{"id":624,"date":"2008-10-17T09:11:07","date_gmt":"2008-10-17T16:11:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2013-07-31T11:24:10","modified_gmt":"2013-07-31T15:24:10","slug":"professor-robert-coles-early-sports-reporting-is-basis-for-segment-of-espns-black-magic-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"Professor Robert Cole\u2019s Early Sports Reporting is Basis for Segment of ESPN\u2019s “Black Magic” Documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Cleo
Cleo Hill (14)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As a reporter in North Carolina in the early 1960s, Professor Emeritus of English Robert Cole <\/strong>wrote a series of articles detailing the racial mistreatment of Cleo Hill, the first graduate of an historically black college or university to be drafted in the first round by an NBA team.<\/p>\n

After a solid start during his rookie year with the St. Louis Hawks, \u201cHill was benched about a quarter of the way into the season and then released,\u201d Cole said. \u201cHe never played in the league again.”<\/p>\n

“The generally accepted explanation for this unusual use of a player is that it was done to satisfy veteran southern white players who did not want [Hill] to stick with the team,\u201d Cole said.<\/p>\n

Hill\u2019s tragic story was one of several retold in the ESPN documentary Black Magic<\/em>, which chronicled the struggles black basketball players and coaches faced during the Civil Rights Movement in America. The film\u2019s researchers used Cole\u2019s articles from the 1960s as the basis for the segment on Hill.<\/p>\n

Hill was “probably the greatest player of his time, black or white,” said sportswriter Howie Evans, while basketball analyst Billy Packer said Hill was a forerunner to Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n

\u201cI broke the Cleo Hill stories in the Winston-Salem Journal <\/em>based on a strong source relationship I had developed with him when he was a spectacular player for Winston-Salem State Teachers College,\u201d Cole remembered.<\/p>\n

Hill played in the NBA during the era of a strict \u201cquota system,\u201d according to the Black Magic Web site. Once the Hawks cut him, he was \u201cblacklisted\u201d by other team owners.<\/p>\n

\"black\u201cIn those days, the NBA was believed to unofficially limit each team to two black players,\u201d Cole said. \u201cThe Cleo Hill affair was one of several events that led to racial changes in the league.\u201d<\/p>\n

More information about the ESPN documentary can be found at http:\/\/espnblackmagic.secondthought.com\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An ESPN documentary about the struggles faced by black basketball players and coaches during the Civil Rights Movement in America used as source material a series of articles written by Professor Emeritus Robert Cole. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":629,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,21,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-in-focus","category-october-2008","category-on-campus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tcnjmagazine.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}