The Milwaukee Colored Panthers were an African American semi-professional basketball team that played in Wisconsin during the mid-to-late-1930s. With an office on West Pierce Street in downtown Milwaukee, the Panthers’ innovative business model included sending postcards to post offices throughout the state, addressed simply, “Manager, City Independent Basketball Team,” along with the town’s name, but with no address. Yet, they would inevitably arrive at their destinations. In 1938, the front of these mailers had a photograph of the team and the back promoted their success as “winners of 128 games in the past three years” with an assurance they “can be booked in your city” by writing to the club’s manager. The Panthers won with excellent teamwork, which included “clever ball-handling and one-handed shots” according to the Green Bay Press-Gazette. “A dark cloud of speed and deception will descend on the armory Saturday night,” the Portage Daily Register reported in January 1937, prior to their game with the local Portage Sarbackers. The team’s success advanced the popularity of the game throughout Wisconsin and paved the way for subsequent visits to the state by the all-Black, fully professional New York Renaissance, considered the top basketball team in the country at the time. A portion of net proceeds from the sales of our Black Fives assortment will benefit the The Black Fives Foundation, which works to inspire excellence by preserving, teaching, and honoring the pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball.
