The Kentucky hoops team whose ‘throwback jerseys’ carry a message of inclusion
In an era of racial segregation, the boys’ basketball team from Somerset’s Dunbar High School claimed the 1953 state championship in the all-black Kentucky High School Athletic League by winning a 51-50 thriller over Paris Western High School.
Only three years later, Dunbar High School was no more, as the racial integration of Kentucky schools opened the path for black students to attend Somerset High School with their white peers.
Since 1956, blue-and-gold Dunbar Trojans uniforms have not been worn in a high school basketball game.
On Saturday night, thanks to the Somerset Briar Jumpers boys’ basketball program, that will change.
It was on the team bus coming home from a game last season when current Somerset boys’ hoops coach Jeron Dunbar and his assistant coaches found themselves in a brain-storming session.
In recent years, Somerset’s archrival, Pulaski County, has worn “throwback jerseys” to honor some of the smaller high schools — Eubank, Mount Victory, Shopville etc. ... — that existed in that county prior to the consolidated high school.
Dunbar wanted his players to get in on the throwback-jersey fun; however, as an independent city school district, Somerset did not have an analogous, merger-filled past.
“We were trying to figure something out, and we thought ‘What about the old Dunbar High School that was here?’” Dunbar says. “A lot of these kids (now), they don’t know anything about the old Dunbar school. We thought (wearing Dunbar jerseys) would be a way to bring that history back for them.”
It is a history both grim and inspiring.
Separate and unequal
In 1904, the Kentucky state legislature passed a bill that made the racial segregation of schools, both public and private, the state law. It codified that the commonwealth would field separate and very unequal educational systems for white students and black students.
With everything stacked against the black schools, a sense of community and a determination to overcome became a strong ethos at institutions like the Dunbar School in Somerset.
“Given the times then, we got all the discard books. Everything we ever had was a discard even though we were part of the city school system,” says Jeff Perkins, a longtime Somerset school administrator who went to Dunbar through seventh grade. “But the teachers were really, really focused on learning. And there weren’t any discipline problems. All (the teachers) had to do was tell your parents and that was it.”
For black families in southeast Kentucky yearning for educational opportunities for their children, the Dunbar School in Somerset was a beacon.
Somerset Independent Schools board of education member Elaine Wilson, whose late father-in-law, Grant Paul Wilson, was principal at Dunbar, says, “I know of a (student) from Albany, Ky., who stayed with my husband’s parents from the eight grade on so he could attend school up here. They didn’t have a black school in his area.”
As a basketball program, Somerset Dunbar was not the consistent state power that Louisville Central or Lexington Dunbar were in the era of segregation. But from 1952-54, Coach T.L. Childs and the Trojans enjoyed a golden era.
In the book “Shadows of the Past: A History of the Kentucky High School Athletic League,” author Louis Stout, the late, former Kentucky High School Athletic Association commissioner, noted that Dunbar’s 1953 state title team finished undefeated.
The star of that team, Jackie Fitzpatrick, went on to play for the Harlem Globetrotters.
‘Raise awareness of our history’
When Green County (5-15) visits Somerset (20-5) on Saturday for a 6 p.m. tip-off, the host Briar Jumpers will be playing in uniforms designed to look like the ones worn by Dunbar.
Rather than the purple and gold long associated with Somerset athletics, the Briar Jumpers will wear white uniforms with gold letters spelling “Dunbar” above blue numbers.
“I think it will be really cool for the community to come back and see these,” says Somerset forward Kaiya Sheron, also the star quarterback on the Briar Jumpers’ 2019 Class 2A state football championship team.
Guard Kade Grundy, also a standout baseball player who will play in college for the University of Louisville, says it will be surreal for a Somerset team not to compete in purple and gold.
“But I think it’s great that we are recognizing (Dunbar),” Grundy said. “They are part of our culture. ... I think (that history) needs to be recognized and I am glad we are doing it.”
Somerset Principal Jeffrey Wesley says that, out of an enrollment of some 540 (grades 9-12), the school has roughly “9 to 10 percent” of students who are black.
“Some of our students don’t really know the history of segregation here, that there were two separate schools,” Wesley said. “We’re trying to bring that together for them and trying to shine the spotlight, not only on the accomplishments of the Dunbar School, but also to raise awareness of our own history.”
What Somerset is doing is not unprecedented in Kentucky. In 2016, Lexington’s Paul Laurence Dunbar High School wore throwback jerseys that recognized the old Lexington Dunbar, which was the all-black high school in the Lexington city schools during segregation.
Going forward, Somerset plans to hold one Dunbar throwback game each season.
For those with an emotional investment in what was once the only school in the Somerset area educating black students, what’s happening Saturday is a moment to be relished.
“Letting people know they are not forgotten is one of the most important things we can do,” says Wilson, the Somerset school board member. “I am so excited about this opportunity to bring that history alive for everybody.”
