The late Jackie Robinson will always be an enduring symbol of the civil rights battle in America when the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Famer became the first player to break Major League Baseball’s color line in post-War World II.
Earl Lloyd was the first African-American to play in the National Basketball Association, the first African-American assistant coach in the NBA and the first full time African American head coach in the NBA. But his role as a pioneer has been less publicized. Lloyd was relegated to the back room of history in a league that has been dominated by African-American icons like Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Oscar Robertson, Elgin Baylor, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan until 2003 when he was inducted into the Naismith Hall of Fame.
West Virginia State, which was established in 1891 as an historically black college in Institute, W.Va. and is the smallest land grant college in America, is in the process of trying to rectify that oversight.
On Feb. 28, West Virginia State, which has since become a predominately white commuter school in the wake of desegregation, will culminate Black History Month with the unveiling of a statue of of its greatest living athlete in the Earl Lloyd Lobby of its new convocation center. The 86-year old Lloyd will be in attendance for the celebration. West Virginia State has raised funding for most of the project but has asked each NBA team and many corporate sponsors for donations to help pay for the base and backdrop.
It is a worthwhile project and the school is planning a silent auction during the weekend with proceeds going to the Earl Lloyd Foundation and Scholarship fund.
Lloyd has personally invited Bill Russell, who has informed him he will attend.
Lloyd was born in 1928 and was raised by his father, Theodore Benjamin Lloyd, and mother, Daisy Mitchell Lloyd, in “the Berg” area of racially segregated Alexandria, Va. They influenced him to become a good student and an outstanding athlete at Parker-Gray High School. The 6-7 Lloyd chose tiny West Virginia State after graduation in 1946 because his high school coach, Lewis Randolph Johnson, attended that college and was a teammate with the coach there, Marques Caldwell.
Lloyd was an impact player in college, dominating the African-American competition in the CIAA.
The quick, defensive-minded 6-7 Lloyd, whose nickname was “Big Cat,” led WVSU to two CIAA Conference and Tournament Championships in 1948 and 1949. He was named All-Conference three times and was All-American twice, as selected by the Pittsburgh Courier in 1949 and 1950. In his sophomore year he led West Virginia State– with an enrollment of 2,000 students– to an undefeated 33-0 season.
But Lloyd also learned a lot about social injustice off the court.
“When I started my freshman year in college,” he said in an interview with Bleacher Report, “I had about seven teammates who fought in World War II and they came home and we were teammates. Here I am, an 18-year-old kid from Alexandria, Virginia, and these guys probably had some narrow brushes with death; you know, it’s just a whole different thing.”
During World War II hundreds of thousands of Americans went overseas to war. Some 125,000 of them were African American. They fought for their country, but when they came home, life for an African American solider was still just as bad. “What angers you the most is our mothers and fathers can go over there and get killed but then you come back home and they tell you where you can’t have a house,” Lloyd said
Lloyd loved campus life. But he lived in an isolated world. Lloyd attended school just 10 miles from Charleston, but rarely visited the city because African Americans weren’t welcome. Pro scouts rarely visited CIAA campuses in those days. Lloyd graduated from WVSU with a degree in physical education in 1950. He found out he had been drafted by the NBA in the spring of his senior year when a classmate told him she heard it on the radio.
Lloyd was one of three African Americans to enter the NBA in the 1950-51 season. He was the second African American player drafted by an NBA team when he was selected by the Washington Capitols in the ninth round, a few picks after Chuck Cooper, who had been chosen by the Boston Celtics. Nate “Sweetwater” Clifton, who attended Xavier La. College and played for the New York Rens after the war, joined the New York Knicks.
Lloyd and Harold Hunter, another African American big man who played for North Carolina College, were both invited to the Caps’ training camp by a franchise looking for phyiscal size. Lloyd survived and became the first African American to play in an NBA game Oct. 31 as a member of Bones McKinney’s starting lineup in a road game against the Rochester Royals, one day ahead of Cooper.
Four years ago, when he was honored in Atlanta, Lloyd remembered wondering if he would make a good enough impression to stick around. Lloyd and the Capitols lost the game. But he played well enough to earn a roster spot in a league that now features the highest percentage of African-American athletes in any of the major professional leagues. “Before the game, I was terrified,” recalled Lloyd, who scored six points and grabbed 10 rebounds in a 78-70 loss. “I had a fear of disappointing the people who depended on me. Luckily, letting people down was not a part of my DNA. I’m glad I was part of something that helped pave the way for others.”
There were stories the Klu Klux Klan might show up that night. But fans in Rochester treated Lloyd well that night. So did his teammates.
Much of that has been lost because the NBA was still in its barn storming stage, trying to survive. “In 1950, basketball was like a babe in the woods,” Lloyd once said. “it didn’t enjoy the notoriety baseball enjoyed.”
Lloyd played seven games with Washington before the Capitals’ franchise collapsed. He enlisted in the Army in 1951 and his former teammates dispersed to other teams. Lloyd captured four U.S. Army basketball titles before returning to the NBA in 1952. He and teammate Jim Tucker became the first African Americans to win an NBA title in 1955 with Dolph Schayes.and the Syracuse Nationals. That year, Lloyd, who started at power forward, averaged 10.2 points and 7.7 rebounds for Syracuse, who defeated the Fort Wayne Pistons 4-3 win a best of seven series in the finals. Lloyd closed out his playing career with the Detroit Pistons from 1958 to 1960. He had a solid, but not spectacular career. Lloyd played in over 560 games in nine seasons and averaged 8.4 points and 6.4 rebounds per game. The Pistons played their home games at Indianapolis and Lloyd was subject to ugly racist comments.
But Lloyd, much like Robinson, never responded, using their hatred as motivation and paving the way for other African-Americans to make their mark.
After he retired In 1960, Lloyd served as assistant coach and scout for the Detroit Pistons. As a scout, he helped draft Bailey Howell, but failed to interest Detroit in future legends Earl “the Pearl” Monroe and Willis Reed. Lloyd served as the NBA first non-playing coach with the Pistons from 1971 to 1973. After basketball, he worked for Chrysler and as a job-placement administrator with the Detroit Public Schools. In the 1990s, Lloyd worked for the steel and auto parts company of former Piston, Dave Bing, a Hall of Famer who had played for Lloyd during his years as head coach with the Pistons before retiring in Tennessee.
Lloyd was named to the NAIA Silver and Golden Anniversary Teams and, in a quirk of history, the newly constructed basketball court at T.C. Williams High in Lloyd’s home town was named in his honor in 2007. Lloyd attended Parker-Gray two decades before it merged with T.C. Williams to become the combined, desegregated high school that went on to win the Virginia state football championship and the subject of the Disney movie, “Remember the Titans.”
Lloyd will get another chance to make his journey one more time at the end of this month. It should be a nice moment.
