Duquesne honors Chuck Cooper, a trailblazer from the Bluff
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Irva Cooper was 12 years old and swooning for the handsome lifeguard at the South Park pool when Chuck Cooper first caught her eye.
Little did she know the impact on American history Cooper would later have as the first black player drafted in the NBA in 1950 by the Boston Celtics.
"I just went to the swimming pool to gaze at him," she recalled. "If my mother only knew."
Duquesne will host Richmond in the Chuck Cooper Classic at 7 p.m. today on ESPNU, in honor of its quietly famous late alum, an NBA trailblazer from Pittsburgh, who played his rookie season just three years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball and more than a decade before Martin Luther King Jr. shared his dream in a stirring speech.
After Cooper led the Dukes to a 78-19 record and two NIT appearances, the Celtics made him their second-round pick, No. 12 overall in 1950 -- as owner Walter Brown proclaimed: "I don't care if he's striped, plaid or polka dot. Boston takes Charles Cooper of Duquesne."
Cooper's experience was laced with racial prejudice and, at times, rampant segregation on road trips at restaurants and hotels. If it was a burden, he never said so. He believed in the Celtics and spoke highly of them.
• Game: Richmond (12-11, 3-5 Atlantic 10) vs. Duquesne (13-9, 4-4), 7:05 p.m.
• Where: Palumbo Center.
• TV: ESPNU.
"He cracked the door. He made it possible for all these guys making these big salaries," said Irva Cooper of her husband at Palumbo Center on Friday. "But he was the one, I always said, who had to suffer the slings and arrows. He was the reason teams wouldn't play his team because he was black. Segregation was really that bad."
When asked, his family will share tales of Cooper eating by railroad tracks while his teammates were eating inside at a whites-only restaurant or when he was forced to stay at a different hotel or eat in a back room. Yet, he thrived on the court.
First Published February 4, 2012 12:00 am
