Integrated

Abstract

It is 1960, six years after the US Supreme Court ruled that segregation in the public schools was prohibited and states were ordered to come up with plans for integrating African Americans into the white school systems. An unanticipated response to desegregation was that not all African Americans favored the process, because it meant that some of their cherished institutions would be changed forever. Few such institutions were affected more than the strong tradition of black high school basketball. And nowhere in the nation was that tradition stronger than in basketball-mad Kentucky, where more than fifty black high schools proudly competed in their own league for more than a quarter century. The Kentucky experience of desegregation reflects the dissonance when logic meets emotion. The story centers on Lincoln Institute, a black high school near Louisville founded in 1912 after the state legislature passed a law “to prohibit white and colored persons from attending the same school.” Lincoln Institute was led by a charismatic academic and theologian named Whitney M. Young. In more than three decades as the school's leader, Young overcame prejudice, funding issues, and politics to create a bastion of excellence and respect in the black community. In Integrated, former Lincoln Institute players, students, and teachers tell their stories of angst, regret, and resilience during a largely ignored transitional period in the nation's story of desegregation. Their experiences within the broader racial themes of the 1950s and 1960s provide a unique perspective on one of America's most transformative periods.