This story was originally published on Feb. 27, 2005, for the 50th anniversary of Crispus Attucks' state championship.

For almost three decades Crispus Attucks High School quietly went about its business, serving as Indianapolis' segregated black high school.

Opened in 1927, Attucks produced mechanics, tailors and stenographers, doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, musicians, military officers and politicians. It was a source of pride for the black community, a center for social activities.

Most of Indianapolis hardly noticed.

That is, until March 19, 1955, when Attucks accomplished what every high school in the state of Indiana dreams of.

The Tigers' state basketball championship marked the first time an all-black school won an open state tournament anywhere in the nation. It was also the first state basketball title for a team from Indianapolis.

To millions watching on TV or listening to the radio statewide, the school built to rid Indianapolis schools of black students was being proudly called: "Indianapolis Crispus Attucks."

After the game, in accordance with tournament tradition, the winning team piled onto a firetruck for the triumphant ride from Butler Fieldhouse to Monument Circle.

But unlike the Downtown celebration the year before, when Milan had time to bask in the glory and pose for photos, the Attucks team made one quick lap around the Circle and a beeline up Indiana Avenue to Northwestern Park for a bonfire.

The route had been decreed days earlier in a meeting at the Indianapolis Public Schools superintendent's office, attended by representatives of the mayor's office, the Fire Department and the police, who feared riots and wanted the Attucks contingent back in its own part of town as quickly as possible.

"I guess they felt black people would tear up Downtown," said basketball legend Oscar Robertson, the team's best player, for whom that hurt remains keen.

"I was part of Indiana basketball history. I wasn't an asterisk on the side, and neither were the other guys on the Crispus Attucks team. We were a part of the Indiana High School Athletic Association, and we shouldn't have been treated that way."

Willie Merriweather, another star of that team, just remembers being a happy kid.

Now that the school is back in the spotlight for a celebration of the 50th anniversary of that championship, memories and attitudes are as different as the people who experienced the racial discrimination of the time.

Yet all agree that the legacy of the basketball glory is much bigger than sports. Basketball introduced the team and the school as a collection of people, with names and faces and talents. Friendships that formed on the court and in the stands helped to mend a racially frayed city. It was a start.

"Should this stuff be brought up again?" Merriweather, now 69, mused. "In my mind, it should. Because it has a history to it. It has a good ending to it."

Attucks, he said, "started out one way, and it ended up another way. I think the team and the accomplishment brought together the city to a large extent. And it's a true story."

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Crispus Attucks High School was first planned in 1922 by city leaders for the purpose of segregating the 800 black students who were, at the time, attending Manual, Shortridge and Tech high schools alongside white students. (The Ku Klux Klan was influential in city politics at the time, but scholars of the period stress that building the school was a city, not a Klan, decision.)

By the time the school opened at West and 12th streets five years later, it already was too small. The black population was growing along with the region's industry, and 1,350 students reported to the school built for 1,000.

From the beginning, the focus inside the brick structure with the stately colon naded entry was on academics, which is where the conversation with Attucks grads starts to this day.

With black educators no more welcome than black students in the white schools, Attucks was able to attract an impressive faculty, possibly the best in the city. Almost every teacher had a master's degree, and many had doctorates.

Matthias Nolcox and Russell Lane, the school's first two principals who served a combined 30 years, had degrees from Ivy League schools; Lane received his law degree from Indiana University. They recruited top-flight educators from across the country, black men and women who believed in education and in the students of Crispus Attucks.

Betty Crowe, a 1948 Attucks graduate and the wife of coach Ray Crowe during the basketball glory years, described Attucks using the adage: "They gave us lemons, and we made lemonade."

Gilbert Taylor, a 1955 Attucks graduate who has a doctorate and is curator of the Attucks Museum at the school, added: "I did not realize (when I was a student) that we had two or three attorneys on our faculty. I did not realize that we had Buffalo Soldiers, that we had Tuskegee Airmen, that we had members of the Golden 13 (the first black U.S. naval officers), all here on the faculty at Attucks. They never mentioned that. They were not about ego. Their pride came from you and your accomplishments."

