Edwin Henderson

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Edwin B. Henderson (1884-1977), widely recognized as the "Father of Black Basketball," introduced basketball in Washington, D.C. in 1904 to African Americans on a wide scale, organized basis.

Given that African American players dominate the game of basketball today, it would seem difficult to overstate the importance of the role that Henderson played in basketball history.

Henderson’s involvement in basketball – and in the advocacy of organized physical fitness and recreation overall – was overarching. He was a tireless in organizing the first all-black amateur athletic association, the Interscholastic Athletic Association, the Washington, D.C. Public School Athletic League and the Eastern Board of Officials, a training center that, for decades was the go-to pool for highly qualified African American referees. For 25 years, Henderson was also the appointed head of the Department of Physical Education for the segregated Washington, D.C. school system.

His life is the topic of numerous noteworthy books, papers and proceedings, as well as a doctoral dissertation. Henderson himself was the author of several seminal books about African American participation in sports, including his landmark work, The Negro In Sports (Washington, DC: Associated Publishers, Inc., 1939), as well as a regular contributor in the National Negro Press Association with pioneering magazines such as The Messenger and Crisis.

From the 1910s through the 1950s, Henderson played and coached basketball, and taught and influenced perhaps hundreds of thousands of Washington area schoolchildren in basketball, including many later luminaries such as Duke Ellington and Charles Drew. In 1973, Henderson was elected Honorary President of the North American Society for Sport History. In 1974, along with Joe Louis, Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Bill Russell and Althea Gibson, he became an inaugural member of the Black Athletes Hall of Fame.

Henderson died in 1977, at age 93.

Beyond athletics, Henderson and his wife, Mary Ellen, also an educator, were also determined and successful civil rights activists, fighting against housing discrimination in Falls Church, Virginia, and against segregated sports facilities in the greater Washington, D.C. area. Where at one time Falls Church tried to prevent the Hendersons from owning land in certain parts of town because of their race, now the local recreation center bears a plaque dedicated to Edwin Henderson’s legacy, and, in 2005, a local middle school was named after Henderson's wife.