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The Panthers grew out of the city's Christian Street (a.k.a. Southwest")
Colored YMCA in the late 1910s, when Philadelphia emerged as a black
basketball power base with such teams as nearby Lincoln University, the
Vandals and Buccaneers of Atlantic City, the Briscoe Five, and the
Southwest Scholastics.
They were so successful and popular that African
Americans in the City of Brotherly Love, insofar as black basketball was concerned, embraced them as "Philadelphia's Representative Team."
The biggest stars on the semi-pro Panthers were
tall homegrown center Charles Cooper, and Billy Yancey, a two-sport
athlete who also played pro baseball as a shortstop for the New York
Lincoln Giants and the Hilldale Club.
Cooper joined the team in 1926
after attending Central High School and starring in the Southwest Y's
Senior Interscholastic League. As the Panthers' starting center,
Cooper's size (6'-5", 215 lbs.) and rebounding ferocity resulted in the
nickname "Long Boy" and then "Tarzan."
Led by Cooper and Yancey, the
Panthers were the city's Colored Basketball Champions throughout the
1920s.
Cooper left the Panthers in 1929 for a professional basketball contract
with Harlem's all-black Renaissance Big R Five. Over the span of
eleven seasons, Cooper led the "Rens" to 1,303 victories, including 88
straight wins in 86 days in 1933, and the inaugural World Professional
Basketball Tournament title in 1939. More than any single player, "Tarzan" Cooper made the Rens into a legendary team. Most of his
contemporaries, including Hall of Fame center Joe Lapchik of the
Original Celtics, considered Cooper to be the greatest basketball center
of his time. After leaving the Rens, Cooper played for the all-black
Washington Bears, which he led to another World Pro Championship in
1943 before ending his playing career in 1944. Cooper's 1933 Rens were enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame as a collective team in 1963, and
Cooper himself was inducted as an individual player in 1970.
Please click HERE to download a Philadelphia Panthers team poster!
