Wilmeth Sidat-Singh
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Wilmeth Sidat-Singh was an American black basketball and American football player who was a victim of segregation in college and professional sports in the 1930s
Sidat-Singh was born in Washington DC in 1918 to black parents Pauline and Elias Webb. Upon his father's death, his mother remarried a Hindu doctor, Samuel Sidat-Singh from Harlem who adopted Wilmeth and bestowed his last name upon him. Sidat-Singh showed an inherent talent for basketball and became a local legend as he led DeWitt Clinton High School to the New York Public High School championship in 1934. He committed to play basketball at Syracuse University beginning in the fall of 1935. While playing an intramural football game, an assistant football coach noticed his talent and asked him to join the football team. Sidat-Singh starred while playing the equivalent to modern day quarterback.
However playing in a time when racial tensions still existed, his heritage would come back to haunt him. His light skin and Hindu last name had enabled Syracuse to pass him off as a Hindu. However shortly before a scheduled game against the University of Maryland, a Southern institution, black sportswriter Sam Lacy wrote an article declaring that Sidat-Singh was in fact black. The University of Maryland refused to play against a black opponent and Sidat-Singh was forced to stay on the bench despite the fact that he had already dressed. Sidat-Singh had become another victim of the Jim Crow Clause, a so-called 'gentleman's agreement' that prevented black players from competing in games against Southern teams.
With unofficial bans on black players enacted in both the NBA and NFL, Sidat-Singh played for a professional black basketball team out of New York before moving to Washington DC to join the police force at the start of World War II. He later joined the military and was a pioneer member of the Tuskegee Airmen. Sidat-Singh died in 1943 during a training mission when his plane sputtered out and he drowned in Lake Huron.
In 2005, Syracuse University honored Wilmeth Sidat-Singh by retiring his number in the rafters of the Carrier Dome
[edit] External link
- Player Bio @ orangehoops.org
