Historian Sees Chamberlain as Playing Role in Race Relations 

LAWRENCE, Kan.

      Taking another look at Wilt Chamberlain, a dominating force in college basketball when he played for the University of Kansas in the mid-1950s, a historian views him as a pivotal figure in both sports and race relations.

      Chamberlain, a 7-foot-1 high school star from Philadelphia, was recruited to Kansas in 1955 by coach Phog Allen. He scored 42 points in his first game as the freshman team beat the varsity. Because freshmen couldn't play on varsity teams in that era, Chamberlain's official debut with the Jayhawks came the following season.

      He had 52 points — still a Kansas record — and 31 rebounds in his first game, and the Jayhawks finished 24-3, losing the national championship to North Carolina by a single point in three overtimes. After a junior year in which he averaged 30.1 points a game, Chamberlain passed up a final season at Kansas to turn pro.

      He spent a year with the Harlem Globetrotters before switching to the NBA, where he had 31,419 points over 14 seasons and once scored 100 points in a game for the Philadelphia Warriors.

      Aram Goudsouzian, a historian from the University of Memphis, reviews Chamberlain's time at Kansas in a cover article in the latest issue of Kansas History, a publication of the Kansas State Historical Society.

      Beyond the skills which made him “the first real, Black celebrity star in college basketball,'' Goudsouzian said, Chamberlain helped effect racial desegregation in Lawrence.

      “His size, ability and race threatened the established patterns of college basketball,'' the historian told the Lawrence Journal-World, adding that Chamberlain “foreshadowed the changing landscapes of American sports and race relations.''