Divided court

The visiting team knew the big game would be tough.

The Lawrence North Wildcats from Indianapolis were playing the Bedford North Lawrence Lady Stars, the defending state champions.

They met on BNL’s home court in its small southern Indiana town for the semi-state game.

Every Lawrence North player is black. They braced to play in front of a roaring crowd of almost 6,000 white faces in a state where basketball and race have been known to combust in nasty ways.

In the days leading up to the game, Lawrence North had requested the game be moved to a neutral gym and at least one minority official work the game. Both requests had been denied.

All week before the game, at team practices the Wildcats coach had blasted a CD with crowd noise, trying to teach his girls to stay focused. But nothing could have prepared them for the ugliness that awaited them inside BNL’s gym.

The taunts from BNL’s student section began as the girls from Lawrence North’s team began warming up.

“Niggers.”

“We could smell you when you got off the bus.”

Lawrence North parents and the principal were shocked to see many of the BNL students wearing hunting gear and safari costumes.

Beneath one of the baskets, two fans were jumping up and down in gorilla suits.

Lawrence North Head Coach Chris Giffin was so focused on the game that he didn’t see the gorillas and didn’t hear many of the racial slurs directed at his players. Five minutes before the tip-off, he gathered with them in the locker room. He told the girls to strategize on defense and to block out any negativity. The coach wanted his team to stay focused on one thing — going to the state finals.

The girls said nothing about the taunts or fans. As always, they recited the Lord’s Prayer.

“Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Looking back, their coach is still stunned at their bravery.

“Had I heard some of the things they were forced to hear, we wouldn’t have played,” Giffin said. “Nobody should have to do that.”

***

Lawrence North lost the semi-state game in overtime, 62-54. BNL would go on to win the state championship for the second year in a row.  But the score from the semi-state game on March 1 was soon overshadowed by the aggression of the BNL fans.  

Days later, the semi-state girls basketball game became the most notorious racial controversy in Indiana high school athletics in recent years. The behavior of the teenagers in the stands was bad enough. But the deeper issue turned out to be that so many adults allowed it to happen.

The game presented “systematic racism,” Lawrence North parents and staff argued, beginning with the refusal by the Indiana High School Athletic Association to change the venue or officials. A member of the governing body’s executive staff had attended the game but made no attempt to quell the taunts or suggest the students remove the gorilla suits.

BNL administrators said nothing to the students about their gorilla costumes until the Lawrence North principal asked them to intervene.

The controversy was heightened because the game took place at one of the premier high school basketball schools in the state against a team of state champions coached by basketball legend Damon Bailey. Bailey did not respond to email requests for comment.  

Three days after the game, Lawrence North Principal Brett Crousore complained to the IHSAA. The governing body is currently wrapping up its investigation, and the two schools plan to meet next week.

The state’s chapter of the NAACP, the United States’ oldest civil rights organization, filed its own complaint.

“It’s 2014,” said Chrystal Radcliffe, president of the Indianapolis chapter. “Nobody should ever have to go any places and be treated like that.”

*** 

Basketball is a way of life in Indiana. But for decades, racism has seeped onto the court.

“If it happens in society, it’s going to happen in sports,” said IU Professor Gary Sailes, who teaches courses on race in athletics.

Crispus Attucks High School in Indianapolis became the first black team in the nation to win an all-state title in 1955, according to Greg Guffey in his book “The Golden Age of Indiana High School Basketball.” The school had been a brainchild of the Ku Klux Klan, created to segregate black students.

The black team faced staunch prejudice in small towns outside Indianapolis. Fans would yell racial taunts out of car windows. When they won the state championship, there was no victory celebration — the city refused.

When predominantly black teams traveled to towns like Martinsville, coaches told players to go right from the bus to the court, never stopping to eat in restaurants.  

Bigotry lingered for decades. In 1998, Martinsville came under national fire, featured in Sports Illustrated and USA Today. During one game, Martinsville fans yelled, “Here come the darkies,” to Bloomington High School North’s racially mixed team. During the game, Martinsville players bit several Bloomington North players. The school was banned from hosting conference games for more than a year.

Just last year, a group of white Highland Hills Middle School students wore black masks to an eighth-grade basketball game against Parkview Middle School, a team that included black players.

Some students wore gorilla masks and one mask that appeared to represent President Barack Obama. The principal quickly asked the students to remove the masks, called the parents of the students and later offered sessions on diversity awareness.

