Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, Date of Birth, Place of Birth, Date of Death

    

Wilmeth Sidat-Singh

American basketball player

Date of Birth: 13-Feb-1918

Place of Birth: Washington, D.C., District of Columbia, United States

Date of Death: 09-May-1943

Profession: aircraft pilot, basketball player, American football player

Nationality: United States

Zodiac Sign: Aquarius


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About Wilmeth Sidat-Singh

  • Wilmeth Sidat-Singh (February 13, 1918 – May 9, 1943) was an African-American basketball and football player who was subject to segregation in college and professional sports in the 1930s. His parents were both African-American.
  • After the death of his father, Elias Webb (a pharmacist), his mother, Pauline, married Samuel Sidat-Singh, a medical student from India who adopted Wilmeth, giving him his family name.
  • After his graduation from Howard University, Dr.
  • Sidat-Singh moved the family to Harlem and set up a family medical practice.
  • Wilmeth showed great talent as an athlete and became a basketball star, leading DeWitt Clinton High School to the New York Public High School Athletic League championship in 1934.
  • He received an offer of a basketball scholarship from Syracuse University and enrolled in 1935.
  • While playing an intramural football game, an assistant football coach noticed his talent and asked him to join the football team.
  • Sidat-Singh starred for Syracuse, playing a position equivalent to modern-day quarterback and starring for the basketball team as well. Syracuse University and nearby Cornell University were among the first collegiate football teams to include African-American players as starting backfield players.
  • In that era, when games were played in Southern segregation states, African-American players from Northern schools were banned from the field.
  • Because of his light complexion and name, Sidat-Singh was sometimes assumed to be a "Hindu" (as people from India were often called by Americans during this time).
  • However.
  • shortly before a game against the University of Maryland, a black sportswriter, Sam Lacy, wrote an article in the Baltimore Afro-American, revealing Sidat-Singh's true racial identity.
  • Wilmeth Sidat-Singh was held out of the game and Syracuse lost that game 0-13.
  • In a rematch the following year at Syracuse, Sidat-Singh led the Orange to a lopsided victory (53-0) over Maryland. With unofficial bans on black players enacted in both the National Basketball League (NBL) and National Football League (NFL) Sidat-Singh played briefly for a professional barnstorming basketball team in Syracuse and then joined the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia.
  • After U.S.
  • entry into World War II, he applied and was accepted as a member of the Tuskegee Airmen, the only African-American unit in the U.S.
  • Army Air Force, and won his wings as a pilot.
  • Sidat-Singh died in 1943 during a training mission when the engine of his airplane failed.
  • "He died on a training flight when his stricken plane went down in Saginaw Bay, his parachute tangled in the fuselage." He drowned in Lake Huron.In 2005, Syracuse University honored Wilmeth Sidat-Singh by retiring his number and hanging his basketball jersey in the rafters of the Carrier Dome.On Saturday, Nov.
  • 9, 2013, the University of Maryland publicly apologized to surviving relatives from the Webb family at a ceremony during a football game with Syracuse University.

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