Only in Indiana: A legacy of firsts as Crispus Attucks championship basketball team honored

We have all heard a lot of good sports stories. Some are celebrated for a short time and some are celebrated for all time. This is a basketball story that is about to be celebrated once again 60 years after it happened.Where does the time go? Sixty years ago Bill Hampton and John Gipson were playing basketball for Crispus Attucks, making history.

"I didn't ever know the magnitude of what we did. How we touched people," John Gipson remembers. He was a substitute on the 1955 team and a starter on the 1956 team that went undefeated and won a second consecutive championship.

"It's a legacy that we have left," his 1955 teammate Bill Hampton added.

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It's a legacy of firsts. First Indianapolis team to win a state championship. First all-black basketball team to win a state championship in the country. And now the team will serve as Grand Marshal of the Indianapolis 500 Festival Parade, which you can watch on WTHR this Saturday at noon.

"For me I think it will be another first for us," Gipson said.

So what is it like to come home, I asked Oscar Robertson as we sat on the veranda overseeing the Ohio River in Cincinnati? 

"It's nice. I love Indy. Love Indiana. Great for me. It's where I learned to play basketball. Nothing can top that," Robertson answered.

"The Big O," as he was known" would lead Crispus Attucks to its first state title in 1955 and a second undefeated season in 1956. Those years would lay the foundation for his collegiate, Olympic and NBA Hall of Fame career to come. There was only one thing that eluded him.

"We never had a parade, to be honest," Robertson clarified.

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The parade for Attucks in both 1955 and 1956 wound around Monument Circle downtown, but unlike traditional parades before it, it didn't stop there for a celebration. It continued on to Northwestern Park.

Never got to stop? Never got to stop to celebrate, I asked?

"Never did that. Every other team that won the state championship did but because we were black students they decided this was no good. We don't want them downtown," Robertson remembers.

Now the living legend who resides in Cincinnati says he is finally ready to move on.

"I am older now, you know. Those things don't bother me nearly as much so I can appreciate this. This is great. Not only for myself. I've had a glorified career and I appreciate that career. A lot of players are not in that position and I think it is great for them," he says.

Which takes us back to the gymnasium at Crispus Attucks.

"I think it's great. I think it's just great. Long time coming but better late than never," Bill Hampton who started on the 1955 team said.

That's where Robertson's two teammates, who never even had the opportunity to play a home game because the gym was too small, are basking in the afterglow. The banners are still displayed on the wall of the current gym, Bill Hampton still sports his championship ring and after sixty years a wrong is about to made right.

"It's extremely important our kids and our grandkids and community as a whole will sit on this and be happy for a long time," Hampton continued.

It's an overdue honor for one of Indiana's greatest high school basketball teams of all time.

The IPL 500 Festival Parade is this Saturday starting at noon. Watch on WTHR!

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