Chuck Cooper (basketball)

• 1. Introduction

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  Chuck Cooper stepped onto an NBA court for the first time on the 1st of November, 1950, against the Fort Wayne Pistons. That night, three men crossed a line that had been drawn for decades. Cooper, Nat "Sweetwater" Clifton, and Earl Lloyd became the first African-American players in the National Basketball Association. But Cooper's place in that history began several months earlier, on the 25th of April, 1950, when the Boston Celtics called his name at the draft. What made a team owner defy the quiet resistance of his peers? What did Cooper's path look like before that draft room, and what did he do with the rest of his life after the final buzzer? Those are the questions this documentary will answer.

• 2. Pittsburgh Roots

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  Charles Henry Cooper was born on the 29th of September, 1926, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Daniel and Emma Cooper. Daniel worked as a mailman, and Emma taught school. The neighborhood that shaped him would later become the city he devoted much of his adult life to improving.

  At Westinghouse High School in Pittsburgh, Cooper averaged more than 13 points per game in his senior year and earned a spot on the All-City first team as a center. He graduated in 1944. From there, he enrolled at West Virginia State College and played a semester of basketball before the United States Navy called him into service during the final stages of World War II.

  After his discharge, he arrived at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, where his college career would establish him as one of the most accomplished players the school had ever seen. He started every game across all four years. His four-season total of 990 points set the school record. The Duquesne Dukes posted a 78-19 record during his time there and earned invitations to the National Invitation Tournament twice.

  His final college season, 1949-50, was the first in which Duquesne finished nationally ranked for the entire year. Cooper captained that team to a 23-6 record and a sixth-place national ranking. The Afro-American newspaper, in its issue of the 18th of November, 1950, noted that Cooper was the first Black player named a consensus second-team All-American college basketball athlete.

• 3. The Draft That Changed the League

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  Coming out of Duquesne in 1950, Cooper signed with the Harlem Globetrotters. That signing could have been the end of his professional story, with the NBA still an all-white league. Then the Boston Celtics made a decision that their counterparts across the league were not prepared for.

  When word spread that Celtics owner Walter A. Brown intended to draft Cooper, officials from other teams urged him to hold back. They argued he should not be drafted because he was Black. Brown's response has since become one of the most quoted lines in NBA history: "I don't give a damn if he's striped, plaid or polka dot. Boston takes Charles Cooper of Duquesne."

  On the 25th of April, 1950, the Celtics selected Cooper with the 13th overall pick, the first pick of the second round of the 1950 NBA Draft. He became the first African American ever drafted by an NBA franchise. The team he joined was coached by Red Auerbach and included Bob Cousy as a teammate.

  Later that same year, Cooper, Clifton, and Lloyd took the court in NBA games, collectively ending the league's unwritten color barrier. Cooper's debut came on the 1st of November, 1950, against the very team that would later become one of his employers, the Fort Wayne Pistons.

• 4. Six Seasons on the Court

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  Cooper played four full seasons with the Celtics, then was traded to the Milwaukee Hawks. He ended his NBA career with the Fort Wayne Pistons. Across those six seasons, he appeared in 409 regular-season games, scored 2,725 points, and pulled down 2,431 rebounds. His career regular-season average settled at 6.7 points and 5.9 rebounds per game.

  In the playoffs, Cooper contributed to five postseason runs. His best scoring average in those appearances came with the Celtics in 1952, when he averaged 11.0 points per game across three games. His playoff career stretched to 26 games, during which he averaged 5.3 points per game.

  The record books from that era carry a notable gap. Statistics for blocked shots, steals, and turnovers were not tracked at the time, so a full accounting of his defensive contributions is impossible. What the numbers do capture is a player who was consistent, durable, and productive across the better part of a decade at the highest level of the sport.

  After leaving the NBA, Cooper spent a year playing for the Harlem Magicians. A car crash injured his back and brought his playing career to an end.

• 5. Life After Basketball

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  Cooper earned a Master of Social Work from the University of Minnesota in 1960. The degree pointed toward the second chapter of his life, which he spent working inside the city that had made him.

  He served on the Pittsburgh school board. The city appointed him director of parks and recreation, a position that made him the first Black department head in Pittsburgh's government. He also worked as an urban affairs officer for Pittsburgh National Bank, supporting its affirmative action program.

  Cooper had married twice, first in 1951 and then in 1957 to Irva Lee, with whom he had four children. He died in Pittsburgh on the 5th of February, 1984, of liver cancer at Forbes Hospice. He was 57 years old.

  More than three decades after his death, the basketball world formally recognized what Cooper had done. On the 9th of September, 2019, he was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. The induction placed his name alongside the institution's highest honorees, and it did so in the same city, Springfield, Massachusetts, that had housed the Hall since 1959.