This blog is for sneaker buffs, basketball fans, personal improvement seekers, sports enthusiasts, vintage lovers, black culture aficionados, all-culture respecters, and history makers. It combines pre-NBA African American basketball history with modern elements of pop culture to produce meaningful motivation, inspiration, and enlightenment you can use today. Our slogan: Make history now!
Yesterday, I mentioned the 102nd anniversary of the founding of the St. Christopher Club, the black athletic club that took root in Harlem.
Today I want to make you aware that the St. Christopher Club was more than just a basketball team, and was actually much more well known for its successes in track and field. This was at a time when track and field was a headline-grabbing sport.
Here’s an excerpt from a 1914 article that appeared in the New York Times:
NEGRO ATHLETES WIN MANY HONORS
Season’s Performances Show Colored Runners to be Factors in A.A.U. Meets
Recent performances of the colored athletes in the Metropolitan District of the Amateur Athletic Union have attracted widespread attention and should a corresponding progress be made by them in the next three or four years many laurels now worn by white athletes will pass into the keeping of negroes. This success has been more noticeable during the last month than at any other time, and the fact that four titles were won by colored athletes at the recent small clubs championships, and negroes were prominent in the point table of the Metropolitan titel meet, has caused a flutter of excitement among the registered athletes of the A.A.U. Nor is the present crop of negro runners likely to suddenly cease, for there are many promising colored boys in the public schools of Greater New York.
That this article appeared prominently in the New York Times was remarkable by itself. At the time, it hadn’t been that long since the A.A.U. was still racially segregated. Even more amazing was the critical role that African American athletic clubs played in developing these athletes.
The Times continues:
Many of the colored athletes prominent in athletic circles were graduated from public schools in Greater New York, but, unlike former years, when promising colored athletes received little consideration or encouragement, the student upon graduation can now join a colored athletic organization and continue to compete. There are three negro athletic clubs in the metropolitan district, whcih are making rapid strides in the athletic world, and scarcely an open meet is now held that does not find representatives of these clubs in the list of competitors. These organizations are the Salem-Crescent A.C. and the St. Christopher’s Club of New York and the Smart Set A.C. of Brooklyn.
The success of these African American athletic clubs began with just a thought. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said on the bicentennial of the start of the “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” (April 19, 1875), “Every revolution was first a thought in one man’s mind.” Thoughts do become things.
We might remember Emerson’s words as the 2008 Olympic Games begin in Beijing, China — with the motto, “One World, One Dream.”
When we look at the number of African American athletes on this year’s United States Olympic Track and Field Team, I believe our country owes a debt of gratitude to the original pioneers — the men of the St. Christopher Club, the Smart Set Athletic Club, and others — who first thought to develop competitive track and field programs for African Americans when none previously existed.
Those pioneers didn’t wait for permission. Instead, they decided to make history now.
The 102nd anniversary of the formation of the St. Christopher Club was last week.
The St. Christopher Club, which had arguably the most successful non-professional basketball team of the Black Fives Era, got its start in 1896 as a bible study group to help keep young African American males off the seedy streets of what is now midtown Manhattan.
St. Philip’s Protestant Episcopal Church, one of the most prominent black churches in America, organized the bible study fellowship. The church was located on West 26th Street, in the middle of what was then a predominantly African American neighborhood called the “Tenderloin.” The Tenderloin was overrun by mostly white-owned establishments where gambling, liquor, vice, and its related crimes were so rampant that the district was known as “Satan’s Circus.” The St. Christopher Club was meant to prevent moral decay by offering an inspirational alternative.
The newly renovated Park Slope Armory I wrote about recently (a.k.a. 14th Regiment Armory) in Brooklyn is so magnificent that a lot of people wanted to see more historical images of the old spot.
I found these additional vintage postcards.
If you live in the neighborhood, now you can compare these old images to the real thing.
If you’re walking your dog at night, there’s even this unusual after dark view, below.
The night view is what fans of the Smart Set Athletic Club’s basketball team would have seen when arriving at games and other sporting events that were held there.
You can tell a lot about someone by their office. Or study.
What’s in it, how it’s kept, what’s on the walls … these are all clues.
