In 1911, Cumberland Posey formed an all-Black basketball team called the Monticello Athletic Association.

Posey was a local multi-sport star who had led Homestead High School to the city basketball championship and who had earned respect on Pittsburgh’s tough, blue-collar sandlot playgrounds.

When the Monticells quickly outgrew local white competition, Posey challenged the previous year’s Black national champion, Howard University, to visit the Smoky City for “the first colored game ever played in Pittsburgh.”

The Monticellos were considered “a huge joke” by Howard, who thought they would show the steel town “just how basketball is played in polite circles”.

However, the Monticellos crushed Howard, and the victory put Pittsburgh on the Black basketball map, earning the Monticello Athletic Association the Colored Basketball World’s Championship for 1911-12.

The success of the Monticello Athletic Association paved the way for other African American teams in Pittsburgh and elsewhere, by showing that any team from any city could produce a champion with enough desire and determination.

A portion of net proceeds from the sales of our Black Fives assortment will benefit the The Black Fives Foundation, which works to inspire excellence by preserving, teaching, and honoring the pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball.