Whenever Elgin Baylor played, people stopped what they were doing and watched.
That refrain appears throughout the new young adult book “Above the Rim: How Elgin Baylor Changed Basketball.”
Author Jennifer Bryant and illustrator Frank Morrison spoke with “City Lights” host Lois Reitzes via Zoom to discuss the book about the award-winning NBA player.
Bryant said her interest in telling the story of Baylor was sparked by the fact that he is an important — yet lesser-known and under-celebrated — figure in history.
A Hall of Famer, Baylor played professional basketball for the Los Angeles and Minneapolis Lakers until his retirement in 1971 due to an ongoing knee injury.
In 1959, a West Virginia hotel and local restaurants refused to serve Baylor and his African American teammates.
As a way of protest, Baylor decided to boycott the game on Jan. 16, 1959, in Charleston, West Virginia.
“He was a rookie NBA player, and, in those days, the NBA only had eight teams. It was fascinating to imagine the kind of travel and lives that they had, and they didn’t have a really big fan base. But Elgin was really the star of the team [Minneapolis Lakers], but he was turned away at the hotel when they got to West Virginia. That was enough. He said, ‘They can’t just let me out of a cage like an animal to play the game and not treat me like a human being the rest of the time,’” said Bryant.
Baylor was one of the first pro athletes to stage a boycott during a game.
Bryant wanted to demonstrate in her book that along with Baylor’s protest on the court, this was part of a larger movement around the United States by civil rights advocates.
Morrison said he was honored to illustrate civil rights icons in the book as well.
“When I do have the opportunity to paint civil rights heroes, I just feel blessed. I wanted to do the best I can particularly on these images because I hold them in high respect. Particularly with Rosa Parks, I wanted to show that she did get into ‘good trouble,’ as John Lewis would say. I painted her to not look apologetic for what she had done, she looked stunned,” said Morrison.
“Above the Rim” is now available for purchase.
