by Jim Junot
Virginia Union University
Sports Information Director
A Basketball Game, A Controversy and a Student-Athlete Who Paid the Ultimate Price
The old man sits in the Belgian Building on the Virginia Union University campus, alone in his eloquence.
His cane rests to his right. His eyes peer out through round glasses above a white moustache.
Modern-day student-athletes walk past the elderly gentleman, hardly giving him a second glance, unaware of the piece of living history they are passing by.
Once in a while, his eyes follow them, as if sizing up the athletes of 2010.
I approach him. “Excuse me, sir,” I say. “Aren't you Roland McDaniel?”
A slight smile crosses the old man's face. His eyes suddenly twinkle.
“Yes, yes I am,” he answers.
For the next 30 minutes, he tells me his story.
“I'm 89 years old, and I'm the only CIAA tennis champion ever to go to Virginia Union,” he begins.
But there is more to the story than that.
Much more.
Too Good for a College Team?
Although many people are familiar with VUU's basketball success in the last 30 years under the guidance of legendary coach Dave Robbins, an equal number are totally unaware that Union basketball was equally as successful more than 70 years ago.
The 1938-39 Panther squad was known as “The Dream Team,” and VUU had won the first of it's 23 CIAA conference titles that season.
McDaniel is the last surviving member of that team. “We were really good,” he said. “We won two straight CIAA titles and should have won three.”
This dynasty was built during a time when VUU's student population numbered around 300. VUU's coach and athletic director, Henry Hucles, had built the basketball team into a powerhouse.
Too powerful for a college team, some said.
Vicious rumors and whispers started about the Panthers. Some couldn't believe that a small, private university could field such a great team without the lure of payment to the players.
The Longest Match
In the meantime, McDaniel was also playing tennis for Union, and in 1940, he became the first and only VUU tennis player to win the individual tennis championship of the CIAA.
“We played tennis in the fall back then,” he says. “We played the championships at Lincoln University in Pennsylvania in November, and it was really cold.”
McDaniel advanced to the championship after downing his opponent from Johnson C. Smith University 15-13, 6-0 in the quarter-finals and then upset the number-one seed, Maurice “Flip” Jackson from Howard University, 2-6, 6-2, 7-5, according to the 1940 CIAA Bulletin.
The quarter-final match is still the longest CIAA title match ever played.
“We didn't have tie-breakers back then,” he said. “I played the longest match in the history of the CIAA, and won in one of the shortest matches ever played.”
McDaniel had a secret weapon, though. His clothing.
“I was the only player to have a pair of long white tennis pants," he said, smiling. "The others had to play in shorts in the cold.".
In the championship match, McDaniels downed Eugene Harrington of Shaw University 6-1, 3-6, 6-3.
Over time, I had accumulated a file on the VUU tennis team. I showed McDaniel the part of the file that mentioned him. In one picture in the 1940 CIAA Bulletin, McDaniel is standing in the back row next to another Union player, Clemenceu Givens.
“He was my doubles partner, and we were really close,” he said as he tapped the photo. “He got called up when World War II broke out.”
Givens became one of the original Tuskegee Airmen. and was shot down in Europe behind enemy lines.
McDaniel grows silent.
“He's passed on now,” he said.
The Rumors Return
After the 1940 tennis season, McDaniel returned to playing basketball.
The Panthers' success on the hardwood continued, with VUU winning 23 of 25 games.
But so did the rumors, mostly among the other schools in the CIAA and the CIAA office.
Things came to a head between VUU and the CIAA on March 7, 1941.
The Belgian Building
The Belgian Building wasn't originally built on the Union campus. It was built in New York, N.Y., for the 1939 World's Fair. Union had been awarded the building by the United States government after Nazi Germany had invaded Belgium.
VUU planned to use the building as a home basketball court, since at the time the Panthers had none. VUU played its home games either at the old Municipal Recreational Center or on the stage at The Mosque (now The Landmark Theatre in Richmond, Va.).
But Union had to pay for the transportation of the building from New York to Richmond, and the best way to do that was to play an exhibition basketball game against a well-known opponent.
The World Champions
The most well-known professional basketball team at the time was the Harlem Globetrotters. The National Basketball Association didn't exist yet, and the Globetrotters were the World Professional Champions.
It would be like VUU playing the NBA champion Los Angeles Lakers today. The game, since it was to be played against professional players, had to receive special permission from the AAU and the CIAA.
The game was to be played at the Blues Armory on Sixth Street in Richmond, Va. Tickets were 99 cents (equivalent to $15 in today's money). A sell-out crowd of 2,000 people packed the Blues Armory on March 7, 1941 as the Globetrotters and the Panthers took to the court.
But behind the scenes, trouble was brewing.
A Warning Too Late
Less than an hour before the game the CIAA ruled that the Globetrotters were an “outlaw” team, and that VUU faced severe penalties if it went through with the game.
The Globetrotters were already on the court, and there were more than 2,000 people packed in the stands expecting a game.
If Union backed out now, not only would it have to pay the Trotters for their appearance, but it would have to refund the money to an angry crowd, and the hopes of VUU having its own basketball court might be gone forever.
