News from the Past

A Note from the Brooklyn Campus Archives

Now that medals have been retired to their respective honored places and the Summer Olympics of 2008 is history, I’d like to share an Olympics story from our archives about a team whose glory was not contained by gold or silver or bronze.

Summer Olympics, 1936, and the Long Island University Basketball Team

1. Olympian: a participant in Olympic Games
2. Olympian: a being of superior attainments
	Webster’s Third New International
	Dictionary

Not all the Olympians competed in the 1936 Summer Olympic Games. In fact, some of the best of them boycotted the Games.

Long Island University--less than ten years old with fewer than 200 students occupying space in downtown Brooklyn office buildings and sharing a cramped gymnasium with its pharmacy school--had a peerless basketball team. The Blackbirds had won 33 straight games over a two-year period under Coach Clair Bee, known for his innovations and expertise as “Mr. Basketball.” The team was tops in the NCAA Division I and considered sure invitees to the 1936 Olympic Games and more than probable medalists.

But those Summer Games were to be held in Berlin where Adolph Hitler had come to power as chancellor and his Nazi party had turned Germany into a dictatorship. By 1936, Jews, gypsies and all those considered “enemies of the state” were being disenfranchised and persecuted. The Nazi policy of Aryan superiority controlled every area of German life.

A handful of countries, including the United States, debated whether to go to Berlin. Finally, the U.S. Olympic Committee decided on participation. Their reason: sports and politics should be separated. (Ironically, Germany was using sports to further its politics.)

An Olympic committee, however, could not speak for a certain university team in the heart of Brooklyn. Long Island University’s winning basketball players met in Coach Clair Bee’s office to vote on whether to participate. Jewish, Protestant, Catholic, they deserve to be mentioned by name: Ben Kramer, Jules Bender, Leo Merson, Marius Russo, Arthur Hillhouse, William Schwartz, Kenneth Norton, Harry Grant. As a team, they had all the ability and fighting spirit to capture the Gold but they decided if one team mate voted to boycott, all would boycott. Olympic glory was tantalizingly within reach but, the situation and decision was so important, if one man’s conscience told him he couldn’t see fit to attend, the whole team would not go. In the ensuing moments more than one man voted to boycott and the team united on that decision. Coach Clair Bee stood beside his men and Dean Tristram Walker Metcalfe not only stood beside them but pointedly and proudly spoke for them. He announced the Blackbirds “had decided not to compete because the university would not under any circumstances be represented in Olympic Games held in Germany.” A number of other college teams declined the Olympic invitation but only Long Island University, with the words of Dean Metcalfe, specifically and fearlessly told the world why we declined. The Olympics were “being held in Germany.”

Within three years Hitler had launched World War II, the Nazi forces had begun its course of destruction that ravaged Europe taking millions of lives and millions more in the Holocaust. But for a shining, prescient moment in 1936 Long Island University’s basketball team took a stand against tyranny and came together in honor of conscience and respect for the best of human values. Yes, the team from Brooklyn did win the Gold.

From Janet Marks, Archivist