When I was growing up in Chester, Pennsylvania during the 1960s, my friends and I played basketball during all four seasons of the year. It didn’t matter if it was swelteringly hot in August or bitterly cold in February, we’d be playing hoops on the outdoor asphalt court in Chester Park.
I grew up in the last all-white neighborhood in Chester. Once a small but mighty industrial powerhouse located on the Delaware River, just fifteen miles downstream from Philly, Chester in the 1960s was in the throes of deindustrialization, urban decay, and white flight.
The wealthy white families had already moved into the surrounding suburbs. Working class white families held their ground in segregated Northeast Chester, buffered by the Widener College campus, the 72-acre Chester Park, and an invisible racial boundary enforced by police officers, real estate agents, and social taboos. I lived in the white enclave of Northeast Chester with my two older brothers and two older sisters and our single mom. We moved from the suburbs to Chester when my dad died in 1956.
Just a mile away, divided by Interstate 95, was the border of a mysterious and foreboding foreign land inhabited by Black Chester.
The one bridge between those two worlds was the game of basketball.
In the parks, school yards, back allies, and gyms of Chester during that time, hundreds, probably thousands, of Black boys, white boys, and Puerto Rican boys played the game of basketball. They played hard and played it from dawn to dusk, seven days a week. Some of those boys went on to play ball in college, and a handful of Chester legends of the era played in the NBA. Most Chester boys from those times ended up working in a factory or, maybe, in an office, if they were lucky. The unlucky ones ended up in a homeless shelter, or in a jail cell, or in an early grave.
I grew up on the basketball courts of Chester, and I’ve never really left them behind. This particular story is one that I’ve thought about writing for many years. Although it’s disguised as a basketball story, it’s really a story about coming of age in an America fractured by race, about fears real and imaginary, and about seeing something of myself in the Black boys from the other side of Interstate 95.
I was fifteen years old in the summer of 1969. From the day summer vacation started that year, I ate, drank, and breathed basketball. I practically lived on the court in Chester Park. If none of my friends was around, I’d practice shooting by myself, taking 50 shots from every spot on the court. When a friend finally arrived, we would play one-on-one games that turned into battles in which bragging rights were perpetually on the line. Eventually, the late-sleeping gang would show up, and we’d go five-on-five until dinner time. After wolfing down dinner, we’d hurry back to the park, only to be bullied to the sidelines by the older teenagers and young men. On rare occasions, they needed an extra player and one of us would get the thrill of playing with the big guys. Life didn’t get any better than that for a fifteen-year-old street jock.
My older brother Tim was 19 years old that summer. He was always one of the best players in the after-dinner games at Chester Park. Tim was attending college at a local branch of Penn State University in 1969, but that summer he had a job working as a counselor at the Morton Street playground on Chester’s East Side. Morton Street was a badass street in a badass neighborhood. All of the kids who lived on Morton Street were Black.
It wasn’t unusual for the Chester Parks Department to hire a white college kid to work as a counselor in a Black neighborhood back in the day. That was the way it was in Chester in ‘69. Even though the majority of Chester’s residents was Black, authority was all white. The Mayor was white, the City Councilmen were white, the local government’s department heads were white, and the patronage jobs that were doled out went, for the most part, to whites, including the jobs as summer playground counselors.
My older brother was my hero, so I’m biased, but I think I can honestly say that the Black boys at the Morton Street playground were lucky to have Tim as one of their counselors. For one, Tim was an extraordinary athlete who played college ball, and he earned respect on the basketball court, which happened to be the only court of public opinion that mattered on the East Side of Chester. Tim was also a natural born coach, and he pulled together a team of younger teenagers from the Morton Street neighborhood and taught them basketball fundamentals, strategy, and teamwork.
Tim and his Morton Street team only had one problem. There was no organized summer basketball league in Chester in 1969, and the team needed some competition to test their mettle.
That’s where my Chester Park gang came in.
Tim was also a natural organizer, and he came up with a plan to stage a best-of-three tournament pitting Morton Street against Chester Park. The first game would be played at the Morton Street playground, the second game would be played at Chester Park, and the deciding game, if necessary, would be played at a neutral court.
Suddenly, the lazy, carefree summer days were charged with an electrified purpose as our Chester Park Five drilled and practiced for the big tournament with unprecedented intensity.
While we all harbored secret trepidation about going head-to-head with the Black kids, we feigned supreme, macho confidence that our victory was predestined due to our prowess. Truth be told, there were some pretty decent ballplayers in that fivesome.
Little Tom Hilbert was actually our best player. “Herbie” was lighting quick and an amazing dead-eyed shooter. Tom would later play college basketball at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia.
