For the Globetrotters, Ability Is Only Barrier

Whites can apply. They just might not be qualified. The long-existing, open-door policy of the Harlem Globetrotters, who have been America’s goodwill ambassadors to the world, is that if you can play basketball, skin pigmentation doesn’t matter.

The Globetrotters, the best athletic representatives Uncle Sam has ever had, break the color line and overcome language barriers wherever they go. The mere mention of their name suggests joy and laughter.

At least one disturbed individual who called on the telephone but wouldn’t give his name, or even admit to the color of his skin, wanted to know why there is so much continuing attention brought to the fact that blacks are denied opportunities in some sports ... yet the Globetrotters basketball team doesn’t have any white faces.

In case you aren’t aware of it, the Globetrotters have had whites. Not just tokens, but whites who played. Abe Saperstein, promoter extraordinaire, who founded the team in 1927, was a man without a trace of bias. He was a London-born Jew who put together a black organization and, after dying in 1966, was buried on St. Patrick’s Day. If he could have written his own demise, he would have wanted it that way.

To make sure the Globetrotters couldn’t be accused of prejudice, Saperstein, in the formative years, would get up from his coaching position on the bench and insert himself in games. During World War II, when the manpower crunch was on and Saperstein couldn’t find a black to take the place of Reese “Goose” Tatum, he hired a white, one Bob Karstens, who played until Tatum returned from military service three years later.

Then there was Bunny Levitt, the champion foul shot artist who toured with the Globetrotters, put on exhibitions and frequently was inserted into the lineup. Levitt was white. So the Globetrotters don’t discriminate. It’s all in the record.

The Globetrotters, who field two touring units, will play a total of 420 one-night stands this year. They identify with fun and frivolity and might even be able to make a dead man laugh.

Whites have tried to crack the roster, but obviously lack the “necessities.” Joe Anzivino, general manager of the Globetrotters, said, “I never heard of it being an issue.” Anzivino has been with the club for 28 years and is a historian of their proud accomplishments.

Oh yes, he’s white and before joining the Globetrotters was the highly respected sports editor of The Honolulu Star-Bulletin. “People just expect us to be an all-black team,” he said. “That’s our identity. Once in a while, some gagster will ask us when we are going to integrate. But we already have. And I remember when Rick Barry was jumping from the American Basketball League to the National Basketball Association that Abe tried awfully hard to sign him.”

Unfortunately, when the Globetrotters started out pounding the highways and basketball byways of the nation, and then the world, they represented one of the few attractive livelihoods for a black athlete. There were only a few black basketball teams, such as the New York Rens, but in the early years of professional sports in the United States, blacks didn’t have equal opportunity.

That’s why Saperstein was inspired to conceive the idea of the Globetrotters, a popular and highly successful collection of barnstormers. It was an opportunity for Saperstein to turn a dollar and also for the black basketball players to have a payday that was denied them by the struggling all-white leagues then in vogue.

What would happen, perchance, if a white prospect approached the Globetrotters for a tryout? “We’d give him one,” Anzivino said. “I can’t remember the last white who asked us for a job. I think it was about 20 years ago when some kid at the University of Minnesota, who could handle the ball and get off a lot of trick shots, made an inquiry. But he never followed it up. We’ll give any white player of ability a chance, but of course he has to be capable of playing Globetrotter-style basketball.”