Basketball at Manhattan Casino

The first post in our series on Black New York, 1921, for Black History Month

One hundred years ago today … The basketball team of Harlem’s Mi-Tee Monarch Lodge kicked off its season by losing to the YMCA of Philadelphia, 28 to 22, at the Manhattan Casino, 155th and 8th Avenue. The Mi-Tee (sometimes written “Mi-Ti”) 45s, as it was known, was an amateur team run by “Captain” Henry Wilson; there was as yet no professional basketball league.

Before the main event, an opener game was played between teams called the Monarch Midgets and the Community House Midgets–youth teams, named in the style of the time.

Basketball, only a 30-year-old sport, already held a central place in Black New York of the time. In January of 1921, Romeo Dougherty, sportswriter of the Black newspaper Amsterdam News, wrote, “Here in Greater New York and New Jersey basketball has meant more to us than baseball for the latter sport among colored people has been so closely allied to the saloon and underground dives” (quoted Anderson, 154).

According to Stephen Robertson, basketball’s popularity had quickly risen in NYC’s Black community, such that by 1910 many Black churches and athletic clubs were sponsoring both men and women teams. Robertson notes that the Manhattan Casino played a role in that rise. 

Only small crowds could fit in the church gymnasiums, so beginning around 1910. as games gained popularity — particularly those featuring black teams from other cities or white teams — they took place at the Manhattan Casino, 280 West 155th Street, well to the north of the boundaries of early black Harlem, but easily accessible by subway.  The crowds featured many respectable men, with newspaper reports drawing attention to the presence of Elks and Post Office clerks.

Note: we mentioned the Manhattan Casino in our post about Harlem's Odd Fellows Lodge on February 29,  2020, noting there that the venue would become better known later in the 1920s as the Rockland Palace and its drag balls. The Manhattan Casino was a ballroom with an attached picnic ground that hosted a variety of entertainments and social and political events. 

1911 advertisement for the Manhattan Casino. Courtesy Black Fives Foundation.

References/Further reading:

Anderson, Daniel. The Culture of Sports in the Harlem Renaissance. United States, McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers, 2017.

Robertson, Stephen. “Basketball in 1920s Harlem.” Digital Harlem Blog.

– Jonathan Goldman, February 1, 1921

TAGS: Harlem, Black history, African American sports, basketball, entertainment, social clubs