C.B. Claiborne: The First African-American Basketball Player at Duke

As Black History Month comes to a close, we’re taking a look back at Duke’s first African American basketball player. The university celebrated it’s 50th anniversary of integrating black students on campus a couple years ago, and the 2015-2016 season next year will be the 50th anniversary of the first African American player taking the court for Duke Basketball. The Atlantic Coast Conference was desegregated in 1963 when Maryland added an African American football player, and basketball was first integrated the following year.

Claudius “C.B.” Claiborne was the first African American player to integrate the Men’s Basketball program at Duke University under head coach Vic Bubas. Claiborne was originally from Danville, Virginia, about an hour from Durham, which was still segregated at the time and filled with racial tension and violence. The 6-2 Claiborne was an excellent student as well as a talented athlete, receiving several national college scholarships, was the president of his senior class and the National Honor Society, and was even invited to meet with President Lyndon Johnson at the White House. He attended Duke on a presidential scholarship from the university (Jacobs, 62). Claiborne was also the captain of the basketball and baseball teams his senior year at John Langston High School in 1965.

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Several Duke assistant coaches took the time to recruit Claiborne and watch him play, including Chuck Daly and Harold Waters. Waters had this to say about the decision to make an offer to Claibrone, “I can’t trace it…the first kid at Duke would be under a mircoscope just because he was different and the first. C.B. was there. He was a good player, a good student, good kid. Nice player. It was a ‘Why not?’ kind of thing.” (61). Claiborne turned down the opportunity to play at the all-black North Carolina A&T State University to play for the varsity basketball team at Duke due to the Blue Devils’ up-tempo playing style and the success of their program after appearing in consecutive Final Fours in 1963 and 1964.

Claiborne performed well on the court for the most part during his time at Duke. He appeared in every game on the freshmen team his first year (freshmen were ineligible for varsity back then) averaging 7.8 points and 5.4 rebounds per game (64). He got along well with his teammates, but faced discrimination from fans, the media, and several professors during his time at Duke. Claiborne had to eat his meals in the dining hall at North Carolina College for Negroes (now North Carolina Central University) in Durham and was never able to attend the awards banquet at the end of the year, which was held at the segregated Hope Valley Country Club. Unfortunately, his sophomore year a rift with coaches about his afro and torn ligament in his knee kept Claiborne on the bench most of the season (65). He made his first start in January 1967 in a victory over Penn State but the team lost in the first round of the NIT.

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According to Bubas, Claiborne “vastly improved” leading into his junior year, and helped the Blue Devils upset rival North Carolina in a triple-overtime game to end the regular season. However, the next season Duke lost too many key players and struggled Claiborne’s senior year finishing 15-13 in Coach Bubas’ final season before retiring. Claiborne was also involved with demonstrations on campus, and missed several practices and a game at West Virginia his senior year to join students to takeover the Allen Building and pressure the administration at Duke to hire more black faculty, offer African American studies courses, end harassment of minority students by campus police, and more (71).

Claiborne later said this about his decision to join the Blue Devils, “No one had ever had this opportunity before, so of course you take the opportunity. You don’t say no to it” (55). Claiborne graduated with a degree in engineering from Duke in 1969 and later received a masters degrees from Dartmouth College, an MBA from Washington University, and a PhD from Virginia Tech, and he’s currently a professor in the business school at Texas Southern. Claiborne’s bold decision about 50 years ago has paved the way for many of the great Duke Basketball players to follow him including Gene Banks, Johnny Dawkins, Grant Hill, Jay Williams, Kyrie Irving, Jahlil Okafor, and many more.

For more on Claiborne’s story and other first African American college basketball players, make sure check out this book where all of the information in this article was found by Duke alum Barry Jacobs (Class of 1972):

Jacobs, Barry. “Across The Line, Profiles in Basketball Courage: Tales of the First Black players in the ACC and SEC.” Guilford, Connecticut: The Lyons Press, 2008. Print.