Robertson has called the school "a miraculous place." Hallie Bryant, The Star's Indiana Mr. Basketball in 1953, called it "a blessing in disguise; a paradox."

One thing Crispus Attucks wasn't was a sports palace.

On the first day of school in 1927, The Star wrote: "Opening of the Crispus Attucks high school . . . gave the colored high school students of Indianapolis their own building, planned and designed to meet their requirements for education. This is the first time these students have occupied a building devoted exclusively to them.

"The new high school embodies features not found in other school buildings of the city. Since the traditions of the Negro race are deeply founded in music, that art has been especially emphasized in the new building.

"In the central portion of the building is a large auditorium with seating capacity for 800 and a combination stage/gymnasium."

In other words, the school was built without a real gym.


Not that that mattered much in the early years, when Attucks was denied membership in the Indiana High School Athletic Association. The reasoning went that it wasn't a "public" school because white students were not included.

In those days, the basketball team had to travel great distances to play other black schools, which meant Attucks played very few games.

Even after the IHSAA agreed to let its members schedule games with Attucks, local teams weren't interested. The Tigers traveled by bus all across the state, playing games in small towns where they were greeted with curiosity, like the barnstorming Globetrotters.

On the long rides, the players ate sack lunches. Hotels and restaurants were out of the question. Even after Attucks started drawing well enough to have the money in its athletic budget for such luxuries, the Jim Crow practices of the time -- rules, often unwritten, banning blacks from "white" hotels, restaurants and bathrooms, among other places -- didn't allow it.

Lane, the late principal, who had been among the most active in the campaign to have Attucks admitted to the IHSAA, was the guiding force behind those early teams. He would suffer the long, cold bus rides. He would sit in the bleachers, visiting with his white hosts while keeping a sharp eye on his students.

He instructed his coaches to put sportsmanship above all else, certainly above winning. That was the way, he believed, to break down the barriers between races.

He chose players who he thought would best represent the school, and they played in the style of the day, flat-footed, with a required number of passes before shots.

That changed in 1950, when Ray Crowe became coach.

Crowe had grown up on a farm near Franklin and had played basketball against and alongside white players. His coach at Whiteland High School had threatened to bench him if he let himself get pushed around on the court.

Crowe believed in student-athletes, fair play and gentlemanly behavior. As he wrote in 1952, in a paper outlining his coaching philosophy, the players needed to be aware of "the relationship between their attitudes and the morale of the community." He benched great players for slacking in schoolwork and for, in today's parlance, "talking trash."

He also played to win.

In Crowe's seven years as coach, Attucks won 179 games and lost 20.

Bobby Plump, sitting in his Broad Ripple pub, named Plump's Last Shot for his game-winning basket in the 1954 state title game, paused recently to marvel at the glory days of Attucks basketball.

This man who led one of the few tournament victories over Attucks back then spoke in a dramatic hushed tone as he described the Tigers' sustained success. The streaks. The number of victories. Close wins over great teams. More often, huge margins of victory.

"They dominated," Plump said. "I mean, they dominated.

"Now," he added, "when you take that dominance and then add the prejudice of the time, you have a very volatile situation."


Aware of the volatile situation, Crowe insisted that his players not react openly to the many obstacles they faced, including biased officiating.

It was often so bad that the media, black and white, cringed. After the foul call that Crowe later called "the worst he had seen in a lifetime of watching sports," a last-minute call on Hallie Bryant that likely cost Attucks the 1953 semistate title, five Indianapolis News writers signed an editorial column in protest.

The Star's Bob Collins also questioned the call, and Tiny Hunt wrote in the Versailles Republican: "Such deplorable refereeing calls into question the very integrity of the tournament."

Al Spurlock, Crowe's assistant coach during those years, said: "Ray would always say, 'We have to beat seven men.' "

Betty Crowe said: "Ray told the boys, 'The first 10 points you get are for the referees, and then you play the game.' He'd say, 'Don't look at me when they make a bad call. Just raise your hand and then make more baskets.'

"The kids would get mad. I'd get mad, too. But Ray would sit there calmly. (In the stands) we'd all be yelling and screaming and fussing, and he'd just sit there. It kept the boys calm."

There were threats, many stemming from gambling. The big crowds, high interest and emotional allegiances made betting on Attucks games serious business.

Before a game against Tech during the 1953-54 season, threats were made against Dave Huff and Don Sexson of Tech and Robertson, Winfred O'Neal and Bill Mason of Attucks. Huff's family insisted that he sit out the game, which Attucks won.

Before the 1953 Indiana-Kentucky All-Star Game, the headline HALLIE BRYANT THREATENED was printed on Page 1 of The Star, just below ROSENBERG SPIES EXECUTED.

Asked about it this month, Bryant shrugged. "I played well that night. I've been on playgrounds where people threaten you every day."

John Gipson, who played on the '55 title team, framed the Tigers' ability to deal with adversity this way: "They were hanging people in the South."

Plump, who decades later would serve as a pallbearer at the funeral of Oscar Robertson's older brother, Bailey, remembers the prejudice he witnessed when he and his Milan teammates came in from Ripley County.

"We'd be walking around the corner from our hotel to get something to eat at the Apex Diner, and people driving by would see our jackets and yell at us, 'You guys better beat those niggers.' We were shocked," Plump said. "We didn't hear that in our community, of course, because it was a white community.

"The prejudice in the 1950s was just awful. But from a basketball standpoint, I can tell you, as players we sure didn't think that way. We'd played other teams that had black players. It was no big deal. We thought of Attucks as a bunch of guys we intended to beat. That's all we were thinking about -- basketball."

They weren't alone.

The more Attucks won, the more tournament games the Tigers played in front of large, mixed crowds, the more accepted they became -- at least among the younger generation. Not by everyone, and not all at once. But it was happening.

"We were on the cutting edge then between staunch segregation and the beginning of integration," said Bill Hampton, who played for the '55 team. "Reaction to us was about half and half."

Maxine Stantley Coleman, a cheerleader for Attucks, remembers being quite sure that, beyond the Attucks fans, the big tournament crowds were not rooting for the Tigers. But, she said, with the victories came some progress, "a little bit at a time." She said the players probably were more accepted than the rest of the students.

Said Robertson: "The way we played and won, we did it with a lot of class. We played in the parks with the white kids and black kids. I knew a lot of kids on other teams, white and black."

The first breakthrough on the court came during Crowe's first season, 1950-51, when Attucks defeated Anderson in the regional final on a last-second shot by Bailey "Flap" Robertson. The Tigers made it to the Final Four before losing in the afternoon to Evansville Reitz, 66-59.

The next season the Tigers lost in the sectional to Tech. After the controversial call in the semistate round cost them a chance at the '53 title, they came back in '54 to make it to the semistate championship game, where, missing Merriweather and O'Neal because of injuries, they lost to Milan by 13.

In 1955, it all came together.

Attucks rolled through the regular season with an average winning margin of 22 points. The only game the Tigers lost was a strange one.

Playing on a snowy night in Connersville's small, packed gym, Attucks' game of running and pressing was neutralized after someone opened a door to give the sweltering crowd some air. In no time, there was condensation on the floor -- which sat atop an old swimming pool -- and both teams spent the second half slipping and sliding. Attucks lost, 58-57.

The Tigers entered the tournament with a record of 20-1 and breezed through the sectional and regional rounds. For the semistate title, Attucks stared down top-ranked Muncie Central, 71-70.

At the Final Four the next Saturday, after Attucks' easy afternoon victory over New Albany, that school's cheerleaders followed tradition and joined the cheerleaders of the finalists.

White cheerleaders, alongside black.

"Even now," Robertson wrote nearly 50 years later in his autobiography, "it's one of the little details in my life that helps me, when I look back."

On to the final.


Nearly 15,000 fans packed Butler Fieldhouse on the night of March 19, 1955. It was standing room only.

No need to worry about racism from officials: The opponent was another segregated school. Gary Roosevelt, built shortly after Attucks and for the same reason, also had made a quick rise once it was allowed to play in the tournament. The finalists represented two of the three all-black high schools in the state; the third was Evansville Lincoln.

True to form, Attucks jumped to a big lead and won going away, 97-74.

