So when the International Olympic Committee added basketball as a medal sport and top college and club teams prepared to play a tournament at Madison Square Garden for the honor of representing the US at the Berlin games, most observers thought the Blackbirds would win in a walk.
Instead, they walked away.
The Blackbirds decided, as a team, to boycott the Olympics as a protest of Nazi Germany and its anti-Jewish policies.
Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of the The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies -- an organization devoted to the study of America's response to the Holocaust -- profiled the 1936 Blackbirds and their boycott in an article published in the New Jersey Jewish Standard.
With all the discussion of protests surrounding the Beijing Olympics, the story of the '36 Blackbirds makes for an informative and thought-provoking read.
The 1936 Olympic Basketball Tournament
With the Blackbirds out of the mix, an AAU squad sponsored by Universal Pictures won the tournament, and made up the bulk of the US roster bound for Berlin.The tournament itself was a bit of a debacle. The German organizers opted to hold games on an outdoor court made of clay and sand -- and the team Spain was forced to forfeit its matches after being called home due to the start of the Spanish Civil War.
The gold medal game was played in a heavy downpour, with Team USA beating Canada by the comically low (even for 1936) score of 19-8.