This is a photo of Andrew Carnegie’s study, around 1905.
It was inside his mansion on Fifth Avenue in New York City. That’s where Carnegie lived after selling his company, Carnegie Steel, to J. P. Morgan. That transaction made Carnegie the wealthiest man in the world.
This is where he spent the remainder of his life giving away his fortune. So it was no doubt a joyful place.
Much of Carnegie’s benevolence was directed toward African American causes, mostly through his connection with Booker T. Washington, which I mentioned earlier this week.
But he did much more than just give money. For example, Carnegie, in 1905, predicted that Europe would one day become united as a single economic entity.
When’s the last time someone made a prediction like that?
The Carnegie mansion is still there and now it’s the Cooper-Hewitt Museum. What’s left of this study is inside.
I’m not saying I want this office, or even one like it. But there are some things in it that I noticed and appreciated.
Take a look.
Did you see the inspirational sayings on the walls?
“All is well since all grows better”
“The Kingdom of Heaven is within you”
“The aids to noble life are all within”
Do you find anything unusual about them?
I find it amazing that Carnegie had these on his wall about 100 years before inspirational sayings just like them began popping up in self-improvement circles. For example in films like “The Secret” and the “Teachings of Abraham.”
In fact, in his book “Think And Grow Rich,” Napoleon Hill refers to what he calls “Carnegie’s secret” as the essence of the book.
Was Carnegie a gnosis teacher, with Hill — and the world — as his students? Well, he was definitely a thought leader.
Some other things I noticed:
The chair by the bookcase, for meditation, reading, idea creation …
The cat nap couch, for contemplation and invention …
How small this office is compared to how big you’d think it ought to be for the richest man in the world …
There’s no conference table, so this spot was apparently meant as the sanctuary for Carnegie’s mind …
The fireplace is great but I wonder if he used it …
Photographs of people and places and things he liked …
All of these are the signs of a highly productive, highly creative, thought-filled, purposeful man. All of that and he was apparently always jolly.
Unlike many conspicuously short men, Carnegie was optimistic and outgoing. “Carnegie’s sunny personality radiated warmth and light,” recalled James Bridge, Carnegie’s assistant in the 1880’s who would later break with him. “He loved to find his own joy of living reflected by those about him. He was the most consistently happy man I ever knew.”
Carnegie made friends easily and had a keen eye for which friends to make on the way up and which young men to teach when he himself had reached the top.
But making a colossal fortune was not enough for him. Unlike many of his capitalist brethren of that era, Carnegie had an intense need to improve the world while he was at it.
I think this post is just about it for my Carnegie marathon this week! Enough about Carnegie already!
But you do have to admit that he had some admirable qualities and uncanny insights that still ring true today.
And it was into this social context, in the widely cast shadow of Andrew Carnegie’s way of thinking, that the Black Fives Era first began to unfold.
He’s the #1 ranked high school basketball player who could have played in the N.B.A. if it weren’t for the league’s artificial age limit.
He’s the Dominguez High School and Oak Hill Academy product from Compton, Ca., who could have played unpaid for the N.C.A.A. (he had declared for Arizona) for a year before entering the N.B.A. Draft.
He’s the McDonald’s All-American who, as a student-athlete, could have risked his college eligibility and reputation by accepting tempting unauthorized payments from any one of dozens of dollar-waving people along a money-gauntlet that promising college athletes must run through but are supposed to ignore.
Instead, this week, Jennings opted to play professionally in Europe. Reports said he hadn’t passed the standardized entrance exams necessary to qualify academically.
I’m really happy for him.
He’s going to get an education in life. He’s going to meet new and different people who speak different languages. He’s going to experience new and different cultures and religions and geography. In politics, he’s going to see America from different perspectives, in which our country isn’t always at the center of every single headline.
Hey, wait a minute! Isn’t that what college is all about?
If you recall from my previous post, some of the doubters thought that no Euro team owner would bother signing a high schooler for just one year.
But I felt it would be the exact opposite, not only because Jennings is such a media and promotion savvy young man (check out his fan site) but also because of the sheer talent and highlight-reel attractiveness. European fans will eat this up.
