to countless other African-Americans who followed Squires' lead.

If not for Squires breaking the KU color line, it is doubtful Chamberlain would have ever attended KU.

The progressive student newspaper, The University Daily Kansan, hoped that change was on its way in the early 1950s to overturn the Jim Crow practices that had pervaded Lawrence for the first half of the 20th century.

“It is time that racial discrimination was ended,” an editorial writer for the University Daily Kansan wrote in 1952. 

“It is time we ended it here at the University of Kansas.”

Many KU basketball fans, though, weren’t ready for a black player on the team in 1951. While Mayer wrote favorably at the time over the crowd reaction to Squires during his first game at KU, he painted a different story in an Aug. 14, 2009 article in the Journal-World. 

Mayer first wrote about the discrimination and racism KU’s first modern-day football black players (the first African-American football player at KU was Ed Harvey in, yes, 1893) endured in halfbacks John Francisco and John Traylor, who came to KU with head coach Chuck Mather in 1954 from Massillon, Ohio. 

“Since this was the 1950s, they ... were stung by the same kinds of racial barbs as was Ed Harvey more than 60 years earlier. It happened on the road and at home. Vicious and demeaning, both places. Bear in mind that Lawrence, the state of Kansas and the Big Seven-Big Eight Conference were not exactly hotbeds of liberalism in those days. Some of KU’s Kansas City alumni actually got up and left the stadium the first few times coach Mather sent Francisco and Traylor into action.”

Then, Mayer addressed Squires’ first home game at KU:

“Matter of fact, several of the KU ‘faithful’ who walked out on the Massillonians were the same ones who took a huffy hike from Hoch Auditorium the night Phog Allen broke the basketball color line with LaVannes Squires in the early 1950s.”

Squires wound up graduating with a business degree in the top-10 percent of his class and worked for the “Look” Magazine Subscription Office in Des Moines as a junior accountant. He eventually became manager of the accounting department of the magazine office before becoming a successful businessman in the banking profession. 

He is now age 88. It is never easy to be a pioneer and the first to break a racial barrier, as the great and legendary Jackie Robinson would attest, so I can only imagine the great adversity LaVannes endured being the first black basketball player at Kansas and living in segregated Lawrence in the early 1950s. I hope LaVannes, who has never come back to any of KU basketball reunions and lives in Pasadena, Calif., is at peace with his KU experience and fervently hopes he returns to Lawrence and is rightfully honored in a resounding celebration at Allen Fieldhouse. That is what he deserves. KU owes that to him. While LaVannes didn’t stand out as a player, he stood out immensely as a pioneer who should be recognized for his outstanding, brave and courageous efforts.

I’m thinking of you LaVannes Squires, ever since I first found out about you and did my research during my 82-page senior honors thesis at KU on racial participation and integration in KU basketball: 1952-1975. I have SO much respect, admiration and love for you.

LaVannes MUST NEVER BE FORGOTTEN by KU sports fans and all humanity.

Racial integration in college basketball history and at the University of Kansas

I’ve always been fascinated with race relations and race and sports issues. I studied this at KU and am very passionate about the subject. I try to read all I can about the topic. I wrote an 82-page honors thesis at KU my senior year on racial participation and integration in KU basketball: 1952-75. It was the hardest project I’ve ever done, sometimes keeping me up until 4 a.m. in my dorm room. But it was also a labor of love and I’m very proud of how the thesis came out. 

My parents set a great example for me fighting for racial equality and social justice their adult lives. My dad even attended the March on Washington in 1963 and sat next to Jackie Robinson on his plane trip from New York to D.C. I asked him a few years ago why he attended the March when he could have easily stayed home in New York. He looked me in the eye and said: “It was the right thing to do.” He added he was working with civil rights issues at the time as a tireless social worker. I am so passionate about racial equality and social justice, and believe the world would be a much better place if people from different backgrounds could learn to get along.

