Loendi Big Five
From Hoopedia
Loendi Big Five of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was an African American professional basketball team in the early Twentieth Century. Loendi won the Colored Basketball World's Championship four years in a row, from 1920 to 1923. Loendi took its name from the Loendi Social and Literary Club, an exclusive all-black club in Pittsburgh.
The Loendi Big Five was the creation of Cumberland Posey, one of the most dominant black players of basketball's earliest years. In 1909 Posey formed the Monticello Athletic Association team that won the 1912 Colored Basketball World's Championship. That team was also known as the Monticello Delaney Rifles and the Monticellos. The team name came from a street on which two of the players lived. In 1913 Posey changed the name to Loendi.
By 1925 Posey the world of black basketball was changing, for the worse as far as Posey was concerned, and baseball was growing more lucrative (he owned the Homestead Grays), so Posey closed down the Loendi team and retired from basketball.
Notable Personnel
- Cumberland Posey (player, coach, manager)
- Walter Clark
- Sell Hall
- Clarence Jenkins
- Israel Lee
- Seward Posey
- James Sessoms
- Joe Mahoney (manager)