I wouldn’t be surprised if, as a trend, Euro owners decide to up the ante, after that first year is up thus in effect competing against the N.B.A. or forcing the league to buy out their player contracts. Thus Jennings, and others that follow, could accept a 2nd year (or more) offer and still be eligible for the N.B.A. draft whenever they feel like returning from their European vacation.
What’s wrong with that?
Henry Abbot of TrueHoop has a good summary of the pros and cons of the move, and the people involved behind the scenes:
Jonathan Givony is, in addition to the guy who runs DraftExpress, a consultant who advises several European teams on things like which American players to sign and for how much.
Givony says he can’t see a top European club offering Jennings more than $100,000. “He’s not strong enough and he’s not experienced enough to run an elite club. He has a world of talent, and he’ll be unbelievable down the road, but experience trumps athleticism and talent every day in European basketball,” explains Givony. “I’d be very surprised if a top team offered him more than $100,000, at most, but stranger things have happened. Jerome Moiso just had his best year ever, and averaged seven points a game. He just signed a huge deal in Russia.”
But, this is precisely why I’m not so sure Jennings is doing this only for the money. Why do we always assume everyone is only about the cash?
Why are we playing along? Why are we demonizing kids for an insanely stupid set of rules created by adults?
O.J. Mayo isn’t the bad guy. Neither is Brandon Jennings, or the other five-star recruits wise enough to follow him for a year of basketball study abroad. Rich kids do it all the time. They take a semester or two, move to Europe, party, study and broaden their perspective.
A 19-year-old from Europe can join the NBA without anyone objecting. But a teenager from the states who hasn’t spent a year masquerading as a college student and justifying CBS’s billion-dollar NCAA basketball package is forbidden from joining the NBA.
Why?
Whitlock usually comes out for the “establishment” but instead tells it like it is and recognizes, as most do, the historic proportions:
Maybe Brandon Jennings will go down in history as the young man who forced the NCAA to honestly deal with the hypocrisy, stupidity and immorality of its rules.
Right on, Jason! (Although you forgot to add the N.B.A. into that last sentence.)
However this works out, I am glad to see a player taking a chance, doing something out of the ordinary.
I just wish I didn’t have this nagging feeling that maybe this isn’t the best idea.
Things have come a long way and basketball is definitely heading towards what some would call a “shift in power.”
William “Dolly” King.
This move reminds me of the time in 1941 when superstar William “Dolly” King opted to leave his undefeated Long Island University basketball team mid-season (L.I.U. went on the win the National Invitational Tournament, before they had an N.C.A.A. tourney) in order to play for the New York Rens all-black professional basketball team … since the racially-segregated pro hoops leagues of that time weren’t going to draft him anyway.
To use Whitlock’s words, King exposed the “hypocrisy, stupidity and immorality” then too, in a history-making move.
As promised yesterday, I’m staying on the Andrew Carnegie theme for a minute.
The following essay is from a letter he wrote to the Pittsburg Bulletin newspaper that originally appeared December 19, 1903.
An entire generation of businessmen, leaders, and ordinary citizens — including the pioneers of the Black Fives Era — were influenced by this essay.
That’s because when this was written, Andrew Carnegie was the wealthiest man in the world. He was the Bill Gates of his time. That got people’s attention.
Since everyone knew he started out with nothing, broke, with little education, and no background to suggest his future success, people understood that Carnegie knew what he was talking about. And, obviously, his legacy lives on today.
But are his keys to success timeless?
Check it out for yourself.
How to Succeed in Life
by Andrew Carnegie.
Everybody wants to preach to the young, and tell them to be good and they will be happy. I shall not enter far upon that field, but confine myself to presenting from a business man’s standpoint of view, a few rules, which, I believe, lie at the root of business success.
First-Never enter a bar-room. Do not drink liquor as a beverage. I will not paint the evil of drunkenness, or the moral crime; but I suggest to you that it is low and common to enter a bar-room, unworthy of any self-respecting man, and sure to fasten upon you a taint which will operate to your disadvantage in life, whether you ever become a drunkard or not.
