Remember Don Barksdale?

This Bay Area name sort of rings a bell but it should produce a symphony:

Basketball's Forgotten Pioneer
Resurrecting Don Barksdale
Dave Zirin
March 6, 2007

Should someone who averaged 11 points and eight rebounds over a four-year NBA career make the Basketball Hall of Fame? I'm not talking about Chris Kaman or the immortal Eddie Lee Wilkins. This is the story of a gentleman named Don Angelo Barksdale and a movement to compel the NBA to do right by their own past. Today, Don Barksdale is sports history's invisible man, a trailblazer who resides in shadows.

Everybody knows Jackie Robinson broke Major League Baseball's color line in 1947. Fewer will know the NFL was desegregated by Robinson's UCLA teammate Kenny Washington and future Hollywood actor Woody Strode. The more serious sports fan will also will tell you that Nate "Sweetwater" Clifton was the first African American to sign a contract with an NBA team and Earl Lloyd the first to actually get off the bench and log some playing time. More will know the immortal Bill Russell was the first black basketball head coach.

But I challenge even the most die-hard hoops junkie - someone who mainlines Allen Iverson youtube videos in their lunch hour - to name the first black NCAA All American. I challenge you to name the first African American to make the U.S. Olympic team. I challenge you to name the first black man to play in the NBA All-Star game. Go on, ask your most hoops-fiending friend and I promise you'll get that "Bush in the headlights" look. The answer to all these questions is Don Barksdale. Barksdale died in 1993 of throat cancer at the age of 69, and there is a push simmering to make sure the history he represents doesn't die with him...

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