Getting Open
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284 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY majority of those fights and still man- aging fighter divorced his second aged to crack a rib, break a thumb, wife, drank prodigiously, and nearly fracture his right hand and wrist, and doubled his fighting weight. He died have his front teeth rammed through in a large city far from his hometown his lower lip. Taylor also meted out a before reaching 60, forgotten by all staggering amount of physical abuse. but a few boxing historians. Two of his ring opponents, Frankie Bud Taylor’s almost inevitable fall Jerome and Clever Sensio, died from from grace might approach the cliché massive head trauma soon after their of a Hollywood film, but the author bouts with Taylor. In both cases, the gives flesh and blood to this profile victor was fighting again within a with a skillful mix of apocrypha and month. documentation. Like the best folk- Biographer John D. Wright lorists, Wright never lets the ring of explores the story of this local hero truth deafen him to a good story. He and temporary celebrity with care and displays a love for his subject and a balance. Understandably, the bulk of love for the sport —absolutely essen- Wright’s portrayal is committed to tial in his earnest effort to capture Taylor’s professional career, which those who may open this book with almost perfectly matched boxing’s scant interest in either. ascent in popularity across America. Curiously, just as Taylor’s skills began TOM ROZNOWSKI is a musician and to diminish, so did the broad appeal writer living in Bloomington, Indi- of his sport. His effort to build an out- ana. His book “An American Home- door boxing arena in Terre Haute dur- town—Terre Haute, Indiana in 1927” ing the Depression ended in failure. is forthcoming. Over the years that followed, the Getting Open The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball By Tom Graham and Rachel Graham Cody (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008. Pp. xiii, 255. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Clothbound, $24.00; paperbound, $14.95.) When All-American George Talia- basketball. Operating under a “gen- ferro led Indiana University to its first tleman’s agreement,” the conference Big Ten football championship in was lily-white on the hardwood. 1945, its basketball program was still Shelbyville’s Bill Garrett changed three years away from integrating. all that in 1948, but only after a high The Hoosiers reflected the Big Ten school career marked by racism. Until norm regarding African Americans in 1943, segregation was endorsed by REVIEWS 285 the Indiana High School Athletic the late forties. Of 12,000 students, Association, which barred Catholic only 200 were black. It was a diffi- and all-black schools (including Tal- cult time for President Wells, who iaferro’s alma mater Gary Roosevelt was also dealing with public outrage and Indianapolis’s Crispus Attucks) over the controversial Kinsey Report. from competing in its state tourna- Once situated at IU, Garrett was ments. Among the black players embraced by such teammates as Phil whose basketball careers were Buck, who later coached at Frankfort restricted by this segregation was and Anderson Madison Heights; Bill Johnny Wilson. Though he led Tosheff, who worked in the Gary steel Anderson High School to the state mills when he was only 13 and came championship and was named Mr. to IU after serving as an Army Air Basketball, none of the state’s big- Force pilot; and Gene Ring, who later time colleges recruited him. The coached against Garrett in Indi- snubbed athlete settled for Anderson anapolis. “Bill was the shortest cen- College, where he earned small-col- ter in the Big Ten,” said Tosheff, who lege All-American honors. roomed with him. “He was barely Following Wilson, Garrett was 6-3, but was greased lightning.” one of three blacks who started for In Garrett’s three years, IU won Shelbyville’s Golden Bears, derisively 50 of 66 games. His senior season, referred to in parts of Indiana as “The the Hoosiers, with a 19-3 record, were Black Bears.” In their drive to the ranked as high as fifth in the country, 1947 state title, the Shelbyville team but road losses at Minnesota and Illi- was refused service by an Indianapo- nois, the conference champion, cost lis hotel where they planned to rest them the Big Ten title. after their semistate opener. Over- Garrett was lionized during his coming the last-minute scramble for IU career, but his most revealing com- accommodations, the Golden Bears ments about his college experience beat Lawrenceburg to advance to— were made to a Dayton reporter in his and win—the Final Four. junior year. With some hindsight, After leading his team to the state Garrett said he might have attended title and being named Mr. Basketball, an all-black college because too many Garrett enrolled at Tennessee State. people at IU treated him as if they He was, however, plucked off the were doing him a great favor. Signif- southern campus by Indiana Univer- icantly, Garrett made the needed sity’s Coach Branch McCracken, who breakthrough in the Big Ten: one year reluctantly bowed to pressure exert- after he graduated, five conference ed by the African American commu- teams listed black players on their nity and by progressive university roster. president Herman B Wells. Indiana Author Tom Graham, who grew University was barely integrated in up in Garrett’s hometown and played 286 INDIANA MAGAZINE OF HISTORY basketball for IU as a freshman, is JOHN MUTKA has worked for the Koko- well-suited to tell readers of his sub- mo Tribune, Frankfort Times, and ject’s adversities on the way to becom- northwest Indiana Post Tribune over ing IU’s first black basketball player. a fifty-year career. He is a member of Graham and co-author Rachel Gra- the Indiana Sportswriters and Sports- ham Cody should be congratulated casters Hall of Fame and a former for the thoroughness of their research Indiana Sportswriter of the Year. and for the book which resulted from their seven-year project. Enduring Nations Native Americans in the Midwest Edited by R. David Edmunds (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Pp. ix, 283. Illustrations, notes, index. Cloth- bound, $70.00; paperbound, $20.00.) Academics have long recognized R. argue,” Edmunds writes, “that if cur- David Edmunds as a leading scholar rent [intermarriage] trends continue, of the Native American experience in by 2080 almost 90 percent of all the Midwest. His contacts with other Native American people in the Unit- historians enabled him to enlist a ed States will be of less than one-half dozen specialists for Enduring Indian by lineage” (p. 10). The chal- Nations: Native Americans in the Mid- lenges of these trends, however, pale west. Their articles focus mostly on in comparison to those of past cen- Indian and white relations in the turies, when Indians lost their chil- western Great Lakes from the later dren and their lands. decades of the seventeenth century to Indian leaders in the western the early years of the twenty-first cen- Great Lakes employed various sur- tury. One of the book’s themes illu- vival techniques while confronting minates the role of Native leaders, removal. Thomas Burnell Colbert including métis (people of mixed her- portrays Keokuk as a worthy Sauk itage), as they fought the govern- chief, even when compared with ment’s forced removal of Indians to Black Hawk; he was an accommoda- the West during the 1830s. A second tionist who surrendered land to the thread emphasizes the important eco- government and enjoyed a positive nomic issues that confronted Indian relationship with federal officials. peoples as they struggled to retain Bradley Birzer describes Jean Baptiste their heritage. This battle continues Richardville, Miami principal chief, to this day and promises to acceler- as a métis who maneuvered his cul- ate in the future. “Demographers tural advantages to acquire great.