Sports Complex named after Dr. Edwin B. Hendersom

University of the District of Columbia Names Sports Complex After Dr. Edwin B. Henderson

OnFebruary 19, 2022, Alpha Omega and Omicron Gamma chapters, Third District of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity Inc., in conjunction with the University of the District of Columbia (UDC) and Dr. Henderson’s family, participated in the renaming of the Sports Complex on the campus. After the cover was unveiled, the sign above the entrance of Building 47 on the University of the District of Columbia’s main campus in Washington, D.C., read, “Dr. Edwin Bancroft Henderson Sports Complex.”

The University of the District of Columbia (UDC) community renamed its sports complex after Henderson, one of its most distinguished alumni, a native Washingtonian, physical health education and basketball pioneer, and civil rights advocate. In addition, Brother Henderson was a Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame inductee in 2013 and a charter member of Alpha Omega Chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc. in 1922. The building is the first on UDC’s main campus to be named after an individual.

Edwin Bancroft Henderson was born in southwest Washington, D.C., on Nov. 24, 1883. He was an honors graduate of M Street High School (later called Dunbar High School) and the Miner Normal School (a predecessor institution of UDC) in 1904. Upon graduating as a teacher in 1904, Henderson taught (and later directed) physical education in the D.C. public schools for five decades. During his first three summer breaks, he attended summer sessions at Harvard University’s Dudley Sargent School of Physical Training in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he learned the game of basketball.

When Henderson returned to segregated Washington, D.C., he had difficulty finding courts or clubs for Black players, so he organized Black basketball teams, leagues, and referees. He used basketball as a catalyst for physical education training, leadership development, and sportsmanship. Known as the “Grandfather of Black Basketball,” he was inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame in 2013. He taught and influenced perhaps hundreds of thousands of Washington area schoolchildren in basketball, including Duke Ellington and Dr. Charles Drew, teaching them integrity and the importance of scholarship.

He earned a bachelor’s degree from Howard University, a master’s degree from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in athletic training from the Central Chiropractic College in Kansas City, Missouri. He became the first black man to receive a National Honor Fellowship in the American Association for Health, Physical Education, and Recreation.

He also authored several seminal books about African American participation in sports, including his landmark work, The Negro In Sports. He helped organize the first all-black amateur athletic association, the Interscholastic Athletic Association (1906), the Washington, D.C. Public School Athletic League (1906), and the Eastern Board of Officials (1905) – which was a training center for decades and was the go-to pool for highly qualified African American referees.

Aside from sports, Henderson and his wife, Nellie, also an educator, helped form the Colored Citizens Protection League to fight segregation and discrimination in housing and education after they moved to Falls Church, Virginia. In 1918, Brother Dr. Henderson helped form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Falls Church, the nation’s first rural branch of the NAACP. He twice served as president of the NAACP’s Virginia Council, from 1955 to 1958. He claimed to have had more than 3,000 letters published in more than a dozen newspapers, with most of the letters concerning race relations and seeking equality for African Americans in the United States and the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area.

Henderson died of cancer in 1977 at age 93. His ashes were interred in Woodlawn Cemetery in Washington, D.C. His papers are held at Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center. During comments at the reception following the unveiling, Brother Mark Robinson, chair of Alpha Omega Chapter’s Centennial Committee, said, “Brother Henderson is more than deserving of this honor. As fate would have it, the recognition comes as the Alpha Omega Chapter of the Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc., the chapter he helped charter, is celebrating its centennial anniversary.”

Alpha Omega Chapter has committed to donating $5,000 over the next two years and the Omicron Gamma Chapter made a $500 donation to the UDC Foundation for a memorial campaign in Brother Henderson’s honor. Plans call for the construction of a statue of Brother Henderson in a memorial plaza in front of the sports complex, which will bear his name. In addition, the foundation plans to endow a scholarship named after Brother Henderson to be awarded to students attending UDC.

Brother Jerome Shelton, a UDC alumnus (Class of 1968) who was initiated at Omicron Gamma Chapter (University of the District of Columbia) and now sits on the UDC Board of Trustees, said, “We stand on the shoulders of giants. I grew up in D.C., played basketball at the Boys Club, and never knew who E.B. Henderson was until many years later. That is truly sad, but I am so elated today that we recognize the guy who I spent so much time trying to play his game.”

“People from around the world will be able to come, see, and understand who this man was, once the statue and project are complete,” said UDC President Ronald Mason, Jr.

“We want to raise scholarships so students can learn and study about who this man was and what he did.”

Mason then asked, “Why did it take so long for this to happen?” He explained that “great people of color who were Washingtonians” haven’t received their just due in the annals of history. “In America today, there is an assault on truth. People are trying to rewrite history. If we had commemorated E.B. Henderson 50 years ago, we might have had some professional basketball players here with us who understood how much respect this man was due because of how he enabled them to make billions of dollars today. When we commemorate him today, it will help the young people who only see the obstacles in the paths to understand the possibilities of the future and that they too can be an E.B. Henderson.”

The grandson of Brother E.B. Henderson, Edwin Bancroft Henderson II, said although his grandfather didn’t have a degree in architecture, “he was an architect who helped to build the infrastructure, so African-American youth would be able to participate in organized athletics.”

John Thompson III, vice president of Player Development and Engagement for Monumental Sports and Entertainment, donated $200,000 to UDC for the Dr. E.B. Henderson Memorial Fund Campaign on behalf of the Ted Leonsis Foundation, which owns the NBA’s Washington Wizards and WNBA’s Washington Mystics.