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: ''For the locomotive, see Black Five.'' The term Black Fives refers to all-black basketball teams that thrived in the United States between 1904, when basketball was first introduced to African Americans on a large scale organized basis, and 1950, when the National Basketball Association became racially integrated. The period is known as the "Black Fives Era" or "Early Black Basketball" or simply "Black Basketball". Early basketball teams were often called "fives” in reference to the five starting players. All-black teams were known as colored quints, colored fives, Negro fives, or black fives. Dozens of all-black teams emerged during the Black Fives Era, in New York City, Washington, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Cleveland, and other cities. They were sponsored by or affiliated with churches, athletic clubs, social clubs, businesses, newspapers, YMCA branches, and other organizations. The terms "Black Fives" and "Black Fives Era" are trademarked phrases owned by Black Fives, Inc., whose founder and owner, Claude Johnson, coined the terms while researching and promoting the period's history. == Washington and New York origins == Edwin Henderson is considered the "Grandfather of Black Basketball." He was a black gym teacher who is credited with being the first to introduce the game of basketball to African Americans in a wide scale organized way, in the winter of 1904 in Washington, D.C., through physical education classes in the district's racially segregated public school system. It was thirteen years after basketball was invented. Henderson learned the sport while taking summer classes in physical training at Harvard University. He envisioned basketball not as an end in itself but as a public-health and civil-rights tool. Henderson believed that, by organizing black athletics, including basketball, it would be possible to send more outstanding black student athletes to excel at northern white colleges and debunk negative stereotypes of the race. He reasoned that in sports, unlike politics and business, the black race would get a fair chance to succeed. According to Henderson, the relatively new sport was not an immediate hit with his students. “Among blacks, basketball was at first considered a ‘sissy’ game, as was tennis in the rugged days of football,” he later wrote.〔(Black Basketball's Direct Link To Hemenway Gymnasium In Boston (Part II) ), (c) 2003–2012 Black Fives, Inc.〕 In 1906, Henderson co-founded (along with Garnet Wilkinson of the M Street High School and W. A. Joiner of Howard University, as well as W. A. Decatur and Robert Mattingly of Armstrong Technical High School) the Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association of Middle Atlantic States, an amateur sports organization designed to encourage competition among intercollegiate and interscholastic athletes, in track and field as well as in basketball. Subsequently, several all-black basketball teams made up of players from public schools, athletic clubs, churches, colleges, and Colored YMCAs began to emerge in the Washington, DC area. Simultaneously, basketball was catching on among African Americans in New York City, and these two urban centers served as the early incubators of the black game. The first independent African American basketball team in the history of the sport was the Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn, which was organized in 1907. This team promptly won the first "Colored Basketball World's Championship"—a title coined by African American sportswriters to honor the best all-black basketball team, by their informal consensus—for the 1907-08 season. The first inter-city competition between two African American basketball teams took place on December 18, 1908, when the Smart Set Athletic Club traveled to Washington, DC to play the Crescent Athletic Club. Brooklyn won the game.〔(100 Year Anniversary of First Black Inter-City Basketball Game ), (c) 2003–2012 Black Fives, Inc.〕 The first all-black pay-for-play team was the New York All-Stars, formed in the fall of 1910 by former St. Christopher Club manager Major A. Hart. Hart wrote: "That this game has taken a firm hold on our people has been demonstrated beyond a doubt. Now it is up to the players and their friends (advance the black game ) by not only forming a basketball league among the teams, but playing good, fast, clean games, eliminating therefrom all petty jealousies, quarrels and the little meannesses that have a tendency to disgust the people who assemble to witness these contests. We want to play the game as our white friends play it. That is, in the spirit of fairness and for the benefits that the exercise will give us and the enjoyment we can afford to our friends." Hart clearly envisioned basketball as entertainment and therefore as an opportunity to create revenue—not just as physical education. Like Henderson and the 12th Street YMCA team, he recognized that a winning team of all-star performers would help further popularize the game among African-Americans in New York. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Black Fives」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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