Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball
Bill Garrett was the Jackie Robinson of college basketball, even if today he's mostly remembered only by dedicated Hoosier hoops fans. Because Indiana was as racially intolerant as the South during the early 20th century, it wasn't surprising that although Garrett had led his small town's underdog team to the 1947 state high school championship, he couldn't play for Indiana University, which followed the Big Ten schools' "  'gentleman's agreement' not to recruit or play blacks." But during the postwar civil rights movement, IU's administration was pressured to accept Garrett on the team. Invariably calm and courteous, no matter how many players taunted him or hotels refused to give him a room on the road, Garrett played at IU from 1948 to 1951 and on the night of his last game was given a roaring ovation. The Korean War ended Garrett's chance to gain immortality with the recently integrated Celtics, but he spent the rest of his life happily coaching and teaching. Father and daughter Graham and Cody refrain from reveling in numbing, point-by-point details, instead offering a striking and honest portrait of a man overcoming racism in a place that barely acknowledged its existence.(Mar.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.