Hucles, the VUU Athletic Director and Head Basketball Coach, made the only decision he could, to go through with the game.
“We couldn't cancel the game,” McDaniel says. “We just couldn't.”
The game itself would go down in VUU history as one of the most memorable it's ever played. The contest was tied eight times and wasn't decided until the Globetrotters' Bernie Price hit a basket in the final seconds to give the Trotters a 40-38 win.
For Virginia Union's athletic program, and for McDaniel personally, the repercussions came swiftly and furiously.
The Fallout
On March 20, 1941, the CIAA met in a special session at Virginia State College (now University) in Petersburg, Va.
The CIAA leveled six charges at the Panthers: Playing a game against Brooklyn College (the previous November) without permission from the CIAA; using an ineligible player against Brooklyn College; playing teams in another conference without CIAA permission; using an ineligible player against a team in another conference; unsportsmanlike conduct in the Union-Morgan State game; playing a professional team without AAU sanction.
Four of the six charges stemmed from VUU's game against Brooklyn College. The Panthers beat Brooklyn in November, 1940, with nothing being said at the time.
Also, the Panthers used Wiley “Soup” Campbell, who had been the team's star for the previous four seasons, in the game because the team was decimated by the flu. Again, nothing was said at the time.
Playing teams in another conference was done all of the time, even in 1940-41, but the charges were, in fact, true.
The unsportsmanlike conduct charge stemmed from the fact that the officials had to be escorted by security off the court during the VUU-Morgan State game held in Richmond. The size and layout of the gym made it necessary for officials to be given an escort.
This time, however, the CIAA said the crowd was booing and whistling at the referees.
Booing a ref? Shocking.
Support for Union
Most fans and sports reporters agreed that five of the six charges were bogus, and the true penalty was because VUU defied the CIAA by playing the Globetrotters.
“First of all, let's not brand the Virginia Union basketball players as 'pros,'” wrote Lem Graves, Jr., in the Norfolk Journal & Guide. “They are not 'professionals' in any sense of the word. They are simply a bunch of nice college kids who happen to be better-than-average basketball players.”
During the special session, Clarence W. Davis, athletic director of Howard University and chairman of the CIAA Eligibility Committee, threatened to declare all of Union's student-athletes professionals, making them unable to play intercollegiate athletics ever again.
Hucles, as athletic director, could not allow his student-athletes to lose their scholarships and, backed into a corner, he accepted whatever sanctions the conference chose to apply.
By an 8-0 vote, the CIAA voted to force Union to suspend all athletic activity for six months. Today, it would be called an across-the-board “death penalty” for VUU athletics.
“Union's athletes in three sports: basketball, track and tennis are not responsible,” wrote Graves in the Norfolk Journal & Guide.
Sam Lacy, who would eventually mount a campaign for Jackie Robinson to break the color line in Major League Baseball, wrote in a special column to the Afro-American newspaper that the CIAA was being “inconsistent” in their rulings.
“Union officials contend that if the CIAA plans to enforce the rules impartially, (then) something should be said about (Howard, Lincoln, Morgan State and Virginia State) playing the D.C. Recs,” Lacy wrote.
The D.C. Recs were the Recreational Collegiates, a group of professional players from the Washington, D.C., area who were patterned after the Trotters, the New York Renaissance and the Washington Brewers.
The End of the Road
As a result, VUU cancelled it's game against Howard, but the Panthers played VSU in a game classified as an exhibition the following week. VUU downed the Trojans 56-24 in the Blues Armory.
The game raised the necessary funds to transport the Belgian Building from New York to Richmond. On June 9, 1941, the cornerstone was laid on the corner of Brook and Lombardy streets. “They brought the building down on huge trucks on Route 1,” McDaniel says.
VUU, on the other hand, was prohibited from defending its CIAA basketball title.
The Panthers still play in the Belgian Building, now known as Barco-Stevens Hall, and they have won three national championships in men's basketball and one in women's basketball.
But for McDaniel, it was the end of the road. He would be a senior in the 1941-42 school year, and he was prohibited from competing in the 1941 CIAA Tennis Championships due to the across-the-board suspension the CIAA had handed out after the basketball team played the Globetrotters.
He asked the CIAA to grant him special permission to play in the 1941 Championships on the grounds that he was the defending champion.
The CIAA said no.
“I still think I could have won the championship again,” he says, ruefully. “But I wasn't allowed to compete.”
The 1941 CIAA Tennis Championship was won by "Flip" Jackson, coached, coincidentally, by Clarence W. Davis of Howard University - the same Clarence W. Davis who had ruled McDaniel ineligible.
The result is an unfinished ending to McDaniel's legacy. Even though more than seven decades have passed since the controversial basketball game, McDaniel still hasn't gained admission to either the CIAA or VUU Athletic Halls of Fame.
As McDaniel turned to leave, he peered out of the huge-plate glass windows that adorn the Belgian Building. Without his and his teammates' sacrifice 70 years ago, the building might not stand where it does today.
Two more student-athletes of 2010 passed him as he leaves. One holds the door for him as he slowly exits the building.
He looked at the players and, just for a moment, a smile appears again.
Then, as the door closes, he disappears
