{"id":454181,"date":"2026-02-02T19:28:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T19:28:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/454181\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T19:28:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T19:28:10","slug":"a-hotel-didnt-allow-the-first-african-american-drafted-into-nba-to-stay-with-his-celtics-teammates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/454181\/","title":{"rendered":"A Hotel Didn’t Allow The First African-American Drafted Into NBA To Stay With His Celtics Teammates"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA held its inaugural Pioneers Classic on Sunday when the Boston Celtics<\/a> took on the Milwaukee Bucks<\/a> at TD Garden. The game was a celebration of the 75th anniversary of the debut seasons of Chuck Cooper, Earl Lloyd, and Nat \u201cSweetwater\u201d Clifton, the NBA\u2019s first Black players.<\/p>\n

Cooper was the first African-American to be drafted by an NBA team, the Celtics, and his son, Chuck Cooper III, spoke to ESPN about the difficulties his late father faced and how the great Bob Cousy was by his side.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Celtics played a regular-season game in North Carolina,\u201d Cooper said. \u201cAnd I believe it was at Raleigh, North Carolina, and they wouldn\u2019t let my dad stay at the hotel. So my dad was like, \u2018You know Red [Auerbach]? Don\u2019t make a big deal of it. I\u2019ll head back to Boston on the next train and get ready for the next game.\u2019 But Bob Cousy was his good friend, and he wasn\u2019t going to let my father catch that train by himself.\u201d<\/p>\n

This isn\u2019t 200 years ago, of course. The Celtics had selected Cooper with the 13th pick in the 1950 NBA Draft, and it can boggle the mind at times how different the U.S. was at that time. Even Black players who came after Cooper, such as Oscar Robertson<\/a>, have spoken about similar experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe got to the train station,\u201d Cousy said. \u201cWe decided to make a pitstop and go to the boys\u2019 room. We look up there, and there are the two signs. One with an arrow pointing to where the colored went to the restroom, and the other for Whites.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd it was a moment in time where you\u2019re standing with a close friend, and you\u2019re embarrassed for the world,\u201d Cousy added. \u201cYou just don\u2019t know what to say. You just don\u2019t know how to explain that type of overt stupidity. To this day, I\u2019m offended by it.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was only in 1964 that segregation ended in the U.S. with the passage of the Civil Rights Act. Cooper was gone from the NBA by then. He\u2019d only play six seasons in the league, averaging 6.7 points, 5.9 rebounds, and 1.8 assists per game for his career.<\/p>\n

Cooper\u2019s name tends to get forgotten at times, but his story is one everyone should know<\/a>. The NBA\u2019s honoring Lloyd, Clifton, and him with this game was a great gesture. Lloyd was the first Black player to play in the NBA, while Clifton was the first to sign an NBA contract.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA held its inaugural Pioneers Classic on Sunday when the Boston Celtics took on the Milwaukee Bucks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":454182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-454181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=454181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/454181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/454182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=454181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=454181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=454181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}