In 2023, roughly 70.4% of NBA players and more than 60% of the WNBA were African American. 50% of the 68 college teams were made up of African Americans. A lot has gone down in history to make that majority population possible, and it wasn’t easy, especially during a period when some D1 schools had zero black basketball players.
The odd one out
After being named Indiana Mr. Basketball as the top high school player in the state in 1956, Oscar Robertson took the natural next step of enrolling in college. His choice, the University of Cincinnati, didn’t turn out to be the dream program he had hoped for. This was the late 1950s, and many Southern universities weren’t recruiting Black athletes at all.
“When I went to the University of Cincinnati, I was the first black to play there, and I didn’t realize it,” Robertson said . “When I went to school there, I didn’t see any black people. So one day I told a coach I want to have a meeting. So I let him and said what was going on; he told me the story that they just don’t like Blacks at the school.”