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Indy 500 Parade Grand Marshals: 1955 Attucks Team and Cheerleaders, 2015
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After Attucks consecutively won the state basketball championship, during the Civil Rights Movement, the white community began to see more than just the color of the player's skin. "We gave the black community hope. We heard talk about how blacks were lazy, how they don't want to get up and go to work, how they have too many kids. But when Attucks started to win, they could brag on us," stated Oscar Robertson.
"The success of Attucks's basketball team integrated the high schools of Indianapolis. They became so dominant that the other schools had to get black basketball players..." Attucks impacted other schools in the area, causing some of the white schools to integrate. In 1955, the year Attucks won its first championship, Shortridge High School already had four black starters on their basketball team . By 1956, Tech High School had over 700 black students, and Shortridge High School had more than 600.
“There wasn’t equality in the 1950s like there is now... |
After the championship games, many black citizens looked at Oscar Robertson as a superhero. Ray Tolbert, a former Attucks player, stated, "he was like our Rosa Parks."
"Oscar was our prince, our standard bearer . He was the guy every African-American kid who picked up a basketball from that point on emulated." In 1954, the Supreme Court abolished segregation in schools; teachers from Attucks moved to other schools across Indianapolis; however, the first white student did not enroll in Attucks until 1971 due to slow integration. Unfortunately, Attucks' enrollment declined and in 1986 the school cut their basketball team. Attucks later became a middle school due to financial issues; however the school changed back in 2006. In 2008, Attucks' basketball program was restored.
"Thank heavens there was an Attucks, and a Oscar Robertson, and a Ray Crow, and all the players that played for them, because it was very significant and it did help. That is what Crispus Attucks gave, to not just" the state but the nation. "They made a Civil Rights statement by excelling at something that all Hoosiers value, which is excellence in basketball." |