Major League Baseball integrated in 1947, when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers and became the first black player in the league’s history.

It took the National Basketball Association three years longer to accept black players. But in 1950, three black players joined the NBA. One of them was Charles H. “Chuck” Cooper, who became the first black player drafted by an NBA team when he joined the Boston Celtics after playing at Duquesne University.

(Later in his life, Cooper spent three years in Lancaster in the mid-1960s as director of Neighborhood Services, and therein lies the Lancaster connection. See the article posted below).

But while Cooper was the first black to be drafted, two other black players also laid claim to “firsts” in that 1950-51 NBA season. Nat “Sweetwater” Clifton was the first black to sign a contract with an NBA team (N.Y. Knicks), and Earl Lloyd became the first black to play in an NBA game (with the Washington Capitols), simply because his team’s season started earlier than that of the Celtics or Knicks.

There’s a nice summary of the 1950-51 season on the NBA Web site, with photos of Cooper and Clifton. You can also read a longer New York Times piece, published in 2000, on the 50th anniversary of the NBA’s integration.

Chuck Cooper played six NBA seasons, averaging 6.7 points per game, before retiring from basketball and earning a master’s degree in social work. He died on Feb. 5, 1984, at age 57, and the New Era’s obituary is posted below.

Unfortunately, the photo did not reproduce very well, and the headline misstates that Cooper was the first black to pay in the NBA, rather than calling him the first black to be drafted into the NBA and “one of the first three” blacks to play in the association.