Second-I wish young men would not use tobacco-not that it is morally wrong, except in so far as it is used in excess and injures health, which the medical faculty declares it does. But the use of tobacco requires young men to withdraw themselves from the society of women to indulge the habit. I think the absence of women from any assembly tends to lower the tone of that assembly. The habit of smoking tends to carry young men into the society of men whom it is not desirable that they should choose as their intimate associates. The practice of chewing tobacco was once common. Now it is considered offensive. I believe the race is soon to take another step forward, and that the coming man is to consider smoking as offensive as chewing was formally considered. As it is practically abandoned now, so I believe smoking will be.
Third-Having entered upon work, continue in that line of work. Fight it out on that line (except in extreme cases), for it matters little what avenue a young man finds first. Success can be attained in any branch of human labor. There is always room at the top in every pursuit. Concentrate all your thought and energy upon the performance of your duties. Put all your eggs into one basket and then watch that basket, do not scatter your shot. The man who is director in a half dozen railroads and three or four manufacturing companies, or who tries at one and the same time to work a farm, a factory, a line of street cars, a political party and a store, rarely amounts to much. He may be concerned in the management of more than one business enterprise, but they should all be of the one kind, which he understands. The great successes of life are made by concentration.
Fourth-Do not think a man has done his full duty when he has performed the work assigned him. A man will never rise if he does only this. Promotion comes from exceptional work. A man must discover where his employer’s interests can be served beyond the range of the special work allotted to him; and whenever he sees his employer’s interests suffer, or wherever the latter’s interests can be promoted, tell him so. Differ from your employers upon what you think his mistakes. You will never make much of a success if you do not learn the needs and opportunities of your own branch much better than your employer can possibly do. You have been told to “obey orders if you break owners.” Do no such foolish thing. If your employer starts upon a course which you think will prove injurious, tell him so, protest, give your reasons, and stand to them unless convinced you are wrong. It is the young man who does this, that capital wants for a partner or for a son-in-law.
Fifth-Whatever your wages are, save a little. Live within your means. The heads of stores, farms, banks, lawyers’ offices, physicians’ offices, insurance companies, mills and factories are not seeking capital; they are seeking brains and business habits. The man who saves a little from his income has given the surest indication of the qualities which every employer is seeking for.
Sixth-Never speculate. Never buy or sell grain or stocks upon a margin. If you have savings, invest them in solid securities, lands or property. The man who gambles upon the exchanges is in the condition of the man who gambles at the gaming table. He rarely, if ever, makes a permanent success. His judgment goes; his faculties are snapped; and his end, as a rule, is nervous prostration after an unworthy and useless life.
Seventh-If you ever enter business for yourself, never indorse for others. It is dishonest. All your resources and all your credit are the sacred property of the men who have trusted you; and until you have surplus cash and owe no man, it is dishonest to give your name as an indorser to others. Give the cash you can spare, if you wish, to help a friend. Your name is too sacred to give.
Do not make riches, but usefulness, your first aim; and let your chief pride be that your daily occupation is in the line of progress and development; that your work, in whatever capacity it may be, is useful work, honestly conducted, and as such ennobling to your life.
To sum up, do not drink, do not smoke, do not indorse, do not speculate. Concentrate, perform more than your prescribed duties; be strictly honest in word and deed. And may all who read these words be just as happy and prosperous and long lived as I wish them all to be. And let this great fact always cheer them: It is impossible for any one to be cheated out of an honorable career unless he cheats himself.
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What’s your reaction?
Are these anything new? Or have you heard some version of this before?
Do people more or less already follow Carnegie’s keys to success? Or is our society brainwashed to go after the wrong thing?
Are these keys way out of date? Or can they be applied or modified to work today?
What about as far as you, your work, your business? Do you follow these principles, more or less? Is this all one needs?
Ladies … what do you think of Carnegie’s belief that “the absence of women from any assembly tends to lower the tone of that assembly.”?
Gentlemen … no bar-rooms? Are you O.K. with that?
I’d like to hear from you on this one, so please share a couple of quick thoughts. Thanks!
