Blue White Illustrated

2015-16 men's basketball media guide, even among the long list of nearly 675 letter winners since 1897. Nor will you see anything about him in the Penn State All-Sports Museum, and I'll share the blame for that. Now, probably for the first time, you will read the previously unknown details about Cumberland Posey's years at Penn State. No one was more influential As many readers know, I helped start the All-Sports Museum and was the first director, serving in that position from 2001-05. I am still involved as part of the museum advisory board and I also do occasional part-time work for the ath- letic department's strategic communi- cations office, which produces the var- sity sports media guides. I first learned about Posey when I be- gan consulting for the museum project in 2000. In a thick book outlining the major points of each exhibit, the design- er of the museum had referred to Posey as the school's first African-American basketball player with a couple of sen- tences about his background involving the famous Homestead Grays and Loen- di Basketball Club. Jackie Esposito, the archivist who over- sees the Penn State Special Collections Library, showed me a photo of Posey on a basketball team from the 1911 college yearbook La Vie. However, this wasn't the varsity team; it was the 1909 fresh- man team (better known as the graduat- ing class of 1913) that competed in the In- terclass League, the intramurals of that era. Pictured are six players and another student, perhaps the manager. Posey is in the first row on the far right. No one at the archives was sure Posey had played on the varsity team as a sophomore because he is not included in the 1910-11 varsity photo, roster and write-up in the 1912 La Vie. All that was known by archives per- sonnel was that Posey left school during or after his sophomore year and went back to his home in suburban Pittsburgh. However, the yearbooks and other archive information proved Posey was only the second African-American to en- roll at Penn State after Calvin Walker in 1899, and, thus, the school's first black athlete; Walker did not play organized sports. In reflecting back, I don't remem- ber why we didn't include that photo of the 1909 freshman team in the basketball exhibit or, at least, mention his historic status at Penn State within the exhibit. Once the museum was operating, I forgot all about Posey until a few years later when I began researching a possible book about Penn State's black athletes. What I found was the fascinating life of a man now recognized as one of the most monumental African-American sports luminaries of all-time. One could write an entire book about Posey, and Rob Ruck, a tenured history professor at the University of Pittsburgh, would be the person to do it. Ruck is one of the lead- ing authorities on Posey, and his 1993 book, "Sandlot Season: Sport in Black Pittsburgh," is a trove of information about Posey. My research also led me to numerous other sources that gave me a comprehensive profile of and great re- spect for Cumberland Posey Jr. Posey's time at Penn State is merely a footnote in his long ultra-successful ca- reer as a player, manager, owner and en- trepreneur in amateur and professional baseball and basketball. No one was more influential than Posey in the first half of the 20th century in helping African- Americans gain respect and fame for their athleticism, despite the segregation and racism of that period. He is best known for his 35 years with the Home- stead Grays, but his basketball achieve- ments were phenomenal for his day. A mysterious arrival The Basketball Hall of Fame news re- lease on the class of 2016 succinctly cited his accomplishments: "Posey was an ex- ceptional multisport athlete recognized as the greatest African-American bas- ketball player of his time, playing from the early 1900s to mid-1920s. After leading Duquesne University in scoring for three seasons, he created, managed and played for the legendary 'Loendi Big Five.' His team was the most dominant of the black fives era, winning four straight Colored Basketball World Champi- onships. Upon retirement from basket- ball, Posey switched his focus to baseball where he excelled for 35 years as a player and businessman. Posey was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006." The sentence about Posey playing for Duquesne is quite deceiving. He defi- nitely was Duquesne's leading scorer from 1916-18 but he played under the name of Charles W. Cumbert, and Duquesne doesn't hide that intriguing fact. For years, the Pittsburgh Catholic college has included that morsel in its annual basketball media guide, but without explaining why. Posey's false name was brought up at the news conference Duquesne held the day of the Basketball Hall of Fame's an- nouncement. Charles Johnson, who started a foundation to honor African- American basketball pioneers, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette he has not found any evidence that Posey was en- rolled at Duquesne under his real name. Eligibility could have been the reason, not only because Posey had played at Penn State but also because he had played semipro and pro basketball for years after leaving Penn State. Johnson believes the light-skinned Posey passed himself off as white because some oppo- nents refused to play against blacks. And that may be true to some extent, but as my later research showed, Posey's African-American teams earned a na- tional reputation by beating all-white, all-black and mixed-race teams. In my research, I discovered that more than two years before Duquesne started a varsity basketball team in January 1913, Posey had played on Penn State's varsity team of 1910-11. He also briefly attended Pitt in 1913 without participating in any varsity sports, and he married the love of his life. Meanwhile, shortly after leaving Penn State in 1911, Posey and his older broth- er, Seward, organized a basketball team they called the Monticellos. The team grew from an amateur mishmash into a semipro power and in that fortuitous year of 1913, the Monticellos became as-

• Cover