Crescent Athletic Club

From Hoopedia

Crescent Athletic Club, of Washington, DC, was an amateur black team that pioneered basketball in the African American community in the early 1900s.

Crescent Athletic was one of the first black amateur athletic clubs in the country, and was one of the original members of the Inter-Scholastic Athletic Association (ISAA) of Middle Atlantic States, an organization of high schools and colleges with associate club members. In the first year of basketball competition in the ISAA, 1907-08, Crescent won the club, or open, championship, beating out such teams as the Oberlin Athletic Club and Le Droit Park for the honors.

In the 1908-09 season, Crescent again won the open championship, and then beat the Smart Set Athletic Club of Brooklyn in DC for the first intercity contest between African American basketball teams.