Boston Celtics legend Bill Russell talks Lexington player strike for civil rights

Amid the celebration of the NBA’s storied history over the decades, the harsh reality of players of color is sometimes forgotten. But for players like Boston Celtics legends Bill Russell , Sam Jones, and Thomas “Satch” Sanders, such memories are an indelible relic of an era where casual racism was far more institutionalized and even accepted.

In fact, when the latter two were denied service at the cafe of the team hotel in the 1960s, Russell, Jones, and Sanders all elected to sit out the game in protest. The fellow Black players on the Celtics and then those on the opposing team — the (then) St. Louis (now, Atlanta) Hawks — joined them as well.

Hear the story told by one of its protagonists, Bill Russell himself, in the video embedded below, courtesy of CLNS Media via their “NBA History & Legends on CLNS” YouTube channel.

It’s a story that should not be forgotten among the many happy ones more commonly recounted from that era, and one that still bears telling today.

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