Nearly 70 years after breaking barriers on the basketball court, six members of the 1950s Tennessee State basketball program met with Vice President and HBCU graduate Kamala Harris.
Henry Carlton, Robert Clark, Ron Hamilton, Ernie Jones, George Finley, Dick Barnett and George Finley met with Kama Harris in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on Friday.
“I thought this would never take place,” said Finley, who was part of the 1959 championship team.”[Winning] the championship was big, but it wasn’t as big as being here with [Vice President] Harris today.”
These six men — along with the rest of the team — played for the 1957 Tennessee A&I program that became the first from a black college to win a national basketball title. The program went on to win the same title in 1958 and 1959, becoming the first college basketball program to win three consecutive national titles.
“I look at each of you and the path and the journey that you’ve been on and your willingness to tell the story in such an active way is so important,” Kamala Harris, a graduate of Howard University, told the men. “There are forces right now that would try to overlook or deny our history. But I think the only way that we will continue to strengthen ourselves and see progress as a country is when we remember where we’ve been to help us guide where we want to be.”
The Tennessee State program was led by Basketball Hall of Fame John McLendon, who helped the program climb the NAIA mountain less than five years after black colleges were first allowed to participate in the tournament. Barnett was the team’s star player who would go on to be drafted into the NBA in 1959 and go on to become an NBA All-Star and two-time champion with the New York Knicks. The 87-year-old was recently elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame and will be enshrined in the hall this fall.
Harris has been an outspoken ambassador during her stint as Vice President, appearing at the NCAA Tournament and Celebration Bowl during Howard appearances and recently called Grambling State after its NCAA Tournament win.
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