When Vice President Kamala Harris greeted Dick Barnett on Friday, he was brief in his response.
“After all.”
At last, six surviving members of Tennessee Agricultural & Industrial State University in Nashville visited the White House, the culmination of a decades-long effort, led by Mr. Barnett, for recognition.
The Tennessee A&I Tigers were the first team from a historically black college or university to win any national championship and the first college team to win three championships back-to-back, in 1957, 1958 and 1959. Former teammates — Mr. .Barnett , George Finley, Ernest Jones, Henry Carlton, Robert Clark and Ron Hamilton — attended a private ceremony in the Roosevelt Room of the White House with Ms. Harris, who paid tribute to the group during a roundtable discussion.
“There is so much we have achieved as a nation because of heroes like the ones I look up to right now,” Ms Harris said, adding: “I, like so many of us, stand on your great shoulders, each and every one of you.”
Although nine players from Tennessee’s A&I championship teams went on to play professional basketball, their accomplishments quickly faded in the Jim Crow South.
Mr. Barnett, a former shooting guard, has spent the past decade trying to fix that. He campaigned for years to have the team inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame while teaching the next generation of basketball players at Tennessee State University, as the school is now known, about the team that breaks barriers.
When Ms Harris asked Mr Barnett, 87, to describe their playing days, he said: “It was a constant struggle.”
“But you didn’t give up,” Ms. Harris said, according to a video of the ceremony released by the White House.
“No question about that,” he replied.
His work was honored in 2019 when the 1957-59 Tennessee A&I teams were inducted into the Hall of Fame, a journey that was the subject of a recent PBS documentary, “The Dream Whisperer.”
But the final piece of the puzzle was a White House celebration — a long-standing American tradition and one Mr. Barnett felt was long overdue. And time was of the essence: Only eight players and one assistant coach from the championship teams are still alive.
More than 50 members of Congress signed a letter in January on behalf of the group requesting an invitation to the White House “for long overdue recognition and appropriate celebration.”
After the ceremony, the group gave Ms. Harris a custom jersey and a tour of the White House.
In an interview afterwards, Mr Barnett said of the visit: “It was good that this time had finally come.”
George Finley, 85, the team’s former center who traveled to Washington from Los Angeles with his grandson, said he never thought a White House visit would happen. He told Ms Harris that Friday was “one of the best days of our lives”. He also showed her a photo of Ms. Harris and President Biden that he has in his wallet.
“I see this as a promotion for HBCU schools and the recognition that this school has brought to all these colleges. it’s really something big,” he said in an interview before Friday’s ceremony. “Even though it’s been so many years, it’s still good.”
Their coach, John McLendon, a demanding technician, “would be enlightened about it”, Mr Finlay added. “He was for me one of the greatest coaches ever.”
Mr. McLendon, who died in 1999, had tried to get Tennessee A&I into the NCAA but was denied. Instead, the team played in the National Intercollegiate Athletic Association.
Ernest Jones, 85, and his wife took a train to Washington from Chicago. He was sidelined with injuries during the 1959 championship, but continued to play for the Harlem Globetrotters and semi-pro teams. After discrimination kept his college team out of the public eye for so long, Mr. Jones said, the visit to the White House was well-earned.
“No one saw this as such a great achievement until someone really, really worked and made them realize it,” he said in an interview before the ceremony.
Mr. Jones, who grew up playing clay courts in Mississippi, doesn’t remember much from his days at Tennessee A&I, but he does remember Mr. McLendon’s infamous conditioning routine: Running three miles every preseason and three miles every day 21 days before the tournament. Mr. McLendon called them “the championship miles.”
If Mr. McLendon had lived to see his team visit the White House, he would have said, “Hallelujah,” Mr. Jones said. “I would tell him, ‘Nice job, coach.’
Friday may not be the last celebration for Mr. Barnett, who went on to play for the New York Knicks’ only two championship teams in the 1970s, dazzling fans with his signature question mark-shaped jump shot. He is a finalist for this year’s Basketball Hall of Fame class, which is expected to be announced Saturday during the men’s Final Four tournament in Phoenix.
Mr. Barnett’s former Knicks teammate, Walt Frazier, appeared to pre-empt the official announcement during a televised Knicks game this week, saying he had heard from another Knicks legend, Earl Monroe, that the introduction of Mr. Barnett was official.
“I’m glad you finally heard that,” Mr. Barnett said in the interview Friday, adding, “They had indicated they were trying to keep it a secret for a while.”
Michael A. McCoy and Erica L. Green contributed to the report.