In this two-part blog, I explore some of the integration in college basketball history and KU’s role in integrating the basketball team with its first African-American player with LaVannes Squires in 1951-52.

...

Recruiting black players to KU was never a high priority for legendary coach Phog Allen until he sought the services of Wilt Chamberlain, the most dominating high school player the game had ever seen. Twenty-two years before Chamberlain arrived on campus, John McLendon followed the path of pioneers Lizzie Ann Smith — the first African-American student to enroll at the University of Kansas in 1876 —  and Blanche K. Bruce — the first African American to graduate from KU in 1885 — when he arrived at Mount Oread in 1933 as the first African American to major in physical education.

McLendon was also the first black to attempt to integrate Kansas basketball at that time. He showed up at KU’s tryouts under Allen, but was never invited to join the team. This would have been an enlightened act on Allen’s part to let McLendon become a Jayhawk, but this was too early in the 30’s for strides to actually happen. (The 5-8, 160-pound McLendon also wasn’t a very talented player; he was cut three times in junior high and high school). 

While McLendon could never crack Allen’s roster, there were a few blacks making inroads on integrated college teams in the early 20th century and in the first half of the century, including pioneers as Wilbur Wood at Nebraska (1908-10), Paul Robeson at Rutgers (1918-19), Cumberland Posey at Penn State, William Kindle at Springfield College, Charles Drew at Amherst, and John H. Johnson and George Gregory at Columbia. Gregory was the first black All-America basketball player in 1930-31, and joined on the Walter Camp team by Purdue guard John Wooden, who would become a Hall of Fame coach at UCLA.

Clair Bee was also a pioneer in those early days of signing African-American players with his Long Island squad. However, Bee and other liberal coaches were a minority. Except for an extremely small sample of African-American players on integrated college teams at the time, blacks were essentially barred from participating in intercollegiate sports.

This was certainly the case at Kansas. Milton Katz wrote in his biography on McLendon, “Breaking Through,” that KU’s “athletic administration barred black students from participating in intercollegiate athletics on the grounds that some schools would refuse to play Kansas if it had an integrated team.”

Allen, who also doubled as KU’s athletic director, was still an old-fashioned man and product of his times.

In 1927, Allen reportedly said “that no colored man will ever have a chance as long as (I am) here.”

Allen, who denied that statement, said a year later: “I do not believe that colored and white boys should play together in any games of physical contact or combat.”

KU Chancellor Ernest H. Lindley made a statement in 1928 describing the rough plight of blacks.

“The bald social fact is that the Negro is not getting his full rights in the University, nor in Lawrence, nor in Kansas, nor anywhere else in this country, so far as I know,”  Lindley said.

Allen’s ideas on race were the polar opposite person as the inventor of basketball James Naismith, then a physical education instructor at KU in his 70s when McLendon enrolled at KU.

Naismith kindly took McLendon under his watch and acted with fatherly guidance to this young student. He helped steer him into the proper courses and helped fight to integrate the swimming pool at Robinson Gym so McLendon could complete his swimming requirement needed in the School of Physical Education.

Naismith, who was born and raised in Canada, saw race in different terms than most Americans at the time. He was color blind like many Canadians and also a strong believer in “muscular christianity,” where basketball and other team sports were used as a tool to mold character, self-discipline and ethical values,” Katz wrote.

Katz wrote that “according to McLendon, Naismith deplored any form of discrimination, segregation, or prejudice. The professor treated all of his students equally.”

“Dr. Naismith didn’t know anything about color or nationality,” McLendon told Katz. “He was so unconscious about your economic or religious background. He just saw everyone as potential. There wasn’t anything in his body that responded to anything racist.”

With Naismith acting as the guiding foundation for the young McLendon, the latter would make his mark as the first African-American student at KU to graduate with a physical education degree and later become a trailblazing coach and one who basketball legend and Hall of Famer Julius Erving nicknamed "The Father of Black Basketball.”

