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The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph

Cover of book about Duke and NCCU's Secret Game in 1944
Title:
The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph
Description:
On March 12, 1944, the Duke University Medical School basketball team traveled to play North Carolina Central University (NCCU), then called the North Carolina College for Negroes, for Duke’s first integrated basketball game. NCCU, Duke’s Durham neighbor, was founded in 1909 as a historically Black college. Duke was still segregated and years away from playing its first integrated varsity game. There were no spectators and only one reporter from the Carolina Times (who agreed not to write about the game). The NCCU Eagles, coached by John McClendon, beat the Medical Center squad 88-44. Scott Ellsworth (T’77, Ph.D.’82) first wrote a New York Times article in 1996 documenting this game after interviewing NCCU coach John McClendon.
Date:
2015
Rights:
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 DEED Some Rights Reserved
Citation:
Scott Ellsworth, The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph. (New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2015),  David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.