23 Facts About Edwin Henderson

From 1926 until his retirement in 1954, Henderson served as director of health and physical education for Washington, DC's black schools.

An athlete and team player rather than a star, Edwin Henderson both taught physical education to African Americans and organized athletic activities in Washington, DC, and Fairfax County, Virginia, where his grandmother lived and where he returned with his wife in 1910 to raise their family.

Edwin Henderson was born in southwest Washington, DC, on November 24,1883.

Edwin Henderson's father, William Henderson, was a day laborer and his mother Louisa taught him to read at an early age.

Edwin Henderson often reminisced about Al Jolson having been one of his playmates, as well as how he watched racial segregation grow in Washington after the turn of the century, particularly during the Woodrow Wilson administration.

Edwin Henderson became familiar with that area too, spending summers there and sometimes assisting at that store.

Edwin Henderson graduated from Dunbar High School, then the Miner Normal School in 1904.

Edwin Henderson earned a bachelor's degree from Howard University, a master's degree from Columbia University, and a PhD in athletic training from Central Chiropractic College in Kansas City, Missouri.

Edwin Henderson became the first black man to receive a National Honor Fellowship in the American Association for Health, Physical Education and Recreation.

Shortly before his retirement from the DC Schools at age 70, Edwin Henderson received an Alumni Achievement Award from his alma mater, Howard University.

Edwin Henderson married Mary Ellen Meriwether Henderson, a teacher and civil rights advocate, as well as active with the Girl Scouts and League of Women Voters.

From those early years through the 1950s, Edwin Henderson played and coached basketball, as well as refereed football and baseball contests and occasionally sparred in the boxing ring.

Edwin Henderson helped organize the first all-black amateur athletic association, the Interscholastic Athletic Association, the Washington, DC, Public School Athletic League and the Eastern Board of Officials.

Edwin Henderson taught and influenced perhaps hundreds of thousands of Washington area schoolchildren in basketball, including Duke Ellington and Charles Drew.

From 1926 until 1954, Edwin Henderson directed physical education for African American children in the segregated Washington, DC, school system.

Edwin Henderson used sports to combat truancy, as well as instill character, forming teams in each fifth and sixth grade classroom.

Edwin Henderson contributed regularly through the National Negro Press Association, including such pioneering magazines as The Messenger and Crisis.

Dr Henderson twice served as President of the NAACP's Virginia Council, from 1955 to 1958, the height of Massive Resistance declared by Virginia's political boss Harry F Byrd, Sr.

Edwin Henderson claimed to have had more than 3,000 letters published in over a dozen newspapers.

Edwin Henderson died of cancer in 1977, at age 93, at his son's home in Tuskegee, Alabama.

Edwin Henderson survived his beloved wife of 63 years by one year.

Edwin Henderson's papers are held at Howard University's Moorland-Spingarn Research Center.

In 2013, Edwin Henderson was inducted posthumously into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.