Author Scott Ellsworth on “The Secret Game”

Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2015
Time: 4:00 p.m.
Location: Edge Workshop Room, Bostock Library
Contact: Valerie Gillispie, valerie.gillispie@duke.edu or 919-684-8929

Please join us on Tuesday, March 31, at 4:00 p.m. for a special reading by historian and Duke alumnus Scott Ellsworth. He will be reading from his new book The Secret Game: A Wartime Story of Courage, Change, and Basketball’s Lost Triumph.

The Secret Game tells the incredible story of a Sunday morning in 1944 when the all-white Duke University military team from the Medical School traveled across town to North Carolina Central College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) and played a secret interracial basketball game. Under legendary coach John McLendon, the NCCU Eagles won the match-up. The players then continued to socialize and play a pick-up game that mixed players from each team.

Against the backdrop of World War II and the Jim Crow South, Ellsworth explores the way this extraordinary game came about, what it meant for the players involved, and how the details of this game were forgotten—and remembered. Ellsworth conducted research in the Duke University Archives, Duke University Medical Center Archives, and NCCU archives in writing the book.

Ellsworth will be introduced by Timothy B. Tyson, Duke University faculty member and author of Blood Done Sign My Name. The event will be followed by a book signing and reception in the Edge Lounge. Copies of The Secret Game will be available for sale by the Gothic Bookshop.

This event is sponsored by the Duke University Archives, the Center for Documentary Studies, the Gothic Bookshop, the Duke University Libraries, and the Office of Public Affairs and Government Relations.

Post contributed by Valerie Gillispie, Duke University Archivist.