体育历史学家、教育家、行政管理人员、教练、运动员和民权活动家埃德温·班克罗夫特·亨德森博士是非洲裔美国人参与体育运动和体育教育的先驱推动者，被认为是美国历史上最具影响力的运动员 “Grandfather of Black Basketball.”
亨德森出生于1883年11月24日，是华盛顿特区M街高中的优等生，1904年毕业于矿工师范学院。 他在哥伦比亚大学（Columbia University）获得硕士学位，在密苏里州堪萨斯城的中央脊椎按摩学院（Central Chiropractic College）获得运动训练博士学位。
Dr. Henderson introduced the game of basketball on a large-scale basis to African Americans for the first time between 1904 and 1910 and began a long and distinguished teaching career in the black public schools of Washington, D.C. He also continued his study of physical education by attending the Harvard Summer School of Physical Education. 在哈佛，亨德森接触到了新的体育学科和篮球运动。 反过来，亨德森把篮球运动带到华盛顿特区、纽约和其他东海岸城市的非裔美国人社区。
亨德森建立了第一个非裔美国人运动联盟（ISAA， 1906年）。 他还建立了第一个非裔美国裁判和官员组织（东部官员委员会，1905年）。 他是第一个获得体育教育认证的非裔美国人，1904年至1907年在哈佛大学获得认证，在那里他学习了篮球运动。 Henderson became a player himself in 1908 by forming the “Washington Twelfth Streeters” at the 12th Street YMCA in Washington, DC and dominated competitive basketball on the East coast, going undefeated and claiming the 1909-1910 “Colored Basketball World Championship.”
For 25 years, Henderson served as the director of the Department of Physical Education for the District of Columbia’s segregated black schools. 在亨德森指导、教导和指导的许多学生中，有查尔斯·r·德鲁、蒙塔古·科布和艾灵顿公爵。
亨德森博士也是一位多产的作家，也是第一位研究非裔美国人体育运动的学术研究者。 众所周知，亨德森一生中为《华盛顿邮报》和其他报纸杂志撰写了3000多封关于民权和种族关系的致编辑信。 His articles appeared in a number of black periodicals including 危机, 的信使, and the 黑人历史公报. Between 1910 and 1913, he co-edited the Spaulding sports equipment company’s Official Handbook of the Interscholastic Athletic Association of the Middle Atlantic States, which chronicled the birth of organized sports among African Americans on the East Coast. He also wrote the first scholarly documentation of African-American participation in sports with his seminal work, 体育运动中的黑人, under the auspices of Carter G. Woodson’s Associated Publishers, the publishing arm of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH). 《运动中的黑人》是第一本关于黑人运动员和运动的主要研究，出版于1939年，1949年修订。
Prompted by historian Charles H. Wesley, Woodson’s successor at the ASALH, Henderson published 《黑人运动员：1968年的出现与到来》 In 1976, Henderson wrote 体育界的美国黑人， which was included in Mabel M. Smythe’s 美国黑人参考书. 这篇文章是他1977年去世前发表的最后一篇文章。
亨德森在弗吉尼亚州的福尔斯彻奇建立了全国有色人种协进会（NAACP）的分支机构，并领导了结束乌林体育馆（Uline Arena）种族隔离座位政策的斗争。乌林体育馆是华盛顿特区的体育设施，美国篮球协会华盛顿国会大厦的篮球比赛就在这里举行。 When the Capitols joined the newly formed National Basketball Association in 1949, they drafted Harold Hunter and Earl Lloyd who became two of the NBA’s first African-American players. With his challenge to the Uline Arena’s segregation, Henderson helped open the doors into what is now a professional league where black players are dominant.
埃德温·班克罗夫特·亨德森于1977年2月3日去世，享年93岁。 Among Henderson’s many accolades was his 1974 induction as a founding member of the Black Athletes Hall of Fame in New York City in a group that includes Jackie Robinson, Jesse Owens, Bill Russell, and Althea Gibson. 2013年，他也被追授进入马萨诸塞州斯普林菲尔德的奈史密斯篮球名人堂。
想了解更多关于这个非凡的开拓者的信息：
View the short film, EB亨德森的故事.
Replay the University’s EB Henderson 黑人历史月庆祝活动
Learn more about the 恒基兆业纪念计划.
View BlackPast.org.