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Basketball, Nuns, and Civil Rights: Loyola University Chicago Confronts Race in 1963

Abstract:The civil rights movement left its mark on Loyola University Chicago as it dramatically changed American society in 1963. Through sports and direct action, Loyola contributed to the movement for racial justice. In March 1963, the school's basketball team broke racial barriers in college athletics by winning the national championship starting four African Americans. Coach George Ireland defied college basketball's unwritten rule of playing no more than "two [African Americans] at home and one on the road." The Loyola team, the Ramblers, made history in the "Game of Change" against an all-white Mississippi State University team in the quarterfinals of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) tournament. Later that spring and summer, Loyola students and their allies—inspired by Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and the courage of everyday blacks and whites fighting nonviolently for civil rights in Birmingham and elsewhere—publicly protested against the Jim Crow policy of a Catholic women's club located on its campus. When white Catholic nuns joined the demonstrations, their actions garnered national and international attention. The Catholic sisters were part of a growing Catholic-sponsored interracial movement with strong ties to Chicago. Events at Loyola and in Chicago during 1963 reveal that the work of racial justice would remain an ongoing project.