Rick “Mount” Psonak was our big guy. Rick was still growing into his body at age fifteen, but his adolescent awkwardness was rapidly transforming into a manly athleticism. Within a year, Rick would be out on the court with actual men in the after-dinner games at Chester Park.
Joey DiFerdinando was the youngest of the three DiFerdinando boys who were all talented and tough-as-nails ball players. Joey was never quite as good as his older brothers, Nick and Jimmy, but he was still top notch.
Jay Constantine was the scholar-athlete of our cohort. Jay valued and excelled in academics, which tarnished his reputation a bit, but he could also hold his own on the court. Jay eventually went to medical school and became an endocrinologist. So, all that studying instead of hooping with us probably didn’t hurt him in the long run.
I was the point guard on the team. I was just a few inches taller than Hilbert, and my job was to get the ball to our scorers and harass the other team’s best ball handler. I was not even close to being as good a player as my brother Tim, but I played hard and I was a good teammate.
However good we thought we were, we were about to be tested as we crammed into our family station wagon and Tim drove us past the imaginary border separating the white world from the Black world.
When we arrived at the Morton Street playground, we were flabbergasted to find nearly one hundred people had gathered to watch the game. Apparently, the word had gotten out on the street that some young white boys would be taking on the neighborhood team. The crowd was a real mix of ages, from babies in their mothers’ arms to old, grizzled men with gray beards. From our viewpoint, it seemed like the whole neighborhood had turned out to watch the game.
Of course, everyone in the crowd—babies, toddlers, youngsters, teenagers, adults, and seniors—was Black.
And it was so LOUD. Transistor radios blared Motown tunes. Little kids were dancing and singing. Everyone was laughing and bantering back and forth. And when we stepped out of the car and walked onto the basketball court, the decibel level increased to a volume that we fancied could be heard all the way back in our own neighborhood. Whistles, catcalls, and jibes greeted us.
We were scared shitless.
We tried to put on brave faces, but we failed miserably. We were tight and tentative during our warm-up. Our shots were off target, our passes were errant, and our dribbling was unsteady.
Then, my brother Tim blew his whistle, signifying the start of the contest.
He announced to the assembled players and to the crowd that the first team to score 40 points would win the game. Each basket would count for two points. At the 20-point mark, the teams would switch and shoot at the opposite basket. There would be no free throws. When a foul was committed, the team with the player who had been knocked, hacked, or pushed would retain the ball and inbound it from the side.
Tim would be the referee. He would also be the scorekeeper. “Let’s play!”
Morton Street dominated the contest from the first possession when Walker Carter, their tall and rangy star player, blew past our flat-footed defenders and leapt high toward the sky. He laid the ball over the rim and through the hoop. Two points. The score: 2-0.
Their fans erupted into a cacophony of cheers, jeers, and other noises that were alien to our ears.
It seemed like Morton Street scored 20 points before we could catch our breath. They pressed us, stole the ball, blocked our shots, and, when they shot the ball, they couldn’t seem to miss. Walker Carter scored six baskets and didn’t even break a sweat.
Rick managed to knock down a couple of shots for us, and Joey D hit a long jumper for our team.
At the end of the first half, Morton Street led Chester Park by a tally of 20-6.
When we switched to shooting at the other basket, things went from bad to worse.
The rim at the other end of the court was slightly bent and tilted, probably from some young dude dunking and hanging on it for too long. The lopsided hoop hadn’t seemed to bother the Morton Street shooters, but it bedeviled us. No matter if our aim seemed to be perfectly on target, the ball refused to find its way through the cylinder. All our shots bounced to one side or the other or spun around and then dropped into the waiting hands of one of our opponents.
When Walker Carter sunk a corner shot to score their 40th point and win the game, I believe we were just thankful that the debacle was finally over and we could get the hell out of there and go back to the comfort of our own neighborhood. The final score was Morton Street 40, Chester Park 8.
We rode home in complete silence, having been thoroughly embarrassed on the court. Not only weren’t we as great as we had imagined ourselves to be, but we also actually stunk. We couldn’t hope to compete against Black kids. They ran faster, jumped higher, and were stronger than us. Maybe we should spend more time studying, like Jay.
The pain and shame of defeat gradually diminished over the next few days, and we slowly regained some of our self-esteem and confidence.
When the day came for the rematch on our home court at Chester Park, we were determined to redeem ourselves.
We made sure to round up all our friends and others from the neighborhood to come and watch the game, even some girls and a few old men. There weren’t nearly one hundred, but we definitely managed to turn out several dozen fans.