McLendon was the first coach to win three straight national championships (at Tennessee State from 1957-59), the first black coach of an integrated professional team (the ABL’s Cleveland Pipers), the first black coach in the ABA, the first black coach to publish a basketball book, the first black coach on the Olympic staff, and the first black coach inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

As stated in “Breaking Through,”

“McLendon’s amazing career culminated in his efforts as a basketball ambassador; he traveled to fifty-eight countries teaching the fundamentals of the game and the value of sportsmanship, and many believe he contributed more to the proliferation of basketball worldwide than any other individual.”

Despite not earning a spot on the KU roster, McLendon never felt any ill well toward Allen.

“It was Dr. Allen’s job to resist integration. He was the AD,” McLendon told Blair Kerkhoff in his book on Phog Allen. “The whole school knew it was an area where he’d be challenged. He practically apologized to me. But as quickly as he could he got black players on his team.”

“Phog’s ideas about integration in athletics were ambiguous. In the 1930s, he was a fan of Jesse Owens and one year voted for him to win the Sullivan Award,” Kerkhoff wrote.

Twelve years after McLendon graduated from KU, Jerry Waugh, who played for Allen from 1947-51, said Phog called a team meeting in ‘48 “to decide whether we would accept a black player.”

As Allen told Waugh and the team:

“’This changes the travel arrangements, changes eating accommodations and it presents so many problems,’” Waugh recalled Allen saying in a 2015 interview.

“Most of us, I didn’t give any thought to that,” Waugh said about Allen’s sentiments. “I thought we’d go with Doc. Later on, I thought about it, why what was the problem then, and I didn’t see a problem, when maybe I should have seen the problem.” 

Waugh said that Allen “had his biases. It was the times. It wasn’t that he was different from anybody else at that time.”

Charles H. Martin wrote in the Indiana Magazine of History: “The Color Line in Midwestern College Sports, 1890-1960,” Volume 98, Issue 2 about more of Allen’s biases.

“At the University of Kansas, many students supported the recruitment of African Americans, but university coaches were slower to act than their counterparts at Kansas State. After World War II, black and liberal white students at the university established a local civil rights movement, which challenged discrimination in housing, movie theaters, restaurants, and eventually athletics. Perhaps influenced by this campus activism, Kansas Chancellor Deane W. Malott decided in May 1947 to drop the school’s Jim Crow policy for sports. Malott announced that ‘any regularly enrolled student at KU may try out for intercollegiate athletics,’ provided he met conference eligibility requirements. But Phog Allen, the highly successful basketball coach of the Jayhawks, publicly denied that there had been any change in policy for his teams and instead recommended that African Americans participate in track and field, because that sport ‘didn’t require as much body contact as basketball.’

The New York Times reported on March 20, 1947 that one of Allen’s critics sarcastically stated that the coach “would rather lose ever every game on the schedule than allow a Negro to play on his team.”

Blacks were denied access to the basketball team and to various restaurants in Lawrence outside campus in the late 1940s. On campus, blacks were integrated into white culture, history professor Douglas Harvey wrote in KUhistory.com:

“African-American students at the University of Kansas found themselves in something of a Twilight Zone. On campus, they existed in an environment that – officially, at least – was completely colorblind. They mingled with white students in integrated classrooms, could live in integrated dormitories, and were served in the Kansas Union’s cafeteria without a second thought.

“But just a few steps off campus, African Americans entered a world where prejudice reigned and service was denied. ... Blacks were denied the right to eat in Lawrence restaurants or attend nightclubs. In a 1947 survey by CORE (the Lawrence chapter of the Committee on Racial Equality, which was renamed the Congress on Racial Equality in 1950), the activist group found that 15 area cafes and nightclubs “did not serve ‘Negroes’, the word used for blacks at the time.”

References:"Beyond Jim Brown: The Story of Race Relations in Lawrence" by Dr. Bill Tuttle Feb. 12, 2009 in larryville.com

Dick Harp led KU to the national championship in 1952 with his pressing defense and revolutionized college basketball

Kansas basketball had grand expectations entering the 1951-52 season. After all, this was the year that coach Phog Allen said KU would win the national championship and go to the Olympics when he recruited Bob Kenney, Bill Hougland, Bill Lienhard and Clyde Lovellete.

