Cumberland Posey was president of the Loendi Social and Literary Club for three years and president of the Pittsburgh Courier newspaper for its first 14 years, to 1924.
18 Facts About Cumberland Posey
2.
Cumberland Posey was the best African American basketball player of his time, playing from the early 1900s through the mid-1920s.
3.
Cumberland Posey led Homestead High to the 1908 city championship, played basketball at Penn State for two years, moved to the University of Pittsburgh where he earned a pharmacy degree in 1915, and formed the famous Monticello Athletic Association team that won the Colored Basketball World's Championship in 1912.
4.
Cumberland Posey later played varsity basketball for Duquesne University, under the name "Charles Cumbert", and led the Dukes in scoring for three seasons through 1919.
5.
Cumberland Posey was elected to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016.
6.
In baseball, Cumberland Posey played with the Homestead Grays in 1911, was manager by 1916, and became owner in the early 1920s.
7.
Cumberland Posey built a strong barnstorming circuit that made the Grays a perennially powerful and profitable team, one of the best in the East.
8.
Cumberland Posey began playing baseball for the semi-pro Grays in 1911.
9.
Cumberland Posey soon ended his playing career to become field and business manager.
10.
Cumberland Posey took control of the Grays in 1920 and turned them into a highly successful regional enterprise as an independent team.
11.
Cumberland Posey was often accused of raiding other clubs' rosters, enticing their best players to join his team.
12.
Cumberland Posey suffered a heavy dose of the same in the early 1930s, when he lost several stars to the well-financed Pittsburgh Crawfords.
13.
Cumberland Posey's teams reeled in nine consecutive pennants from 1937 to 1945.
14.
Cumberland Posey unwisely attempted to start the East-West League in 1932, during the Depression, but it did not last the season.
15.
Cumberland Posey later became an officer of the Negro National League, and was a major force at its meetings throughout the rest of his career.
16.
Cumberland Posey was a frequent critic of the league, both before and after joining it, in his regular sports columns for the Pittsburgh Courier, a leading black weekly newspaper.
17.
Cumberland Posey was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2006.
18.
On March 28,1946, Cumberland Posey died of cancer in Pittsburgh at the age of 55.