Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of college basketball. In 1947, the same year Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball, Garrett integrated big-time college basketball. By joining the basketball program at Indiana University, he broke the gentleman's agreement that had barred black players from the Big Ten, college basketball's most important conference. While enduring taunts from opponents and pervasive segregation at home and on the road, Garrett became the best player Indiana had ever had, an all-American, and, in 1951, the third African American drafted in the NBA. In basketball, as Indiana went so went the country. Within a year of his graduation from IU, there were six African American basketball players on Big Ten teams. Soon tens, then hundreds, and finally thousands walked through the door Garrett opened to create modern college and professional basketball. Unlike Robinson, however, Garrett is unknown today.

Getting Open is more than "just" a basketball book. In the years immediately following World War II, sports were at the heart of America's common culture. And in the fledgling civil rights efforts of African Americans across the country, which would coalesce two decades later into the Movement, the playing field was where progress occurred publicly and symbolically.

Indiana was an unlikely place for a civil rights breakthrough. It was stone-cold isolationist, widely segregated, and hostile to change. But in the late 1940s, Indiana had a leader of the largest black YMCA in the world, who viewed sports as a wedge for broader integration; a visionary university president, who believed his institution belonged to all citizens of the state; a passion for high school and college basketball; and a teenager who was, as nearly as any civil rights pioneer has ever been, the perfect person for his time and role. This is the story of how they came together to move the country toward getting open.

Father-daughter authors Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody spent seven years reconstructing a full portrait of how these elements came together; interviewing Garrett's family, friends, teammates, and coaches, and digging through archives and dusty closets to tell this compelling, long-forgotten story.

"Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of college basketball, even if today he's mostly remembered only by dedicated Hoosier hoops fans. Because Indiana was as racially intolerant as the South during the early 20th century, it wasn't surprising that although Garrett had led his small town's underdog team to the 1947 state high school championship, he couldn't play for Indiana University, which followed the Big Ten schools' '"gentleman's agreement" not to recruit or play blacks.' But during the postwar civil rights movement, IU's administration was pressured to accept Garrett on the team. Invariably calm and courteous, no matter how many players taunted him or hotels refused to give him a room on the road, Garrett played at IU from 1948 to 1951 and on the night of his last game was given a roaring ovation. The Korean War ended Garrett's chance to gain immortality with the recently integrated Celtics, but he spent the rest of his life happily coaching and teaching. Father and daughter Graham and Cody refrain from reveling in numbing, point-by-point details, instead offering a striking and honest portrait of a man overcoming racism in a place that barely acknowledged its existence." Publishers Weekly (Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information)

"'Getting Open' has all the earmarks of an inspiring movie: 'Remember the Titans' judiciously spliced with 'Hoosiers.' It also brings to mind another instructive film, 'Glory Road,' which recently commemorated the 40th anniversary of Texas Western's all-black starting five winning the 1966 NCAA championship.

Nineteen years earlier, the same year that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier... Washington Post Book Review (read the entire Washington Post review) with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Indiana University's Bill Garrett became the first African-American to play Big Ten basketball.

For years, both in the Big Ten and in major league baseball, 'gentlemen's agreements' precluded the need for any formal opposition to integration. 'Getting Open' tells the story of how Garrett cleared such hurdles, his legacy and that of those who helped him along the way.

In 1947, Garrett, 6"2', led Indiana's Shelbyville High School to the state championship and was named Indiana's 'Mr. Basketball.' Four years later Garrett, an All-American in his senior year at IU, was still the only black player in the Big Ten, which speaks both to the power of 'gentlemen's agreements' and to the more subtle import of the book's subtitle.

To this day, Garrett's story remains largely unknown. Drafted by the Boston Celtics in 1951, the third black player ever drafted into the National Basketball Association, Garrett's 'career' in pro ball was brief. Following his two years of compulsory military service, the Celtics relinquished their rights to Garrett, who spent two partial seasons touring with the Harlem Globetrotters at a time when their remarkable talents — tested but rarely matched by NBA clubs through the late 1940s and early "50s — morphed into pure entertainment, a frustrating and depressing ordeal for Garrett, 'always a fierce competitor.' He returned to Shelbyville and eventually coached Indianapolis Crispus Attucks High School to the state championship. He died much too young in 1974, at the age of 45, though his life was full and rich by any measure but longevity.

To appreciate his accomplishments, one must appreciate Indiana high school basketball: although basketball was born in Springfield, Mass., it came of age in Indiana, where the national phenomenon we now know as 'March Madness' 'is the Indiana high school state tournament of the 1940s gone national.' Add the fact that in Indiana through the early 1950s 'segregation was the crazy uncle in the attic, the unspoken code of conduct ... ' and one has a sense of the true milieu in which this story unfolds.

But beyond the racial overtones that help define time and place in the book, its greater context includes the present. For a country at a crucial turning point in its social consciousness, 'Getting Open' offers a quiet but necessary reminder of certain essential values that perhaps might still be within our reach.

Larry Moffi is co-author (with Jonathan Kronstadt) of 'Crossing the Line: Black Major Leaguers, 1947-1959,' and the forthcoming 'The Conscience of the Game.'" Reviewed by Larry Moffi, Washington Post Book World (Copyright 2006 Washington Post Book World Service/Washington Post Writers Group)
(hide most of this review)

"In the years before the Civil Rights Movement, black men and women around the country fought for their civil rights and became our unsung heroes by making strides that went mostly unnoticed, and paying prices few realized. Their sacrifices will never be forgotten. Bill Garrett was one young man who heard the spirit of history calling, and answered it." Congressman John Lewis

"The authors, a father-daughter team, write a lively story, full of fascinating figures — heroes and villains — who changed history." Chicago Tribune

The amazing, heartrending story of Bill Garret reveals how a white community passionate about basketball did not allow their humanity to win over racial prejudice.

Tom Graham grew up in Bill Garrett's hometown. He played basketball there and on the freshman team at Indiana University, so he knew many of Garrett's coaches, teammates, and fans. A graduate of Harvard Law School, he is an international trade lawyer in Washington, D.C.

Rachel Graham Cody is a graduate of Swarthmore College and Harvard Divinity School, where she focused on African American studies. She lives with her family in Oregon.

Contents
Map of Indiana
Prologue

Part One
1 October 15, 1943
2 The Way Things Are
3 Frank's Office
4 The Black Bears
5 January 3, 1947
6 Hoosier Hysteria
7 Golden Again
8 March 22, 1947

Part Two
9 The Sheriff
10 "Comin' Out a Man"
11 Gentleman's Agreement
12 The Chief and the President
13 Down t'IU
14 The Hurryin' Hoosiers
15 Coming Home
16 A Gym Needs a Name

Postscript
Eight Who Came Before
Acknowledgments
Notes
Sources
Index