In some towns and schools, students don’t realize that a gorilla suit or mask might be offensive, Sailes said. Many of these kids, the IU professor said, are not racist — they’re racially naïve.

But blatant racism is still present today, Sailes said, especially in small Indiana towns. He often asks his IU students to write letters about their experiences with racism. One student said that even when the country idolized Michael Jordan, “If he were in the wrong place at the wrong time in my town, he would find himself killed.”

As an African-American 6-foot-2 man, Sailes said he refuses to get out of the car when he drives through small towns in the state, even today.  

“Racism and bigotry are alive and well in small Indiana towns,” Sailes said.

***

The two teams from the semi-state game, BNL and Lawrence North, play for drastically different high schools.

This academic year, BNL is 94 percent white, according to the Indiana Department of Education. A total of eight black students and 44 multiracial students attend the school. A BNL yearbook from two years ago shows an all-white faculty and staff. One student said the only black teacher is an occasional substitute.

It’s a school where everybody knows everybody, students say.

The yearbook is filled with page after page of all-white faces. Some favorite hobbies listed by students included deer hunting, motocross racing and horse showing at the 4-H Fair.

A photo spread from two years ago shows a group of three boys in gorilla costumes cheering on the basketball team.

Basketball is everything at BNL.  

The teams play on the newly refurbished Damon Bailey Court, with its three state championship banners hanging in the northeast corner. Among the girls that Bailey coaches on the team is his daughter, Alexa.

The school’s basketball history comes with lasting traditions for the fans. Elaborate costumes are always present in the stands. Students have worn police costumes, white masks and even brown paper bags over their heads. When they play Bloomington North, they dress up as lion tamers. They dress up as “hicks,” too, senior Lucas Howell said.

“Our school is known for being ruthless in the student section, dressing up and having fun,” Howell said. “It’s not meant to be taken in any way.”

By contrast, Lawrence North is a city school with twice as many students as BNL and 10 percent more poor ones. No race is the majority. It is 42 percent white and 38 percent black.

Last year’s yearbook depicts fan traditions such as the roller coaster cheer at athletic events. It shows the time a group of students convinced administrators to take part in a Lawrence North version of the Harlem Shake video, aired on the school’s morning news show. The school has an all-black gospel choir and a predominantly black cheerleading squad. Students of color comprised half of the homecoming court.

Lawrence North’s athletic director predicted a culture clash. He emailed the IHSAA a week ahead of the game requesting a minority official.

“In short, perceptions matter,” Principal Brett Crousore wrote in his complaint to the IHSAA. The IHSAA representatives, he wrote, “clearly could not grasp the world in which we live as school administrators advocating for our children and community.”

The IHSAA’s response was that the group selects officials well in advance and does not allow changes, Assistant Commissioner Chris Kaufman said.

Lawrence North Coach Giffin had read about racist instances in the town of Bedford’s past.

“Certainly you don’t want to paint the whole town with one brush, but obviously it has been there,” Giffin said. “We knew it was going to be a very raucous, volatile environment and certainly a difficult one to play in.”

In the days leading up to the game, teachers at Lawrence North urged students to go support the team. One government teacher excused students from writing a paper if they went to BNL, Lawrence North senior Kody Cartwright said. Another student remembers his teacher showing him an article about a history of racism in the Bedford area.

Students and fans packed into seven buses to drive to Bedford. But when they arrived, the bleachers were filled with BNL fans, and administrators had to move fans to make room.

After he saw the gorilla suits, the Lawrence North assistant coach moved to stand between the crowd and his players.

***

The two boys in the gorilla suits had no idea they were about to become the center of a statewide controversy. They were full of energy beneath the Lawrence North basket.

BNL seniors Kaegan Key and Lucas Howell had worn the suits before with no problems, so the semi-state game wouldn’t be any different, they thought. The suits would be perfect for the safari costume theme — they hoped to “capture the Wildcats.”  
Key said it didn’t even cross his mind that the opposing team was entirely black.

At one point, a couple of Howell’s friends cautioned him that the gorilla costumes could be misunderstood, he recalled. But he dismissed them. It was tradition. All in good fun. He couldn’t imagine anyone interpreting it any other way.

As the game was about to begin, Key was singing and dancing, just like always. BNL’s athletic director tapped him on a furry shoulder, telling him the boys needed to take the suits off.

Key was shocked.

“Why?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”

The athletic director told them he would explain later.

