When they piled into cars and drove through Durham, North Carolina, the members of the Duke University Medical School basketball team only knew that they were going somewhere to play basketball. They didn't know whom they would play against. But when they came face to face with their opponents, they quickly realized this secret game was going to make history.
Discover the true story of how in 1944, Coach John McLendon orchestrated a secret game between the best players from a white college and his team from the North Carolina College of Negroes. At a time of widespread segregation and rampant racism, this illegal gathering changed the sport of basketball forever.
"This book offers a slice of history and an inspiring portrait in courage by detailing one basketball game that white and African-American teams dared play in defiance of segregation. The game took place in 1944 Durham, North Carolina, a time when the Ku Klux Klan deemed that 'race mixing' was punishable by death. Coach John McLendon of the North Carolina College of Negroes 'believed basketball could change people's prejudices' and invited players from the Duke University Medical School, an all-white team, to play a 'secret game' in his college's gym. The game shows how the white players were blown away by the new, fast-break style of McLendon's players, losing 44 to 88. The players then mixed it up in a 'shirts and skins' game, with whites and African Americans on both teams. In lively detail, Coy describes the game that advanced race relations in sports, reminding readers that this took place three years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. DuBurke's use of cyan and sepia tones within his photo-like illustrations perfectly conveys the look of the 1940s and the energy of the game itself. Information on Coach McLendon and a time line of integration in sports concludes this exciting account of a landmark game played ahead of its time."-starred, Booklist
"In an account brimming with suspense and emotional tension, Coy (Hoop Genius) and DuBurke (Best Shot in the West) show how a game of college-level basketball one Sunday morning in 1944 helped provide a glimpse of the future of the game and of a segregated nation. The man behind the game was John McLendon, coach of the North Carolina College of Negroes' Eagles, who masterminded the clandestine meet-up between his team and the all-white squad from Duke University Medical School, at a time when segregation laws prohibited play between black and white teams. Initial uneasiness-the athletes, 'some of whom had never been this close to a person of a different color, were hesitant to touch or bump into one another'-gave way to a game in which the Eagles trounced Duke using a hard-driving fast-break style; a follow-up match saw the teams blending their ranks. DuBurke's shadowy images in pencil and paint have the feeling of long-buried photos snapped in secret, while Coy skillfully highlights both the energy and importance of the game and the dangerous social climate in which it was played."-starred, Publishers Weekly
"In North Carolina, 1944, Jim Crow laws against 'race mixing' meant that no playoff system existed to determine, definitively, whether the black powerhouse team of North Carolina College for Negroes could best the nationally acclaimed basketball players from Duke. A clandestine match-up, now dubbed 'The Secret Game,' would answer the immediate question but would also become anti-segregation legend. Coy adheres closely to Scott Ellsworth's description of the game, recounted in his 1996 New York Times article, which Coy cites in a selected bibliography. Audiences watch the Duke players hustle across town in the early hours of a Sunday morning and sneak into the NCC gym, with its doors promptly locked. The nervous players stumble through the opening plays, and then hit their stride and have such a good time (88 to 44, NCC) that they stick around for a s
