First African-Americans in the NBA

What Jackie Robinson did for baseball, breaking the color line, Earl Lloyd did for basketball. After a standout college career at West Virginia State, he joined the NBA in the 1950-51 season, arguably the most famous of the three African-Americans pioneers to do so that season. Lloyd and his two comrades were the first African-Americans in the pro basketball league, and owing to the way the schedules were set up, the first one to step onto to court in the NBA, playing for the Washington Capitals.

On this day, October 31, in 1950, at a time when most of the United States was still widely segregated, when African-Americans had to endure separate public facilities for everything, Earl Lloyd became the first African-American to play in the NBA.

Ironically, Lloyd’s fellow players, both on his team and on opposing teams, were far and away more accepting than the fans. There were fights amongst players, he recalled, but those were never about race. The fans, on the other hand, particularly in the away games in the championship series against Indiana, were quite abusive. Lloyd remembered them raining down racial epithets and telling him to “go back to Africa.” Lloyd took it all in stride. “My philosophy was if they weren’t calling you names, you weren’t doing anything,” he said in an later interview. “You made sure they were calling you names, if you could. If they were calling you names, you were hurting them.”