"Big
House" Gaines dies at 81 |  |
LUT WILLIAMS
BCSP Editor
To us, "Big House," his black college coaching contemporaries and the institutions they represented were college basketball. In some ways they still are.
For us, there was no Duke or Carolina,
Wake Forest or Georgia Tech. They existed in some far
off universe. Because of the prevailing social and
political climate of the time, they might as well not
have existed. 
The CIAA, of which Gaines' Winston-Salem State was an integral and indispensable part, was the center of the basketball universe.
There, he was a towering figure only later to be appreciated by the wider sports world, and only then after a gut-wrenching struggle for inclusion and acceptance.
Somewhere along the way, through his near-record 828 wins, 11 CIAA championships and one NCAA title the first by a black college and a black coach in NCAA history he became a legend and a symbol of the struggle and contributions he and his cohorts made.
When we see black players today filling up the rosters of teams like NCAA national champion North Carolina, those same players 40-50 years ago had almost nowhere to go except to America's historically black colleges and universities.
That means before there was a Michael Jordan, there was a Sam Jones. Before there was a Grant Hill, there was a Cleo Hill. Before there was a Chris Paul, there was an Earl Monroe.
Nurturing these talents and preparing them for what lay ahead fell to people like Gaines. And they did a great job of it.
To an even greater degree, his accomplishments and achievements, earned against all odds in a racist and discriminatory environment hellbent on denying him access and opportunity, epitomize black peoples' historic struggles to make it in America.
Coach Gaines is a small part (if anything he did could be called small) of a cadre, no, a legion of black college products who took up their places on the front lines of educating and edifying black America's youth.
They are coaches, teachers and principals, lawyers, nurses and doctors who returned to their communities and fought the battles for our survival and success.
This Morgan State graduate and Paducah, Kentucky native, on his way to what he thought would be a career as a dentist, stopped off at WSSU and spent 47 years as its basketball coach and his life helping and finding a way for people on and off the court.
For that we owe him a grant level of thanks and a lot more. We must be sure to remember him, honor him, and never forget the battles he and his kind waged for all of us.
© 2005 Azeez Communications, Inc.