The Real Hoosiers

January 22, 2024
In this rousing history, sportswriter McCallum (Dream Team) chronicles how future NBA Hall of Famer Oscar Robertson led Crispus Attucks High School’s basketball team to Indiana state championship titles in 1955 and 1956, making the Attucks Tigers the first all-Black team in the nation to win a state title. McCallum emphasizes how the story reflects the social currents of the era, noting that the Tigers were unable to play home games for lack of a suitable gym at the segregated and underfunded Attucks, and that they received threats warning them not to participate in games against all-white teams. Despite these obstacles, McCallum shows, the Tigers developed a pioneering approach to the game, applying intense “defensive pressure” and an animated offense that contrasted with the leisurely pace that had previously defined the sport. The historical research on how housing discrimination, school segregation, and anti-Black violence shaped mid-century Indianapolis makes the Tigers’ achievements all the more noteworthy, and the accounts of key games excite (“Oscar hurled the ball toward the ceiling just as time expired. By the time it came down, Attucks had triumphed in one of the great Indiana schoolboy basketball games of all time”). This stirring success story hits nothing but net. Agent: Susan Canavan, Waxman Literary.