George Gregory Jr.
From Hoopedia
George D. Gregory, Jr. (born November 22, 1905 in New York City, died May 11, 1994, Washington Heights, New York City, New York) was the first black basketball player to be selected as an All American college basketball player, in 1931.
Gregory graduated in 1927 from DeWitt Clinton High School in New York City, where he was a standout player.
A scholarship player at Columbia University, Gregory scored 155 points in 17 games in his freshman season to rank fourth in the Ivy League. During his college career, he helped his team to two consecutive Eastern Intercollegiate Basketball League titles (as the Ivy League was then called) and two Eastern titles.
The 6'4" Gregory was the captain and star center of the 1930-31 Columbia team that went 21-2 and that some say rivaled the famed St. John's University "Wonder Five".
He was named to the 1931 Helms Foundation All-America team, becoming the first African-American voted to college All-America status in basketball. He was joined on the All-America squad by John Wooden, the future legendary UCLA coach. In his three-year career, Gregory, the second African-American to play at Columbia, scored 509 points in 62 games, for an 8.2 points per game average in that low scoring era of college basketball.
Although Gregory was a scholarship student at Columbia, he also helped support himself by working as a red cap porter at Penn Station.
While studying at Columbia, he served as the boys' director for the Harlem Center of the Children's Aid Society. It was the start of his career in battling juvenile delinquency and defending civil rights.
After college, he attended law courses at night at St. John's University, while playing for several semi-professional basketball teams.
Little is known about this episode in his basketball career. On March 12, 1932 the George Gregory Harlem All-Stars lost to the Bill Webb CCNY All-Stars, 27-24, in an exhibition game at the Rockland Palace.
Later, Gregory began a long career in directing settlement houses and youth clubs, such as the Harlem Youth Center and the Forest Neighborhood House in the Bronx. He was also a founding member of the New York City Youth Board in 1947. From 1954 to 1968, he was a commissioner on the Municipal Civil Service Commission. He was chairman of the Manhattan Community Board 10 in the office of the Manhattan Borough President, from 1950 to 1965. Gregory was an assistant administrator of what is now the Department of Environmental Protection from 1968 to 1970.
Gregory was a well-known figure in New York City Democratic politics, who championed urban redevelopment in Harlem and increased job opportunities for African Americans He was also instrumental in starting public jazz concerts and art exhibitions in Harlem.
He had a reputation as a man who would help those in need. When former CCNY star Floyd Lane had nowhere to turn in the wake of the 1951 point-shaving scandal, he asked Gregory if he could return to his part-time mailroom job. Gregory instead put him in charge of the Forest Neighborhood House recreation program. Lane spent his time teaching youngsters that basketball skills alone were not enough.
Gregory died of colon cancer in 1994, at the age of 88.
Gregory was part of the inaugural class to be inducted into the Columbia University Athletics Hall of Fame in 2006. He was posthumously inducted into the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.
