Overview

Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson was the son of working-class parents born in slavery. Henderson attended Harvard University's Dudley Sargent School of Physical Training. There he met the leaders in the new field of physical education and recognized athletics--and basketball, especially--as a public health initiative and a way that young Blacks could gain college scholarships and debunk the idea of racial inferiority. In The Grandfather of Black Basketball, Edwin Bancroft Henderson II--Dr. Henderson's grandson--provides unprecedented detail and fascinating insight into this influential figure in Black history. Henderson organized the first athletic league for Blacks, introduced basketball to Black people on a wide-scale, organized basis, and founded associations to train and organize Black officials and referees. He was instrumental in founding the first rural branch of the NAACP, advocated for school desegregation, and held executive board positions with multiple NAACP branches. Overlooked for decades, Henderson was finally enshrined in the National Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013 as a contributor. The Grandfather of Black Basketball gives long-overdue recognition to a sports pioneer, civil rights activist, author, educator, and pragmatic humanitarian who fought his entire life to improve opportunities for youth through athletics.

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Edwin Bancroft Henderson II is the founding president and director of the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation, whose mission it is to research, preserve, and celebrate the African American and civil rights history of Falls Church, Fairfax County, and Northern Virginia. He received the NAACP's African American History Preservation Award and was named a National Trust for Historic Preservation Diversity Scholar. He is a Life Member of the NAACP and a member of the Historical Society of Washington. He has served on the Falls Church Historical Commission since 1995. Henderson was an educator for twenty-five years and is the namesake of Dr. E. B. Henderson. Amir Abdullah (he/him/his) is an actor, playwright, and audiobook narrator residing in Los Angeles. He has been seen on stage at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Geffen Playhouse, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, California Shakespeare Theatre, A Noise Within Theatre, and other theaters around the US. On screen, Amir most recently appeared on Chicago Med and on the last season of Empire and has been seen on other network shows and films. As a narrator, he is a four-time Golden Earphone Award winner and an ALSC Notable Children's Recording recipient. Most known for narrating the YA series Tristan Strong, he has lent his voice to dozens of other prolific authors' works such as Ibram X. Kendi, Kwame Mbalia, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, Eric Jerome Dickey, and more. You can hear him as the voice of Yasir in the videogame Abo Kashem and in the HP Lovecraft Society Radio Plays and as a regular on the Open Door Playhouse. He can be seen and heard in commercials for Ford, Adidas, Kaiser Permanente, and Facebook, as well as many others. As an actor Amir won Best Actor at the Movieville International Film Festival for his work in the film The Untimely Concurrence. Amir's playwriting debut, Pray to Ball, had its world premiere at Skylight Theatre Company in Los Angeles and won the Ovation Award for Best Set. He graduated with an MFA in acting from Pennsylvania State University and a BFA in acting from the University of Miami.

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