1950’-80’s BLACK AMERICAN BASKETBALL KODAK PHOTO ALBUMS COLLEGE & NBA ALCINDER


1950’-80’s BLACK AMERICAN BASKETBALL KODAK PHOTO ALBUMS COLLEGE & NBA ALCINDER

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1950’-80’s BLACK AMERICAN BASKETBALL KODAK PHOTO ALBUMS COLLEGE & NBA ALCINDER:
$50000.00



Without question the ONLY extensive collection of its kind. documenting great black American athletes prior to their success in the NBA or demise on the streets. The MEN BLACK AND TALL collection documents the 50’s-80’s culture with back in the day imagery never seen before.TWO IMAGES OF CONTENTS ARE OF ONLY ONE OF NEARLY 10 ALBUMs




PLEASE CONTACT WITH QUESTIONS


Significant facts —


—-President Obama elected Loni Bunch to the Smithsonian who referred the collection to his Director Damian Thomas


—Damien Thomas is expected to travel from Washington DC to review collection (COVID restrictions presently hamper his travel, if collection sells Smithsonian will be notified)



—Collection dates from the 1950’s to 1980’s all players areidentified including age, height, school, year


— majority are candid photos, also press photos, flyers, news articles , letters, scrap book


— Sid Catletts personal scrapbook with Lee Alcindors provenance, including deeply personal letters from Howard University by R C Randolph sharing sports wisdom.


— Kodak’s and Polaroids also 8x10’s from high school to college


—over a thousand original photos


— one basketball scouts professional collection


— collection contains NBA Hall of Famers, college Hall of Famers , and many potentially great players whose careers were tragically never met


— collection transcends basketball as the off court photographs reveal Black American culture throughout America


— NO RETURNS. SO PLEASE ASK QUESTIONS


Below is a feature article providing the story behind the scout and BLACK American athletes which is included with the collection.







MEN BLACK AND TALL


A profiling of black athlete’s and culture in pictures





“The game of basketball has been everything to me. My place of refuge, place I've always gone where I needed comfort and peace. It's been the site of intense pain and the most intense feelings of joy and satisfaction. It's a relationship that has evolved over time, given me the greatest respect and love for the game.”



Micheal Jordan




The hundreds of candid snapshots amassed by basketball scout Gene Francis document a heartfelt, untold, and shocking journey. Francis travelled across America at a time prior to instant imaging, a time when the cost of developing a single photograph might cost a Starbucks coffee. Add the cost of a roll of film to it and you’re looking at a steak dinner, not to mention it taking days to have your treasured memories developed.


Since the 60’s through the early eighties which the archive explores, the digital renaissance has transformed photo sharing into something vastly different. Our devices have become wickedly smart and shamelessly selfish. We now have instant gratification.


Yet, this is not a story about devices, or today’s swanky cameras. It is not a lecture on technology’s impersonal trip to self indulgence. It is a human journey— a personal, and intimate look into the lives of young, Black American athletes.


Each photograph Francis includes in this archive is cataloged with individual notes revealing “ ooomp, looks and personality.” Yet, as profoundly human as they are the images were designed to market a single product. That product was young athletes caught on the old school camera, before the image revolution stampeded our culture with My Space, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.


Here, a conservative white man in a polyester suit, immerses himself in the urban, black athletes world- a stranger, knocking on their door, entering their home with the promise of a dream. And the young men he virtually looked up to understood this, that he was “the man.”


He was the short guy with the loopy smile who they allowed into their hood, that had the ability to take them from obscurity, whose own mission was simple—travel the country no less than a man on the hunt. But he didn't carry a rifle, or a pair of binoculars. He wasn’t dressed in camouFlage and you wouldn't find him outside of urban America. No, Francis traveled the city streets, the housing projects and outdoor courts throughout urban America with a measuring tape, an accompanying photographer, and a salesman smile..


His agenda was based upon Basketball World Publications “plan of operation" that reads:


OVER 15 YEARS OF AGE- 6 FEET 6 OR MORE


15 YEARS OF AGE= 6 FEET 4 OR MORE

14 YEARS OF AGE- 6 FEET 2 OE MORE


UNDER 14 YEARS OF AGE- 6 FEET OR MORE



Here the scouting criteria reveals itself as controversial, as Francis follows a strict set of guidelines that include profiling high school children.


Yet, back in the day, for the scout, it was business as usual. And Francis’s intentions were apparently genuine. By the imagery captured in the archive his presence was clearly welcomed. So, they allowed Mr. Francis into their world, and they did so eagerly, bringing him into their homes, their backyards, their schools and streets— staging candid shots with athletes and himself on asphalt courts, car hoods, house porches, outside universities, high schools, and notable fairytale places like Disneyland. More incredibly, they allowed a stranger, a white man, into their hood in some of the roughest neighborhoods in the country.


The photographs speak of the retro days before luxurious gifts were handed out and entitlements were even expected. There were no Nike agents fitting oversized feet with goliath shoes and a promise. There were no Reeboks or Adidas handing out gifts to the under financed families of these talented kids. They played street ball, grade, high school and college ball because they found something meaningful in the game.


It was an era when the black youth showed up at public courts in mini shorts and knee high tube socks, their afros bobbing as they broke for the net. They showed up at school in tight fitted bell bottoms, and flashy polyester. Though, gifted athletes, their lives were not bent with entitlements like so many of today's expecting athletes. It was a different generation. A different game. They did not sport tattoo swagger, their only tatting were the scars from asphalt balling. They did not expect the God of Sports World to shower them with gifts or praise. And they lived prior to internet news coverage and gossip blogs, prior to fortune 500 companies placing shoe sizes above field goals— a time before Mazzaratis and the promise of monster endorsements danced like fairytales in their heads.


Their commitment to the game provided them not only the opportunity to attend college but to one day, if they excelled, make it to the NBA. This was a golden opportunity that could inevitably take them off the streets, away from the turbulent communities that, for many, influenced their world. The basketball court was, as Micheal Jordan so eloquently writes, “ my place of refuge, place I've always gone where I needed comfort and peace.”


The athletes who had found themselves on the court include “Lewis Alcindor. “ Young men like James Donaldson, and Sid Catlett who has been compared to LeBron James, and who played in what sports writers of the day refer to as the greatest high school game ever played.


The letter included in the archive to Sid Catlett from “Doc” Randolph Taylor on a Howard University letterhead resonates with maybe one of the most inspirational African American letters to a promising sports figure of all time- one that speaks of great humility, rarely shared.


In all, the vast collection of photos embody what lies behind these individual faces, that they were more than mere athletes, more than black American rebounders or captains of the game, but the faces of a generation of Black Americans rarely captured in their personal Environment, without images of violence, gangs or drugs—portrayed at home, outdoors, at ease... simply being themselves.


If the NBA is, as they state, “where amazing happens” the lives portrayed in this archive is where it begins. And by their lives, and through the power of this imagery, we are witness to a white man’s journey as he delves into the black man’s world, who unknowingly captures the soul of a vibrantly rich Black American culture — whose wealth of brotherhood is generously shared with a white guy, with utmost grace, and humility, which, in today’s divisive world, happens to be amazing in itself..



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1950’-80’s BLACK AMERICAN BASKETBALL KODAK PHOTO ALBUMS COLLEGE & NBA ALCINDER:
$50000.00

Buy Now