PHILADELPHIA PANTHERS

The Philadelphia Panthers were an all-Black basketball team that played during the 1910s and 1920s.


Location: Philadelphia, Pa.
Nickname: “Philadelphia’s Representative Team”
Colors: Black, Gray. The team evolved 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.”

A collage of images about the Philadelphia Panthers basketball team of the early 1920s.

LEARN MORE