Oscar Robertson recounts the time he received a telegram from the KKK saying that if he touched them “they would shoot me”
Oscar Robertson was a force of nature at Cincinnati: the team lost nine games total in his three seasons. He averaged 33.8 points per game in college and won the national scoring title in each of his three years, led Cincinnati to two Final Fours and was named College Player of the Year as a senior.
In 1958, all of that earned Cincinnati an invitation to one of the season’s biggest tournaments at the time: the Dixie Classic in North Carolina. That tournament, however, featured all-white teams from North Carolina, Duke and Wake Forest, and NC State (plus other teams from around the country) in the still-segregated South. Robertson recounted some of the racism he faced before that tournament, including a death threat from the Ku Klux Klan. in an appearance on the All The Smoke podcast.
Oscar Robertson defied death threats and discrimination throughout his career ⁰⁰“I get a telegram that says, 'If you go out and play, we're going to shoot you'… I'll never forget it as long as I live.”⁰
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“We were going to play in the Dixie Classic. I didn't know nothing about the Dixie Classic. Then I got a telegram saying, if you came out to play, I was going to be shot. So I gave it to the coach. Later that day, somebody knocked on my door. There was a white kid from Alabama, from an Alabama frat, who was supposed to come and get my autograph. What do you think I did? I autographed it for him. I'll never forget that as long as I live. To be honest with you, I was born in Tennessee. I never thought much about the Klan to begin with… I never thought much about the guys that threatened me. I mean, it wasn't the only time I was threatened, by the way, I gotta tell you, but they didn't bother me. I mean, I just didn't think about getting shot, I just didn't think that was going to happen.”
Robertson faced a lot of racism during that tournament, according to those who investigated the topicincluding having coins and hot dogs thrown at him, being called the “n-word” and much more. Robertson wasn’t alone in this — that 1958 Dixie Classic (Matt Barnes took the cake for a year on the podcast) also featured Michigan State star and future four-time NBA All-Star Johnny Green, who received much the same treatment.
Robertson and Green handled the situation with great class.
It would be another half-decade before schools along the Tobacco Road would integrate their basketball teams.
