Satch Sanders: Basketball Player & Business Man

Part I

It is the early 1960s, and Thomas " Satch " Sanders , the lanky product of 116th Street and Lenox Avenue in Harlem, now a few years out of New York University, is on a road trip with the Boston Celtics. Times are still tough for blacks on the road. The Lester Maddox types still think about swinging ax handles as they stand in front of their restaurants rather than serve blacks.

This trip takes the team to Marion, Indiana, where a proud mayor rolls out the red carpet and hands each player a key to the city. The athletes are hungry, though, and once the ceremonies are over, they rush off to the nearest restaurant. There, Sanders and two of his teammates, Bill Russell and K. C. Jones, are refused service because of the color of their skin. That night Russell, incensed, takes a cab to the mayor's front door and throws the keys to the city back at him.

The next day sees the team in Louisville, Kentucky, for an exhibition game. When the black players head for the hotel coffee shop, once again they are turned away. Only when the management discovers that they are ball players are the rules changed. The black players take their seats at the table and, as the waiter begins to take their orders, they tell him that they were only kidding, that they aren't really with the Celtics. Again, suddenly, they are told to leave. The next day, following Russell's lead, the black players refuse to play in the Louisville game.

Today Tom Sanders tells the story matter-of-factly, as though it were an occurrence so common that it could no longer cause surprise, that an emotional immunity to such slights sets in. Sanders does not tell you what his white teammate, Tom Heinsohn, recalls about the incident. "You know what Satch did," Heinsohn said some years later. "He cried."