The first non-playing Globetrotter in this capacity was Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, followed by entertainers Bob Hope and Whoopi Goldberg, freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, politician Jesse Jackson, and track-and-field star Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Nearly two decades before the NBA, a team of African American basketball players from Chicago began touring the Midwest as the Harlem Globetrotters. The Harlem Globetrotters is an American exhibition basketball team. For example, Wilt Chamberlain, one of the greatest basketball players of all time — he averaged more than 30 points a game for nine straight seasons, was named the NBA's Most Valuable Player four times, and scored a record 100 points in one game, to name but a few achievements — spent the 1958-59 season with the Globetrotters after he left college one year early to pro but was denied admittance to the NBA. Sadly, the Globetrotters lost that title game to the New York Renaissance (also called the Harlem Rens), but in the 1940 Chicago World Pro Tournament — an invitational festival but a de facto championship — the Globetrotters beat the Rens by one point in the semifinal round and then defeated crosstown rivals the Chicago Bruins by two points to win the whole thing. With Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson, Rudy Clark, Scatman Crothers, Robert DoQui. With John Aylesworth, Geese Ausbie, Nate Brown, Tex Harrison. A year later, the Globetrotters would best the all-white Lakers once more. In 1948, the Globetrotters defeated one of the best white basketball teams in the country. Here are the members of the team who play the "Harlem Globetrotters … At the last moment, Red Klotz — the Reds' organizer, player, and coach — nailed a buzzer-beater, giving the team a 100 to 99 victory, ending a 2,495-game losing streak for the players who regularly made up the Globetrotter's opposition. Who was in the audience and how did they react? Stone Mountain, GA 30083 However, the song actually does have lyrics ... and it's about a prostitute. Not counting the semi-serious 1951 sports drama The Harlem Globetrotters (starring "Pop" Gates, "Babe" Pressley, and "Goose" Tatum as themselves), the squad stormed onto screens with its fun and wacky vibe intact on the 1970-73 CBS Saturday morning cartoon Harlem Globetrotters. He stands 4'5" tall. Actress and playwright Kaiulani Lee has traveled the world performing her play “A Sense of Wonder,” which tells the story of science writer Rachel Carson. While Globetrotter Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton became a notable NBA veteran — not only was he among the first African-Americans in the league, but he played ten seasons, including one all-star selection — several other renowned athletes have put in some time as a Harlem Globetrotter. There were some African American-focused YMCA buildings that opened in the early 1900s, and African Americans started playing basketball very early on. The Harlem Globetrotters were founded in 1927. Both earned a salary of about $75,000 a year, more than the WNBA league minimum a decade later. In fact, in one of their earliest recordings, the Beatles even covered the song when they were backing up singer Tony Sheridan. This was a time when minstrel entertainment — shows like Amos ‘n’ Andy — were quite popular in the United States, and a lot of the Globetrotters’ comedic routines were drawn from this minstrel tradition. By then, the Globetrotters were increasingly focused on their comedic routines and didn’t have the monopoly on African American talent that they had before. According to the book Sport: Race, Ethnicity and Identity, point guard Runt Pullins huddled the team together and suggested that the best way to shut up "these wise guys" was to absolutely dominate and embarrass the local team they had to play that night. They'd tour into towns big and small and take on and decisively defeat squads from high schools, colleges, and other barnstorming teams. (Enter your ZIP code for information on American Experience events and screening in your area.). In 1926, Abe Saperstein formed an African-American basketball team that became known as the Harlem Globetrotters. Harlem Globetrotters In basketball’s storied history, there may be no single organization more synonymous with the game than the world-famous Harlem Globetrotters. While the players conducted their on-court warm-ups, drunken fans unleashed some racially fueled heckles at the Globetrotters. How did they decide to field female players? Harlem Globetrotters: The Team that Changed the World features interviews with everyone from former Globetrotters and NBA coaches to Henry Kissinger (!) As a team, the Globetrotters go back much further than you may realize, and they did a lot of work to help legitimize basketball as a nationally-recognized sport. In the years to come, they would gain fame as much for their fantastic dribbling displays as their ability to make audiences around the world laugh. The Harlem Globetrotters played a game — it ultimately became a series of games — with the Minneapolis Lakers, then the champions of the NBA. They were top-flight athletes, great basketball players, and people responded to that. Seeing the Harlem Globetrotters Live is Amazing Family Fun. But when people like Elgin Baylor, Wilt Chamberlain, and Oscar Robertson join the NBA in the late ‘50s, you begin to see African Americans emerge as the star players on NBA teams. And if you want to know more about the fascinating and untold truth of the squad, here's a look into the rise, dominance, and unique appeal of the Harlem Globetrotters. But while it's certainly an honor to play for the Globetrotters, not everybody can play for the Globetrotters. Reece “Goose” Tatum, of the Harlem Globetrotters, holding the ball, 1952 Beyond that rare loss in a comical game, the Globetrotters have lost dozens of games, primarily to all-star teams, college teams, all-star teams made up of college players, and in 1958, to the NBA's Minneapolis Lakers. The Globetrotters were running out of people who would play them. Then the famous team returned to animated form once more in the bizarre 1979 cartoon The Super Globetrotters, in which the already superhuman Globetrotters were imbued with special abilities. Why would an African American team need to go to Canada to experience racial discrimination? By the early 1950s, all the pieces were in place for the modern, familiar iteration of the Harlem Globetrotters — a traveling squad that played real basketball games as a pretense for basketball-themed showboating and entertaining shenanigans. The most recent inductee into this rarified club was Good Morning America host Robin Roberts in 2015. Directed by Peter Baldwin. The Globetrotters toured the country in an era of segregation. He's so tall that he's reportedly the only pro basketball player in the world who can dunk on a regulation rim without jumping. Similar to Scooby-Doo and all its clones, this animated series featured a group driving around and getting into adventures. The team's signature song is Brother Bones' whistled version of “Sweet Georgia Brown.” Their mascot is an anthropomorphized globe named "Globie.” The team plays over 450 live events worldwide each year. After the squad was renamed the Giles Post American Legion Five, team manager (and nightclub promoter) Dick Hudson arranged in 1927 for them to play their games at Chicago's newly built Savoy Ballroom. While the Globetrotters kept playing serious basketball into the 1940s, an ugly incident at a game in Woodfibre, British Columbia, in 1939 would lead to the team's future path and, ultimately, wild success. And certainly, once the NBA started to integrate, the Globetrotters increasingly relied on their comedic talents because they were no longer drawing the best players. For those men, playing basketball was often a way to challenge racism and identify themselves with those middle class Christian values associated with the sport. The Globetrotters were beating the local team and the arena started to become tense with the fear of racial violence. 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