Rucker Basketball Wars

Introduction

All stories start with a beginning and they end with a conclusion.  Not so this story.  What I hope to give you is a snapshot into my life that tells you a story of my father, his accomplishments, his family, his colleagues, and protégés relating to the Rucker Basketball Tournament.  Along the way another most important part of the story will be told: the relative evolution of black culture – politically and entrepreneurially - and development of black community outreach and interrelations. This story is about the behind the scenes struggle to gain acceptance by America of the summer street ball industry as it has now become.  I will relate it to you from my personal viewpoint proceeding from after the Harlem Renaissance period until the present day.

My father was Holcombe Llewellyn Rucker.  This is a man who spent his early life as a gang leader and soldier; later he was a family man, community organizer, community moral leader, schoolteacher, and black self-reliance visionary.  He was an American who happened to be a black man also.  He also is the black man who has been universally recognized as the pioneer of Street Basketball.  Thanks to Uncle James “Jimmy” Rucker a Silver Star and Double Bronze Star honoree, and three-tour Vietnam Nam veteran who came home alive, then married, attended church, raised two fine boys, and wrote some of the most powerful poetry about the war of that era.  He was responsible for ensuring much of the early Holcombe Rucker family background has been recaptured.  He found time during twenty-five years of research to document the Rucker Family history while he was on leave or weekend passes.  He went as far back as to the Civil War.  He couldn’t go further because the name used by our ancestor was an unknown slave name before Rucker was adopted.  I’d like to think he was descended from former African Royalty.  Who knows? 

The surname Rucker came from a white civil war officer named Rucker who commanded a black regiment during the Civil War.  Many of the discharged enlisted men dropped their slave names and adopted the surnames of the white officers they served under. Many black brothers and sisters who plan to discard their white slave master’s name need to understand that a white adopted surname may have honor, too.  I am sure that the black community honors the name Rucker. Basketball aficionados of all races concur in upholding the honor of Holcombe Rucker’s name that has a unique place in one of the only major sports invented in America.  The other sports are baseball and football.  Today they are all part of the great American love for sports where once it was just baseball that epitomized and grandeurized American sports.

The name Rucker is the one my ancestors adopted and I concur they made a wonderful choice.  Like many of my ethnic background I don’t know my African origins or name.  But sometimes I feel that the ancestral homeland Africa is worse off today than its ancestors that were spirited away as slaves rather than immigrants.  Today the descendants of slaves form an African Diaspora that covers Africa, Europe, South America, Central America, the United States, North America, and the Caribbean Islands.  Basketball is played and venerated at arenas in these locations with Asia and Eastern Europe thrown in as a present and future talent pool. 

But what Dr. Naismith started Holcombe Rucker expanded upon.  Perception can turn into reality, as you will see in this story.  The advent of the growth of street ball through Holcombe Rucker and the Rucker Pro Basketball Tournament turned the game into a more exciting one that has helped basketball rival baseball as one of America’s greatest sports exports.  That’s quite a boast, but the Entertainer’s Basketball Classic at Rucker Park in Harlem (umbrella name the Rucker Pro Basketball Tournament) is continuing the dream of the Pope Holcombe Rucker in the basilica and cathedral called Holcombe Rucker Park.

Today the basketball masses pay homage to Holcombe Rucker and Rucker Park, despite a history of behind the scenes upheaval that was necessary to achieve the current spectacular results.  Holcombe Rucker affected black culture in radical ways in his short life of 38 years.  He did not cry about life, he was relentless, with the biggest smile or a stern personal opinion, regarding everybody taking personal responsibility for improving standards in the black community.  His moral and work standards were impeccable although he was not a religious man in any serious way. 

Senior citizens, children that love basketball, and former or present serious basketball players among, of course, multitudes of other people know the name Rucker.  Check out Google on the Internet and see how many people not connected with the Rucker Pro Basketball Tournament are pushing their agenda to take advantage of the name.  If you go on Google, though, be prepared to stay up all night reading about “The Rucker”.  Many basketball legends and endless basketball folklore find association with the Rucker Basketball Tournament.  Fans and sports historians universally agree that Holcombe Rucker is the founding father of organized summer basketball and is recognized as the original promoter of the street ball concept.  I am going to say also that Sonny Hill of the Baker League in Philly was right behind him.  But the original was H