by Chris Boucher
Exactly 121 years to the day that Harry “Bucky” Lew, basketball’s first Black professional, jumped from the Lowell YMCA to the pros, the Y is honoring Lew with a memorial plaque to celebrate his achievement.
The plaque will be the first individual honor for Lew in the city. Good thing the Y doesn’t hold a grudge!
A dedication will be held Monday, November 6, at 6 PM at the Y. The event is open to both members of the club and the general public.
After Lew became the first Black pro in 1902, in a career lasted 25 years, he later became the professional game’s first Black coach, manager, referee, and team owner, all in otherwise white leagues.
He also coached a year at Lowell Tech (now UMass Lowell) in 1922, undoubtedly making him the first Black head coach of a major college. Boston College, amongst others, had to be impressed, as Lowell Tech swept them two-games-to-none that year.
As Lew was a violinist too, YMCA member Herman Hampton will begin the ceremony by playing violin. Lowell Y CEO Kevin Morrissey will speak, followed by another YMCA member, Lew biographer Chris Boucher. Lew’s granddaughter, Wendy Johnson, will also be on hand and attendees will have an opportunity to meet Wendy and her daughter over light refreshments after the ceremony.
Boucher will attempt to bring some context to Lew’s accomplishments by reading excerpts from the papers of the day. Both the Lowell Sun and the Lowell Courier Citizen covered Lew’s career extensively.
In 1901, when he was an amateur, the Courier Citizen wrote about the team and its star:
[Their] record… was perhaps the best made by any team from the city [and they] so far surpassed their opponents that large scores were always piled up every game.
[The season] could not have come to a more glorious conclusion…One of the Lowell men…at critical stages of the game was on hand with the sphere in his tight embrace to aid his fellows in piling up the score. That was Bucky Lew.
And in 1902 and 1903, during the first years of his pro career, the paper offered more praise:
This man Lew is a wonder… His work in the New England League was the talk of every city in which he appeared…
He is a little chap but lively on his feet and has a… good eye for the basket.
Lew possesses the alertness of a cat and his dodging through the defense of a whole team is pretty to watch.
Lew is a gentle little man to look at, but when the whistle blows, he becomes a whirlwind.
And then again in 1915, when he took ownership of a team in a reconstituted New England League:
Harry Lew…himself a basketball player known in every part of the east where the sport is played, is at the head of the project, and this fact alone should make the move a success.
Of course, the similarity to Jackie Robinson is obvious, as Lew himself told Springfield Union reporter Gerry Finn 1958:
All those things you read about Jackie Robinson, the abuse, the name-calling, extra effort to put him down… they’re all true. I got the same treatment and even worse…. I took the bumps, the elbows in the gut, knees here and everything else that went with it. But I gave it right back. It was rough but worth it. Once they knew I could take it, I had it made.
The dedication ceremony begins at the Lowell YMCA on 11/6 at 6 PM!
Chris Boucher is the author of “The Original Bucky Lew: Basketball’s First Black Professional.” The book is available in local bookstores and on all platforms at https://books2read.com/u/4XeQ9g.
