If statues honoring the most revered alumni of the old DuSable High School were erected in front of 4900 S. Wabash Ave., “Sweet” Charlie Brown would stand in bronze alongside Nat King Cole, Mayor Harold Washington and Sweetwater Clifton. , the first black player to sign a contract to play in the NBA.
Like Clifton, Brown was a basketball player. But he was that and much more.
Brown was a star on the DuSable team that lost to Mount Vernon in the 1954 state title game remembered as the “most controversial” game in Illinois High School Association tournament history, the superstar’s fellow star Elgin Baylor on the Seattle University team that finished second in the 1958 NCAA Tournament, an esteemed high school umpire and co-founder and guiding light of the Windy City Senior Basketball League.
“If it all ended tomorrow, I would have enjoyed myself more than any NBA All-Star,” Brown wrote in a 2008 letter to Bill Frey, one of the many close friends he made through the Windy City Senior League and its national event. Of summer. tournament, the Windy City Shootout.
Brown died Friday, August 26, at St. Francis Hospital in Evanston, where he was taken after a fall two days earlier at Peterson Park Health Care Center. After living on the South Side for most of his adult life, he was moved to the North Side Center in late July due to severe respiratory and other health issues. He was 86 years old.
Born in Canton, Mississippi, on February 24, 1936, Brown came to Chicago before starting elementary school at Betsy Ross on the South Side.
He made his first public appearance during his junior year at DuSable, when he was one of the best players on coach Art Scher’s team that reached the first round of the 1953 state tournament before losing to eventual state champion Lyons and finishing with a record from 27-3.
The following season, Scher left for Coach Sullivan. Jim Brown replaced Scher at DuSable, inheriting a cast of standouts that also included Paxton Lumpkin, Shellie McMillon, Karl Dennis and McKinley Cowson and mid-year graduates Curley Johnson and Bobby Jackson.
“We felt like we were on the verge of something great,” Brown told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2004. “The kids took pride in the fact that they were black and had a black coach. A new era began in the city with black kids beginning to dominate the game.”
[ [Don’t miss] He’s a good man, Sweet Charlie Brown ]
Indicative of that dominance was DuSable’s regular-season matchup with Roosevelt, another Chicago powerhouse, who had an all-white team. Brown scored 34 points to lead DuSable to a double-overtime win that decided the Chicago Public League championships and would have long-term ramifications.
Seeking to become the first CPL and the first all-black team to win the state championship, the undefeated DuSable defeated Bowen, Quincy and Edwardsville in the tournament to set the stage for the title game against Mount Vernon.
Not only that, “DuSable would have been the first all-black team in the United States to win a state championship in high school basketball,” according to Bruce Firchau, president of the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association and Museum.
DuSable led by four points with four minutes to play before Mount Vernon rallied to win 76-70.
Referee calls were a factor. Three of Brown’s baskets on long shots were nullified due to travel calls, and Lumpkin was called for charging twice after making shots. In the final three minutes, Brown, Lumpkin and Dennis all fouled.
According to longtime Sun-Times preparatory writer Taylor Bell, “It was, by most accounts, the most controversial championship game in Illinois high school basketball tournament history.”
“I have no grudge,” Brown reflected later. “I learned more from that loss than from all the victories. He taught me how to deal with the realities of our society and learn to accept them. I learned to deal with what life is.”
Brown went on to play college basketball on the freshman team at Indiana (NCAA rules at the time prevented freshmen from playing on the varsity team) and spent the first half of his sophomore season as a contributor. important to the varsity team before he left.
Brown was recruited by Seattle coach John Castellani and, after missing one season under NCAA transfer rules, played a major supporting role for Baylor as the team advanced to the 1958 national championship before losing. against Kentucky.
In the Western Region championship game against California, Brown made the basket that sent the game into overtime. With 10 seconds remaining in overtime, he made the basket that sealed the 66-62 victory.
When Baylor left for the NBA the next season, Brown became the best player on a team that finished with a 23-6 record. He was selected to several All-America teams.
Brown was selected by the Cincinnati Royals as the 74th pick in the 1959 NBA draft during an era when most of the league’s eight teams had unwritten quotas on the number of black players on their rosters.
But Brown opted not to try to play in the NBA. He returned to Chicago after serving in the US Army and played semi-professional basketball. He also worked as a social worker for the YMCA on the West Side, where he undertook to bring rival gang members together to settle their differences.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/UUZMO3IR4VB5JMMAKMCHX3IX6A.jpg)
In 1975, he began a second basketball career as a referee, officiating two high school championship games: King’s 79-71 victory over Rockford Guilford in 1993, and in 1994 when the Peoria Manual edged Carbondale 61-60. He also worked in various city championship contests.
Brown took great pride in his work.
“I wasn’t going to let what happened to me happen to those young men,” he once mused, recalling the controversial 1954 loss to Mount Vernon. “They said the officers cheated (DuSable) but I would never use that word. I say, ‘They made some mistakes.’”
Another significant chapter in Brown’s life began in the 1980s when he was approached by attorney Mickey Rotman, a former Roosevelt player who became president of the Chicago Public High School Alumni Association. Rotman proposed that he and the other members of the Roosevelt team who lost to DuSable in 1954 hold a reunion game to raise money for both schools.
Brown welcomed the idea. A dinner at the East Bank Club preceded the game and the old rivals joined. Gathering play led to word-of-mouth collecting games and then players’ participation in national tournaments for players over 50 years of age.
“We can do this locally,” Brown told his skeptical fellow players.
The first Windy City Shootout was held in the summer of 1991 and in the winter of 1995 the Windy Senior Basketball League was born. (The league was revived in 2022 after a two-year hiatus due to COVID-19.)
Brown played in the league, based in Washington Park and satellite venues mostly on the South Side, for nearly 20 years and until the pandemic was its de facto commissioner.
Former NBA players who have played in the league include Ricky Green, Flynn Robinson, Mickey Johnson, Harvey Catchings and Sonny Parker. Also on the VIP list are several notables from other walks of life, including Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White and former Cook County State’s Attorney Richard Devine.
“Our lives have been enriched by the experiences we’ve had and it’s all because of Charlie,” the late Barry Holt, one of the league’s founding fathers, wrote in an article on the Windy City Shootout. “Charlie touched our lives in ways we didn’t think possible.”
Looking back a few years ago, Brown recalled: “We started with a team of guys and now we have a big family. I got more out of basketball after 50 than I could have imagined.
“I was in the midst of the social change that our country was experiencing in 1954. I know what the difference is before, during and after. I am enjoying the waste. You don’t have to be Uncle Tom, you don’t have to be Malcolm X, you don’t have to be Martin Luther King. Just be yourself and find the best approach for the situation you find yourself in.
“We are all a family. Everyone has to see it that way.”
Visitation will be Thursday from noon to 7 p.m. and Friday at 10 a.m. at Travis Funeral Home in Riverdale, followed by funeral services at 11 a.m. at Shekinah Chapel in Riverdale.
Brown is survived by his daughter, Rosalind, his granddaughters Ryann and Grace, and his grandsons Rawlin and Justin. He was preceded in death by his brothers Reginald, Leroy and Herb. He was divorced, but he and his ex-wife, Shirley, remained close friends until his death.
Neil Milbert is a freelance reporter who covered sports for the Chicago Tribune for 46 years.
Source: www.chicagotribune.com