One reason I feel so honored is because I graduated from C.M.U. with a degree in Civil Engineering, but I’m not even doing engineering today. Unless you look at engineering in its broadest sense, as a problem-solving discipline.
Other than that, I’ve done a complete 180° shift since then, one tick at a time.
Or maybe I’ve done a 360, as in, what goes around comes around. Things do be comin’ back around.
When I was in college I had no idea about the history of the Black Fives Era. Then, to my pleasant surprise, I began to realize how important Pittsburgh was in that history. Then I began to appreciate Napoleon Hill’s classic book Think And Grow Rich, which derives back to Andrew Carnegie, who founded Carnegie Tech, which later became C.M.U.
Then I began to understand the immense role Carnegie played in helping support and sustain Tuskegee Institute and Booker T. Washington, as well as other black colleges and African American causes. Which ties directly back to the Black Fives Era.
This is what Carnegie said about Washington in 1903, the same year he gave $600,000 (about $400 million today) to be used for Tuskegee’s endowment fund as well as for a life income for Washington and his wife:
To me he seems one of the greatest of living men, because his work is unique, the modern Moses, who leads his race and lifts it through education to even better and higher things than a land overflowing with milk and honey. History is to tell of two Washingtons, one white, the other black — both fathers of their people.
How could a brother have known? :-)
(Well, I’m guessing most Tuskegee grads probably know this.)
When I attended C.M.U., the tuition was $6,600. That was a lot of money back then, and it is today. The way I paid for it was with student loans, financial aid, summer jobs, and an annual grant of $500 from my high school back home.
Since I had to pay my own way, and pay off that loan too, I assumed that everyone else was in the same situation. I assumed that everyone else must also really want to be there!
So I could never understand why some of my classmates used to complain so much. Didn’t they choose to be there? To me that was like making it to the N.B.A. and then complaining, why I gotta dribble, pass, and shoot so much? I couldn’t figure that out, so I always just applied myself and didn’t think or worry a whole lot about what would happen next.
I always appreciated Andrew Carnegie’s motto for the university, which is inscribed in some of the buildings on campus: “My heart is in the work.”
All these years later I’m finally beginning to realize what he meant.
Carnegie with Washington and other gentlemen visiting Tuskegee circa 1900, including Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University.
By the way, according to a new biography, although Carnegie was a little fella at 5 feet tall, he was so not like Napoleon … but while we’re on that, Booker T. wasn’t exactly jump-ball material either, was he?
Here are some more of Carnegie’s words of wisdom, these from his book, The Gospel Of Wealth:
I have known millionaires starving for lack of the nutriment which alone can sustain all that is human in man, and I know workmen, and many so-called poor men, who revel in luxuries beyond the power of those millionaires to reach. It is the mind that makes the body rich. There is no class so pitiably wretched as that which possesses money and nothing else. Money can only be the useful drudge of things immeasurably higher than itself. Exalted beyond this, as it sometimes is, it remains Caliban still and still plays the beast. My aspirations take a higher flight. Mine be it to have contributed to the enlightenment and the joys of the mind, to the things of the spirit, to all that tends to bring into the lives of the toilers of Pittsburgh sweetness and light. I hold this the noblest possible use of wealth.
If you can’t quite understand this ancient recording, read along below:
I quote from “The Gospel of Wealth”, published 25 years ago: This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: first, to set an example of modest unostentatious living, shunning display; to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent upon him; and, after doing so, to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds which he is strictly bound as a matter of duty to administer in the manner which, in his judgment, is best calculated to produce the most beneficial results for the community.
So, all this got me wondering something, and makes me want to bring this around again, full circle … 360° if you will.
How does Carnegie’s wisdom apply to modern day big-money athletes and celebrities? Can they learn something, when too many seem to keep unraveling or going broke?
Think about that for a minute.
Meanwhile, I’m gonna stay on this Carnegie theme tomorrow. He’s a dude is worth knowing about.
(Photographs courtesy of Getty Images and Corbis.)
.”
Jennings’ move reminds us of
William “Dolly” King.
Andrew Carnegie (r.) with
Carnegie with Washington and other gentlemen visiting Tuskegee circa 1900, including Charles W. Eliot, president of Harvard University.
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