“Just take them off.”

Hostility seemed to build. During free-throws, BNL fans shouted words like “ratchet,” a slang word for a coarse, undesirable person. They said things like, “Go back to Gary,” referring to the Indiana town with a population that’s 80 percent black.

At halftime, the teams were tied 27-27. The lines for concessions were packed. While waiting in line to buy a Sprite, one Lawrence North female student said she was called a “nigger bitch.”

BNL took the lead as the game neared its end. An announcer urged both teams not to storm the court.

Kaegan Key’s mom texted him as the game neared the end, asking him how it was going.  

“Good,” he said, “but we had to take our suits off.”

“Why?” Jodie Key asked. “Are you guys winning?”

They were ahead, her son texted.

“That’s probably why, Kaegan. They’re mad.”

Kaegan Key later read articles in the Indianapolis Star and WTHR referring to “racially targeted behavior” and a statewide investigation. The Lawrence North complaint letter said that its students, coaches and parents saw the gorilla outfits as a “racially insensitive choice.”

Key said he was horrified.

“The first thing that came to my head was, ‘I’m not racist.’”

***

The Lawrence North behavior sparked a statewide debate.

Principal Crousore urged the IHSAA to prohibit future state tournament games from being held at a home court.

Tournament locations are always predetermined, Chris Kaufman, IHSAA assistant commissioner, said in an interview. They always run the risk that a tournament game will land at a team’s home venue. Playing at an IHSAA-member school is substantially cheaper than playing at a neutral location, such as Assembly Hall. The IHSAA pre-selected BNL as the semi-state location, even though they knew the team had won the state tournament the year before.  

Indiana NAACP President Barbara Bolling said the gorilla suits were not the crux of the problem. The racial taunts are the bigger issue, she said.

It might mean that Indiana high schools need a level of training regarding racial sensitivity, Bolling said.

BNL responded to the complaints with a letter of apology. Superintendent Gary Conner said the gorilla suits and safari costumes were “not racially motivated” and were “intended to promote school spirit.”

“We will continue to closely monitor our student body’s behavior during events,” Conner said in the apology letter. “We will not tolerate students or others representing our corporation who compromise the integrity of our school by engaging in racially insensitive behavior.”

In attempts to diffuse the conflict, Lawrence North Principal Crousore instructed all basketball players and staff not to speak to reporters.

He then visited classrooms and urged students to let him handle the issue.
But the principal couldn’t stop the Twitter battle that ensued.

Lawrence North students called BNL “racist” and threatened to pick fights with BNL students.

BNL students called Lawrence North “sore losers.” Some fired more racial taunts.

One BNL student tweeted “Lawrence North be like,” with a picture of a gorilla. Another student tweeted a caption saying “ghetto grammar” along with a photo of the warm-up shirts worn by the Lawrence North girls, which read “We all we got.”

And another: “Personally I was offended there wasn’t a white girl on that team...who’s racist now?”

***

The IHSAA investigation continues. Lawrence North Principal Crousore met with IHSAA officials March 28, along with his athletic director and girls’ basketball coach. He refused to comment about the meeting.   

At a pep rally before the next game, the state final, BNL Principal Roger Dean reminded students to be “culturally sensitive.” But BNL administrators did not hold any meetings with the students in gorilla suits. There has been no school-wide conversation about racial sensitivity.

BNL students say this investigation won’t stop their tradition of wearing extravagant costumes for basketball games. But they suspect the school might start regulating the costumes.

Jodie Key, the mother of one of the boys in the gorilla suits, said her son is not racist. He was taught to never judge people.

“It was a kids’ game that got turned into something else,” she said. “I think it was a good lesson for him to understand that not everybody thinks the same.”

Her son and his friend Lucas Howell, who also wore a gorilla suit, agree.

“It was my senior year and I was going to go all out,” Howell said. “I didn’t see it as a big deal.”

They were sore losers, he said of Lawrence North.

Kaegan Key said he has learned that even if he doesn’t mean to be racist, he could come across in a negative way. But he doesn’t think he crossed a line.

As long as his intentions are good, Key said, his behavior shouldn’t be an issue.

“They let that affect them too harshly,” Key said. “I’m not going to think I’m a racist. I came here to have a good time.”

If he could do it again, he said, he would probably still wear the gorilla suit.

An earlier version of this story identified Lawrence North High School Principal Brett Crousore as Jeff Crousore.