When the Morton Street players arrived and walked down the grassy hill to the basketball court, they didn’t seem quite as cocky and relaxed as they had in their own backyard. Maybe it was our imagination, but it seemed they were a little nervous during their warmups.
As he had done at Morton Street, Tim blew the whistle and announced the rules of game to the assembled players and onlookers.
“Let’s play!”
This time, Chester Park scored first when I zipped a crisp pass to Hilbert and he banked a shot off of the oversized, square-shaped steel backboard. Our fans didn’t exactly go wild, but there were some shouts of encouragement.
“Way to go, Hilbert.”
Everyone on our team had long ago mastered the art of the bank shot in order to take advantage of the unique, huge backboards mounted at both ends of the court at Chester Park.
Hilbert’s opening score was just the first of many successful bank shots our squad made that afternoon. The Morton Street players tried to emulate us and shoot bank shots, too, but their shots were too soft or too hard and most of them careened off the mark.
The more we scored and they missed, the louder our fans got and the more confident we became.
We led by 20-10 at halftime.
Morton Street scored the first six points of the second half, and we needed to relocate our resolve, which we did. Rick Mount muscled his way in for a tough basket, then I intercepted a sloppy pass from Morton Street’s point guard and scored on a layup. We stretched the lead to 24-16 and never looked back.
This time, Hilbert drained a corner shot to score the 40th point. Final score: Chester Park 40, Morton Street 22.
We celebrated that night with milkshakes at Halls Ice Cream Shop on the corner of Edgemont Avenue and Avon Street. Well now, maybe we were pretty great ball players, despite our stumble at the Morton Street playground. Maybe Walker Carter wasn’t superman. Who’s afraid of Black kids, anyway? Not us.
I wish the story ended with that heady milkshake celebration at Halls, but we did have to eventually play the rubber match.
My brother recruited some of his friends to help drive both teams to the outdoor courts at Nether Providence Middle School. It was a brutally hot summer day, at least 95 degrees, and the humidity had to be near 100 percent. Not another human being was in sight of the basketball court. The only people watching the game were my brother’s two uninterested friends.
It was a strange experience.
Both teams were flat, sapped by the heat, and played tired. It seemed to take forever to get through the first half. Players on both teams just couldn’t put the ball in the hole. A Morton Street shooter finally connected to get them to 20 points first. They led at the halfway point, 20-18.
Sorry to say, Chester Park couldn’t quite get over the hump on that muggy summer afternoon. We lost to Morton Street 40-36.
My brother insisted that everyone shake hands after the game and, for a brief second, the players from both teams seemed to share a fleeting moment of mutual respect that comes from competing against others who play hard, with skill. Personally, I had a confusing revelation that I couldn’t put into words but one that rattled my sense of identity. The Black kids weren’t foreigners. They were sort of like us.
The high point of the summer had come and gone. We soon forgot about the hyped-up tournament with Morton Street and went back to our boring lives in the neighborhood. Over the next year, we all turned 16 years old and got our driver’s licenses. Some of us started drinking a few beers at night, some of us tried smoking marijuana, and some of us started spending more time with a girlfriend than with our jock friends.
It was only much later in my own life when I realized that I had been a part of a fascinating cultural exchange that summer in 1969. I’m still not entirely sure what I learned from the experience of discombobulation that I felt when I stepped onto the court at the Morton Street playground. I’m equally uncertain about lessons learned from observing the vulnerability of those Black kids when they stepped onto our home court in our white neighborhood.
I know I’m still grappling with white privilege, inherited racism, and the instinct to fear and separate from “the other.” I understand, intellectually, that the barriers that segregated me from my Black peers in Chester during the 1960’s were social constructs of racism and oppression that endure to this very day.
In preparing to write this story, I Googled “Walker Carter, Chester, PA.”
Walker graduated from Chester High School in 1973 and then attended Widener University. He was a track and football star in college, leading the Widener football team to a small college national championship in 1977. He also earned All American status in Track & Field as a sprinter. Walker played professional football with the Buffalo Bills for a short time and then worked for the Philadelphia Electric Company as field technician for more than 30 years.
In 2017, he died in a tragic accident while helping to restore power to an impacted community after a damaging storm.
I only knew Walker from playing against him in three basketball games a very long time ago, yet somehow, I felt a stinging loss when I read of his passing.
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Terry Rumsey is a retired professional grant writer who finally has the time to devote to creative writing. He’s a well-known social justice activist living in Philadephia, PA. The Bread & Roses Community Fund recognized Terry as one of the most influential 30 activists in Philadelphia.
