Inside The Huskies

Dick Crews, Pioneering UW Basketball Player, Dies at 89

The guard from Garfield High School was the Huskies' first African American team member.
Dan Raley|
Dick Crews was the UW's first African American basketball player.
Dick Crews was the UW's first African American basketball player. | UW Athletics

It's been a tough three days for University of Washington basketball, with the passing of, in order, former players Dion Brown, John Tuft and now Dick Crews.

One was an electrifying dunker, another made an exasperated program exit (see story links below) and now the UW's landmark first African American basketball player is gone.

On Monday, former Husky standout Eldridge Recasner revealed on social media how he had learned from the family that Crews, 89, had died after battling Alzheimers disease.

Crews forever will be remembered as a trail blazer for UW basketball, joining Huskies for the 1955-56 season when he wasn't necessarily welcome.

Some people were resistant to the idea of integrating the Montlake team and coach Tippy Dye initially wasn't going to go against their wishes. It took some intense negotiating from Crews' Garfield High School coach Bob Tate and others to get Dye to do the right thing.

"He said he wasn't going to keep me on the team, and Bob Tate asked him, 'Why wouldn't you keep him? He's one of your best players,' " Crews recalled in 2004. "He said, 'There's some alums who don't want to see him represent the university.'

"People lobbied him and he gave in."

While opening doors in UW basketball for players such as Brandon Roy, Nate Robinson, Isaiah Thomas and James Edwards to flourish as Huskies and find their way to NBA careers and the financial advantages that came with it, Crews had to deal with doors being slammed in his face.

One such incident happened in Oklahoma City, when the Huskies stopped on their way to a game at Oklahoma State to eat at a restaurant. Racism was on the menu.

The team was refused service because Crews and Lou Coaston, another African American, were part of it.

Dick Crews, pioneering UW basketball player, passes away at 89.
Dick Crews, pioneering UW basketball player, passes away at 89. | P-I

"As soon as Lou got off the bus, a woman ran up and said, 'We're closed,' and it was noontime," Crews said. "Coach Dye looked to see what I would do, but I just stayed on the bus and looked straight ahead. We went to another restaurant and the bus driver said, 'I'll go see if this place is closed, too.' They let us eat there, but we sat in a back room so far back that nobody could see us."

One of the things that made this inhumane treatment all so absurd was Crews, who worked for Weyerhaeuser and other companies following graduation, was one of the most soft-spoken, respectful and kind-hearted individuals you could meet.

He withstood the insults, name-calling and outright hate of the 1950s to make the world a better place.

The results of his efforts were ten-fold: when he did a story with me for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in 2004, the UW basketball team had an African American coach and nine of the 11 scholarship players were black, with four of them eventually playing in the NBA.

"I've learned many things, and you just stand up and tell someone if something isn't right," Crews said back then. "You can't stop people with an evil will and evil hearts. But you have to stand up to them if it's something you want to do, or you run away from everything."

IN CASED YOU MISSED IT:

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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