A lot of people who follow sports know about the Negro Leagues in baseball. Jackie Robinson played there before breaking baseball’s color barrier in the 1940s. But most people don’t know about the Black Fives. Beginning in 1904, this was the basketball league for only African-Americans. A man named Claude Johnson decided to dedicate an exhibit to the Black Fives. “There are ‘dozens and dozens’ of all-black teams that played basketball before 1950 — and that their legacy reflects the changing face of America at the time. They are in parallel with the evolution of black culture, black society — and they are a mirror of the way America evolved, the way the game evolved,” Johnson says. “You know, the pioneers of the game, for all of us, not just
