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An Illegal Act of Basketball

'The Secret Game' book describes match-up that flouted Jim Crow long before Civil Rights victories

secret game

Duke Blue Devils, 1942–43. Dave Hubbell, one of the key figures in the Secret Game, is in the back row at the far left. (Duke University Archives)

One Sunday morning in 1944, an all-white team from Duke and an all-black team from the North Carolina Central College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) met in secret and broke the law. Their illegal act? Playing basketball against each other. 

Duke alumnus Scott Ellworth, who describes the moment in his new book “The Secret Game,” will discuss the new volume and sign copies at 4 p.m. Tuesday, March 31, in the Edge in Bostock Library.

John McLendon
A pioneer in basketball coaching: N.C. Central's John McLendon

Ellsworth, who earned his Ph.D. in history at Duke, happened upon the story while researching college basketball in the 1950s. He was struck by the character of John McLendon, the legendary coach of the Central team, and by the courage of players on both sides.

The black and white teams flouted Jim Crow laws to compete against each other, long before the Civil Rights victories of the 1960s. The match-up was the first integrated college basketball game in the South and a precursor of Civil Rights milestones to come, Ellsworth said.

“During World War II there is a forgotten generation of people in the South – mainly young people, white and black – who are starting to fight back against Jim Crow and segregation in inventive ways,” Ellsworth said. “ The Duke students and the N.C. College students are part of that generation. They were risking their careers by taking part in the game.”

At the time, Durham had two of the strongest basketball teams in the country – one white, one black. At N.C. College, McLendon was pioneering a new, fast-paced version of basketball based on what he had learned from his mentor James Naismith, who invented the sport.

“McLendon helps to create the fast-break game,” Ellsworth said. “He ushers in the modern game of basketball.”

On the other side of town at Duke, the best basketball players weren’t on the varsity squad but instead played for a military team at the medical school comprised of former college basketball stars from across the country.

Each team was demolishing its competition. But the teams had yet to play each other. Meanwhile, early efforts to bridge the racial divide were stirring on local campuses. A group of college professors from Duke, UNC and N.C. College had begun meeting in secret, under the auspices of two Jewish professors at N.C. College, refugees from Nazi Germany who landed in Durham.

A group of students from both campuses, members of the campus chapters of the YMCA, had also launched clandestine interracial prayer meetings.

medical team

Duke medical school basketball team, 1946. Most were well-regarded former collegiate players.

Those secret gatherings helped set the stage for the Duke-N.C. College matchup in a locked gymnasium on the N.C. College campus.  

Ellsworth, who has worked at the Smithsonian and who now teaches at the University of Michigan, has also written “Death in a Promised Land,” a history of the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921. He served with former Duke historian John Hope Franklin as a lead scholar on the Tulsa Race Riot Commission.

Ellsworth spent years tracking down the players who participated in the secret 1944 game.  The experience stayed with them, he says.

“It was a great barrier-buster,” Ellsworth said. “It helped change people’s minds.”

Ellsworth will also discuss “The Secret Game,” and sign copies of the book at 7 p.m. Thursday, April 2, at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh.