Phillip Hoose – ATTUCKS!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City

by

Phillip Hoose

Wednesday, April 17, 2019 – 6:00pm
Octavia Books – 513 Octavia Street – New Orleans, LA 70115

Please join us when National Book Award-winning author, musician, conservationist, and now New Orleanian Phil Hoose comes to present and sign his new book, ATTUCKS!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City.

The true story of the all-black high school basketball team that broke the color barrier in segregated 1950s Indiana, masterfully told by National Book Award winner Phil Hoose.

A rousing rags-to-riches episode, a tale of youth power, and a scarcely told chapter in African-American history, Attucks! charts the rise of the legendary Crispus Attucks High School Tigers in the 1950s. By winning the Indiana state high school basketball boys’ championship in 1955, ten teens from a school meant to be the centerpiece of racially segregated education in Indiana shattered the myth of their own inferiority. Their brilliant coach had fashioned an unbeatable team from a group of boys born in the South and raised in poverty, anchored by the astonishing player Oscar “The Big O” Robertson. The Crispus Attucks Tigers went down in history as the first state champions from the city of Indianapolis and the first all-black team in U.S. history to win a racially open championship tournament.

Recommended for ages 12-18, and anyone else!

Phillip M. Hoose is the author of Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice, a National Book Award winner and a Newbery Honor Book. His other books include Moonbird: A Year on the Wind with the Great Survivor B95, also a Robert F. Sibert Honor Book; The Boys Who Challenged Hitler, a Sibert Honor and Boston Globe–Horn BookNonfiction Honor Winner; and We Were There, Too!, a National Book Award finalist. Mr. Hoose lives in Portland, Maine and New Orleans, Louisiana.