MovieChat Forums > Hoosiers (1987) Discussion > the black people in this movie

the black people in this movie

posted 9 years ago by ilovejuliandfefe
12 replies | jump to latest

I have no ill feelings about this point of the movie, but it was dated in 1951 and at the end, when they were playing the big final game, a few black kids were playing and then a black coach could be seen. (he patted one of his players on the back after they lost). no way would this have been allowed way back then. Black people could not be on high school sports and certainly not given a high title as coach. that's just how it was back then. it was starting to change, but not much.

"Duh. You're the idiot. Not me."

[–] hoosiersfan2011 9 years ago

The man who played the head coach of the opposing team in the final game was Ray Crowe. He was the real-life coach of the team who won the Indiana state championship in 1955--the all-black team Indianapolis Crispus Attucks. They also won state in '56 and '59 and were state finalists in '51 and '57. The man who played the assistant coach, Bailey Robertson, was a former Attucks player. The filmmakers wanted to include Crowe and Robertson in the movie as a tribute to all those great '50s-era Attucks teams.

I believe the first black man to coach basketball at an integrated high school in Indiana was Johnny Wilson at Indianapolis Wood, around 1959.

[–] samup7775 9 years ago

There were black people in this movie? I gotta watch more than half of it.

[–] mobocracy 9 years ago

I kind of questioned how realistic it was to have an integrated team playing in the championship in 1951-2 Indiana.

I might have bought the integrated team, but the random black fans mixed in with white fans in the crowd? I think that would have been unlikely in 1951-2 Indiana.

[–] hoosiersfan2011 9 years ago

Muncie Central won the Indiana state basketball championship in 1951 and '52 and was runner-up in '54. South Bend Central won in 1953 and '57. Both of these teams had both black and white players.

[–] jtrichey13 9 years ago

Indiana was a "northern" state in the Civil War. I'm not sure if Indiana is being confused with Mississippi or what. There were integrated high schools in Indiana in the 1950s.

Downwards is the only way forwards.

[–] astockton_uk 9 years ago

But in the 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was very active in Indiana.

[–] ldlamb74 8 years ago

And?

[–] astockton_uk 8 years ago

And...Indiana was very racist in the 1920s, and by the 1950s it hadn't changed much.

Oscar Robertson, the Hall of Fame basketball player, attended segregated Crispus Attucks High School in Indiana. In 1955 his team became the first all-black squad to win the state tournament. He said that white basketball officials addressed the team prior to the championship game to warn them to celebrate peacefully if they won, as if it was a given that blacks would riot. He never heard of a white team receiving the same warning.

I lived in Indiana in the 1970s, and I knew people who were convinced that blacks would become violent if given the slightest pretext.

[–] ldlamb74 8 years ago

But the fact that a private racist organization existed, has nothing to do with whether the state had state mandated segregation.

The actual team that Milan High beat was Muncie Central, there is video of the game on the Internet. Muncie was a fully integrated school that had both white and black players on the team.

Whatever people's internal attitudes, the movie was accurate in the depiction of what that game looked like.

[–] sixmilecross 8 years ago

And just FYI, Ray Crowe and his brother both went to Franklin High School in Franklin, IN, which at that time was predominantly white. They even named the sports field after Ray.

[–] ldlamb74 8 years ago

This is a ridiculous post.

The movie is based loosely on real events.

There was a tiny rural school that won the title against a fully integrated city school.

Nothing in that part of the movie was unrealistic.

[–] SashaDabinski 8 years ago

Marion HS played in the 1947 and 1950 Indiana state finals with an integrated team.