50 Years Late: Crispus Attucks High School champion team gets public recognition; 1955 Indiana basketball winners

My father is a Hoosier. He's from Indianapolis and graduated from all-Black Crispus Attucks high school in the 1940s at age 16. (At 16 he then entered Purdue University and 4 years later graduated as an electrical engineer.) Some of us will remember a much-touted U.S. movie called Hoosiers. I think it starred actor Gene Hackman. Well, the word Hoosier means someone who is from the U.S. state of Indiana, and the film was about a champion high school basketball team in Indiana. Along the same lines, the first Black statewide high school [men's] basketball champions from any community in the United States - finally have been given public recognition... half a century late. John Tuohy's Indianapolis Star article (27 March 2005) is subtitled, "Players and fans gather to celebrate anniversary of 1955 state basketball title." For some of us those words can never get to the tragedy at the center of the reasons why - into the 20th & 21st centuries - a "freedom-loving" society like the United States of America could allow 50 years to pass before publicly celebrating this particular group of people whose teamwork achieved something rather extraordinary; a group of people who were very, very young at the time they achieved this feat, and who now are community elders.

Tuohy's email is published with his article - John dot Tuohy at indystar.com. An excerpt of his article:

"Willie Merriweather stood at the free-throw line at Hinkle Fieldhouse on Saturday, massaged the basketball in his hands and measured his shot. His first one bounced off the front of the rim. The second clanked off the side. The next three dropped softly through the goal. Fifty years ago, Merriweather stood in the same gym on the Butler University campus and sank 13 free throws in the state championship game for the Crispus Attucks Tigers. The March 19, 1955, victory made Attucks -- led by basketball legend Oscar Robertson -- the first all-black team to win a state championship anywhere in the country. ... The 1955 [team victory] parade after the game was hurried because city officials were worried about racial violence. ... U.S. Rep. Julia Carson, D-Ind., said the hurried parade was just one glaring example of the discrimination the players had to endure. ... Barnett said the spotlight placed on the two black teams opened his eyes to racism. "I didn't understand the socioeconomic realities about living in America in 1955 until then," he said."