12/18/2023 0 Comments Jony lipsey coming undone![]() Before school desegregation dispersed students citywide, blacks attended one of four public high schools – North, Tech, Central or South. Many inner city athletes resided in public housing projects. “You just had a wealth of talent then,” said Lonnie McIntosh, a teammate of Gibson and Boozer at Tech High. Across town, in south Omaha, a smaller but no less distinguished group came of age. “I mean, per capita, there’s probably never been this many quality athletes to come out of one neighborhood.”Īn astounding concentration of athletic prowess emerged in a few square miles roughly bounded north to south, from Ames Avenue to Lake Street, and east to west from about 16th to 36th. Not only did these athletes come out of here and play, they lasted a long time and they made significant contributions to a diversity of college and professional sports,” said Briscoe, a Southside product. “Some phenomenal athletic accomplishments have come out of here, and no one’s ever really tied it all together. Marlin Briscoe, the NFL’s first black quarterback. ![]() Bob Boozer, a member of Olympic gold medal and NBA championship teams. The list includes: Bob Gibson, a major league baseball Hall of Famer. Each is a compelling story in the grand tale of Omaha’s inner city, both north and south. These athletes aren’t simply neighborhood or college legends – their legacies loom large. Omaha’s African American community has produced a heritage rich in achievement across many fields, but none more dramatic than in sports, Despite a comparatively small populace, black Omaha rightly claims a legacy of athletic excellence in the form of legends who’ve achieved greatness at many levels, in a variety of sports, over many eras. My Series Out to Win – The Roots of Greatness: Omaha’s Black Sports Legends And as I cultivate new stories related to the subject they will find their way here, too. Johnson, Alvin Mitchell, Akoy Agau, Larry Station, Mike Green and Dick Davis, Yvonne Turner, Joe Edmonson and many others. ![]() NOTE: I have several more existing pieces to add to this series, including profiles of John C. Here and there I have added related stories I’ve done over the years that help further expand and explore this subject. This is the first time I have culled most of the series together online in one spot. The biggest omission here from my point of view is Mike McGee, who has successfully avoided me for 11 years and counting. I didn’t get to everyone I meant to, but I got to most of them. I learned a lot working on the project, mostly an appreciation for these athletes’ individual and collective achievements. It was a pleasure doing the series and getting to meet legends Bob Gibson, Bob Boozer, Gale Sayers, Ron Boone, Marlin Briscoe, Johnny Rodgers, et cetera. The bulk of the series was dozens of profiles of individual athletes and in some cases groups of athletes. In the opening and closing installments I lay out the scope of achievements that distinguishes this group of athletes, the way that sports provided advancement opportunities for these individuals that may otherwise have eluded them, and the close-knit cultural and community bonds that enveloped the neighborhoods they grew up in. Still another became the youngest inductee in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Another became the NFL’s first black starting quarterback. One became the first full-time black faculty member and head coach at then-Omaha University, which made him the first black head coach at a predominantly white institution in America. They include a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, several members of the College Football Hall of Fame, a Heisman Trophy winner and a member of both Olympic Gold Medal and NBA title winning teams. They are inductees in numerous athletic halls of fame. All of these individuals were great youth, high school and college athletes and some went onto distinction at the professional level as well. In 2004-2005 series my multi-part series Out to Win – The Roots of Greatness: Omaha’s Black Sports Legends was published in The Reader (The idea behind the series is that for a relatively small African-American population or community, Omaha has produced a staggering number of high achieving black athletes across a wide spectrum of sports.
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