Queen James leads vote to end playoffs

In 1959, Elgin Baylor took a stand for dignity at Civic Center

THE clerk behind the front desk glanced at the Minneapolis Lakers basketball players standing in the Kanawha Hotel lobby. “The three colored boys will have to go somewhere else,’’ he said. “This is a nice, respectable hotel. We can’t take the colored boys.’’

The “colored boys’’ included 6-foot-5 Elgin Baylor, the NBA’s best rookie, a basketball icon in the making, a Julius Erving-Michael Jordan prototype and a man not to be dissed. It was Jan. 16, 1959, and the Deep South still clung tightly to racial discrimination. Border states like West Virginia had desegregated most of their schools and some lunch counters, but little else...

In addition to being denied hotel service, Baylor and his two black teammates, Boo Ellis and Ed Fleming, were denied restaurant service, prompting Baylor to visit a grocery store. He bought a few items and, after returning to Edna’s, made sandwiches...

When Kundla met with his players before departing for the Civic Center, Baylor was not there. Kundla, who decades later would be enshrined in the Naismith and college basketball halls of fame, then found Baylor in his room. Baylor looked at him and said, “I was told this would not happen again.’’

He was referring to a November incident in which the Lakers played in Charlotte, North Carolina, and the team’s blacks were separated from their teammates. Shortly thereafter, NBA commissioner Maurice Podoloff promised to end such treatment.

Baylor agreed to accompany his teammates to the Civic Center but decided, as a protest, not to play...

After the game, Baylor spoke with Daily Mail sportswriter Bill Smith and noted that the restaurant’s discrimination was another reason for his protest...

Not long after the game, the business club sent a harsh telegram to Podoloff, urging disciplinary action against Baylor. It added that his protest was “most embarrassing to us and damaging [to] our chances of promoting future NBA games here.’’

But neither the NBA nor the Lakers took action. Podoloff, in fact, denounced the game’s organizers and said he was shocked the three Lakers had been denied equal housing...