In the final minute, the crowd was cheering for an unheard-of 100 points, and for Robertson, who had 30, to go after the four-game scoring title (for the semistate and Final Four). He got the ball and could have tied the mark, but he passed to a player who hadn't yet scored. In the end, eight Attucks players scored that night.

Attucks fans started their famous "Crazy Song" early, which always drove their opponents crazy.

It includes a refrain familiar to Cab Calloway fans: "Hi-de, hi-de, hi-de, Hi . . . Hi-de, hi-de, hi-de, Ho." The Attucks version follows with, "They could beat everybody; But they can't beat us!"

As the horn sounded, fans rushed onto the floor.

The champions dominated the front pages of the Indianapolis newspapers and were splashed on sports pages throughout the state. The Chicago Tribune headline read: "Indianapolis routs Gary."

Scores of black papers nationwide, including the Chicago Defender and Pittsburgh Courier, picked up the story on the wire of the Associated Negro Press. The Courier's headline read: "Attucks Captures Indiana Cage Crown."

The night of the victory, as the firetruck left the fieldhouse, white kids joined black kids in cheering the champions. Along the route, white fans turned out to wave and cheer. But, as planned, the parade was quickly diverted to the black part of town.

Change would not be immediate.


The state's desegregation law of 1949 had made it possible, but not mandatory, for black students to attend the high school in their own part of town.

Given the choice, many black students followed tradition and attended Attucks. But others decided to go elsewhere, and once Attucks started winning -- the Tigers went undefeated in winning the state title in 1956 and won it again in '59 -- many schools began to recruit black players.

Bob Collins, after he retired as a columnist for The Star, credited Attucks basketball for giving the very slow process of school integration in Indianapolis a shove.

In the book "Hoosiers," the late sportswriter is quoted: "The success of Attucks basketball integrated the high schools of Indianapolis. They became so dominant that the other schools had to get black basketball players or forget about it.

"(The other schools) went from not caring to crying 'unfair.' They were even saying, this is illegal. They were saying, 'Oscar lives in the Shortridge district and Hallie Bryant should be goin' to Tech.' In 1951, I don't think any other team in Marion County had a black player. By 1955, Shortridge had four black starters."

By 1956, there were 769 black students at Tech and 657 black students at Shortridge. There were very few black students at Howe and Broad Ripple. There would be no white students at Attucks until 1971. But integration was, at last, back on the track it had been on before Attucks was built.

In the late 1960s, just as competitive forces had broken up Attucks' basketball monopoly, the School Board set about breaking up the faculty. To encourage integration, black teachers were transferred to white schools and white teachers to Attucks.

Other doors opened for blacks, and particularly for Attucks students.

Bob Jewell, a basketball star at Attucks in 1951, received his degree at Indiana Central, and in 1957 became the first black to be hired by Eli Lilly and Co. as a scientist. Others soon followed.

Allen Bridgeforth (Attucks '63) attended the University of Louisville until it was necessary for him to return to Indianapolis to get a job.

"I was the second black deliveryman United Parcel had ever hired," he said. "There is no doubt in my mind that the success of our sports teams made a difference in attitude in the city. I think other people started to understand the pride we had in being a graduate of Crispus Attucks."

Andrew W. Ramsey, a prominent columnist at the Indianapolis Recorder, the city's black newspaper, wrote that the importance placed on such basketball games merely highlighted the divide. But in a follow-up column he acknowledged: "It is in sports that democracy has made its longest strides, and democracy appears in athletic contests long before it makes its appearance in other areas of American life."

Said Robertson: "By us winning, it sped up the integration. I truly believe that us winning the state championship brought Indianapolis together."

In 1986, Attucks, the smallest public high school in Indianapolis, with little more than 900 students, was converted to a junior high in IPS' effort to make the best use of its buildings.

The black community, which had opposed creation of the high school in the 1920s, opposed its demise 60 years later. The school had become historic, they argued. It was their history and their school.

Attucks had long since relinquished its basketball dominance. After the incredible run in the 1950s that brought three state championships, the Tigers never returned to the state finals.

Today, Crispus Attucks is a school for grades 6-12, and its history is told by the museum in the old building and the historical marker on the lawn outside. It is told even more plainly by the proud smiles of generations of graduates.