Over 60 years later, former Tennessee A&I Tiger basketball gamers lastly received the possibility to shine throughout a joyous go to to the White Home.
George Finley, one of many gamers, mentioned to CBS that assembly Vice President Kamala Harris on the White Home was “the best day of my life.”
Finley was joined within the Roosevelt Room of the White Home by his colleagues, the vast majority of whom had been of their eighties: Henry Carlton, Robert Clark, Ron Hamilton, Ernie Jones, and Dick Barnett. The vice chairman had invited all of them, together with their shut family and friends.
Harris remarked, “I have a look at every of you and the trail and the journey that you just’ve been on and your willingness to inform the story in such an lively manner is so essential. There are forces proper now that will attempt to overlook or deny our historical past. However I feel the one manner that we are going to proceed to strengthen ourselves and see progress as a rustic is once we bear in mind the place we’ve been to assist us information the place we wish to be.”
“I assumed this may by no means happen,” Finley mentioned, reflecting on the many years it took to expertise the second. “[Winning] the championship was massive, nevertheless it wasn’t as massive as being right here with [Vice President] Harris at this time.”
Regardless of being picked by the NBA’s Detroit Pistons after enjoying for the 1959 championship group, Finley opted to play for the American Basketball League.
The boys’s basketball group of Tennessee A&I Tigers made historical past by being the primary HBCU group to win a nationwide championship in 1957. In addition they turned the primary school group to win three consecutive nationwide titles from 1957 to 1959.
Nonetheless, Black collegiate athletes had been steadily denied recognition and alternative to compete on the highest ranges throughout segregation and the Civil Rights Motion. Tennessee A&I, now Tennessee State College, is a public HBCU.
As per CBS, the group confronted quite a few obstacles on and off the court docket on the path to the White Home go to. On their flight house from Kansas Metropolis after successful the 1957 NAIA (Nationwide Affiliation of Intercollegiate Athletics) championship, the group obtained a bomb risk. Later, group members took half in a sit-in to protest segregation insurance policies at a lunch counter in Nashville.
The Tigers had been lastly honored for his or her historic victories and admitted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Corridor of Fame in 2019 after many years of ready. However they had been nonetheless but to have a celebration on the White Home for his or her championship victory, a celebration that has been an American custom through the years. In January, greater than 50 members of Congress signed a letter on behalf of the group asking for a White Home invitation for a “correct celebration.”
On Friday, earlier than they left the White Home, the gamers gave Harris—an HBCU alumna herself—a personalized jersey.