KU roared out and won its first 13 games and looked like a potential championship team. Lovellete had changed his game and was passing the ball more, getting his teammates involved. Lienhard spoke to Jayhawk Insider in 2000 about the transformation in Lovellete’s game.

“I think they (coaches) finally convinced Clyde that he had to play team ball and pass the ball to the other players,” Lienhard said. “When he started doing that and when we started working really as a team, it made a big difference. We finally jelled. … It paid off for him, because when he started throwing the ball to the other players, the defenders couldn’t stay on him all the time. They had to guard somebody else.”

While there was great chemistry on the team, adversity struck the Jayhawks when they lost two consecutive road games at Kansas State (81-64) and Oklahoma State (49-45).

Suddenly, KU’s dream of a national championship season hit a roadblock and Allen knew he needed to make a change. So the following morning after the OSU loss, he called his brilliant assistant coach Dick Harp into his office.

“(Phog) said, ‘Dick do something with the defense,’” Bill Mayer recalled in the 2008 Kansas Basketball Legacy of Coaches DVD. “’I don’t know what you’re going to do, but do something with the defense.'” 

An enlightened student of the game, Harp went to work and devised a defensive scheme which would spearhead KU to the national title and eventually revolutionize the game.

Dean Smith, a reserve guard on the 1952 team and later a legendary coach at North Carolina, talked about that defense in his 1999 autobiography, “A Coach’s Life.”

“That team employed a great innovation: a pressure man-to-man defense that absolutlely smothered opponents by overplaying,” Smith wrote. “The idea was to cut off the passing lanes and make it hard to complete even the simplest pass. This was unheard of at the time, really the first instance of man pressure as we know it. The closest things to it it was Henry Iba’s 2- Defense at Oklahoma State, which was a half-court man-to-man pressure defense, but the Kansas defense was a far more extreme version.”

Charlie Hoag, also member of the 1952 team, said the new pressure defense ignited the Jayhawks.

“Other coaches started saying we picked up our opponents when they got off the bus, and stayed on ‘em,” Hoag told the Topeka Capital-Journal in 2000. “We put pressure on all over the court, and we started running more on offense, and it paid off. We beat K-State by 17 and OSU by 20 in return games.”

Jerry Waugh, a former player under Allen and assistant coach under Harp, talked about Harp’s defensive innovation at his memorial service in 2000.

"Doc Allen received most of the credit, and rightfully so, but Dick was very instrumental," Waugh said. "In the middle of the season, that team was struggling a little bit. Doc said to Dick, 'We gotta change something.'

"Dick came up with a half-court pressure defense, and that really seemed to pick up the offense as the team went on to its championship ways. Those of us who played knew what Dick meant to that team.

"Dick understood early that the game was changing," Waugh added. "As I recall, Doc was in the twilight of his career and was standing pat on what had made him successful. Dick saw the future, where the game was going.

"Dean (Smith) took a lot of what he learned from Dick Harp, in the strategies of the game and techniques of teaching. And then you find Roy Williams working with Dean, so you see those things coming back here (to KU)."

Harp’s innovation worked wonders. KU won 13 straight games en route to the national championship before winning two more consecutive games in the U.S. Olympic Playoffs before falling to Peoria, 62-60. The Jayhawks, indeed, qualified for the 1952 Olympic Games as Allen predicted during his recruiting pitch to Lovellette, Kenney, Hougland and Lienhard.

Harp said that defense invigorated the 1952 team and gave it some much-needed confidence.

“Probably as much as the new defense helped, the change itself gave the kids new enthusiasm,” Harp told Blair Kerkhoff in his 1996 book on Phog Allen. “We spent most of our time in practice on it. As soon as we started playing that, opponents knew we were doing something different. They began to think when they played us they needed a new offense. It played right into our hands. We had a new enthusiasm, a new perspective.”

Smith wrote that “the Kansas defense had a lasting influence on the game.”

Coaches like John Wooden and San Francisco’s Phil Woolpert copied Harp’s defense to win championships of their own with Wooden winning 10 NCAA titles, including a record seven straight and Woolpert claiming consecutive titles with USF in 1955 and 1956.

In fact, during the summer of 1953, the 38-year-old Woolpert visited Lawrence and studied Harp’s pressing defense.

James W. Johnson wrote about this in “The Dandy Dons.”

“Woolpert wanted to get firsthand knowledge of the press from Kansas coach Phog Allen’s astute assistant coach, Dick Harp. He told Harp, ‘I have a guy named Bill Russell coming, and he’s going to be a great shot blocker.’”

Wooden once said the “arrival of the Kansas pressure defense was one of the turning points in college basketball.”

Smith agrees.

“The defense stood the test of time, too,” Smith wrote. “This is how innovative it truly was. Almost exactly 40 years later in the 1991 Final Four, I couldn’t help but notice that all four teams — Carolina, Duke, Las Vegas, and Kansas — used schemes that stemmed from that first Kansas pressure defense.”

At the 1991 Final Four, Smith gave credit to Harp for starting the pressure defense and revolutionizing the game.

"It began with Dick Harp at Kansas in 1952," Smith told the Deseret News. "Harp was an assistant coach to Dr. Allen, and he taught ball-to-man pressure defense to the team. ..."I don't know if anyone is old enough to remember back to 1953, when Kansas played Washington in the (national) semifinals, but that was the game when Washington couldn't get off a shot at the start of the game.”

KU used that pressure defense under Harp to advance to the NCAA Finals in 1953 before losing to Indiana.

By the time KU won the national championship in 1952 and the latter years of Allen’s illustrious coaching career, the game was changing for him. While he was still a brilliant motivator, Harp was the one running the show. His former players speak of this fact and Harp’s influence on the actual coaching and game strategy.

“Coach Allen was the psychologist of the team and got you read to play, but  Dick Harp was the man who mapped the strategy,” said Al Kelley, a member of the ‘52 title team.

“If hadn’t been for Dick Harp, we wouldn’t have won the national championship.” Lienhard said boldly.

Charlie Hoag said Allen hit his head three or four years before Hoag joined the team in 1951, which may have caused some repurcussions.

”While he was still a great organizer and motivatior, to me, the game was passing him by,” Hoag said in Mark Stallard's 2005 book, "Tales of the Jayhawks Hardwood." “He was trying to do the things when I first got there that he was doing back in 1930 or 1935. The old Hank Iba/Phog Allen type of offense, you couldn’t win with it really, although they did. But it could be beaten."

But with Harp’s arrival at KU in 1948 as assistant, the Jayhawks became a much better team and eventually a national championship squad.

“Dick Harp turned out to be very important for Kansas basketball and to Phog Allen. He was able to do some of  the innovations, the little changes in defense, that Phog wasn’t capable of doing,” Hoag said.

“The game had passed Phog, by really, is what happened. He was a great motivator, did great things for the University of Kansas, but we could not have won a national championship without Dick Harp,” said Hoag, echoing Lienhard’s comments.

“And that’s a fact. I’m very strong about that, but I also realized the importance of Phog Allen.”

“I would never say anything that would take anything from Phog,” Hoag added. “... Phog was a great leader, a great inspiration and a great motivator, but we needed Dick.”

Lienhard couldn't agree more.

"Dick was one of the most underrated coaches the college game has ever seen," Lienhard said in 2000 after Harp died. "He developed the defensive scheme which led us to the national championship and which Dean Smith took and refined so productively at North Carolina after learning it as a KU player under Dick and Doc (Allen)."

And all Jayhawks fans and the college basketball world should be ever thankful to Dick Harp for revolutionizing the game.