A couple of weeks ago I posted an item about how Manhattan and Siena colleges both passed up invitations to compete in the NAIB tournament, a very prestigious national post-season basketball event, back in 1948.
The reason was that the tournament prohibited African Americans from participating.
The stance taken by the two programs (along with LIU) who would later join the MAAC forced the event to integrate.
Since the original item was posted in this forum, your Hoopscribe did a little more research for a column that recently appeared in The Troy Record newspaper. Because of the paper's location the column focused primarily on Siena's role in the commendable stance of the schools involved.
It seems that Siena made its stance to no fanfare. It told event organizers why it would not participate, but did not seek publicity beyond that.
The team's own players at the time (only one from the 1947-48 team is still with us) don't recall even being told the squad was invited to the post-season tournament, let alone told the school had turned down the invite.
You can read the expanded view of the circumstances from schools that would become MAAC members that chose to do the right thing nearly 66 years ago. It's all in my recent Troy Record column, right here:
http://www.troyrecord.com/sports/20140201/on-the-record-siena-played-role-integrating-college-hoops
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