Rafters on the Plains: Kansas Basketball’s Rise Through Segregation

Rafters on the Plains: Kansas Basketball’s Rise Through Segregation

Spanning 1898–1955, Rafters of the Plains shows how a brand-new game became a KU institution and a national force. Through Miles “Bell” Gaines—a fictional Black aide whose bell rope, tape, and timetables keep the team moving—the book braids documentary fact with lived scene work to confront segregation on trains, in diners, and inside gyms, always letting collective action answer policy. Two doctors define the spine: James Naismith, whose “play hard, never mean” ethos prizes character, and Phog Allen, who systematizes the craft and builds a coaching tree. That lineage stretches through Adolph Rupp and Dean Smith before branching to later generations, situating KU at the center of the game’s evolution. Rupp’s chapter is handled with nuance—innovation within a segregated system—while Dean Smith’s KU roots are noted alongside other mentees. The wartime campus beats include future U.S. Senator Bob Dole, underscoring how global conflict reshaped rosters, travel, and daily life. Players such as Paul Endacott, Clyde Lovellette, LaVannes Squires, and Wilt Chamberlain animate the arc, while spaces chart progress: the constraint of Snow Hall, the ambition of Robinson, the communal crush of Hoch, and the 1955 dedication of Allen Fieldhouse—“James Naismith Court”—as the program’s cathedral. Throughout, the prose stays lean and cinematic, favoring objects and tasks—nets, whistles, checklists, tickets—that pass hand to hand and chapter to chapter. The book ultimately honors a community that carried Kansas basketball through segregation’s barriers and up into the rafters.