ALPHARETTA, Ga. — The winners of the 1965 high school basketball state championship have finally received an official recognition by their hometown of Alpharetta.
In the era of segregation, they played for the all-Black Bailey-Johnson School on Kimball Bridge Road.
During the Alpharetta city council meeting Monday, the surviving members were presented with championship rings.
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“It’s not something that was owed to us, because they didn’t give rings back then, but we’re deserving of it,” Almond Martin, who was a captain of the team said.
The players said back then, high school athletes – both Black and white – didn’t receive championship rings.
But Charles Grogan, another team member, said the community – both Black and white – appreciated the team’s big win.
“I think everybody had the respect for us because we played basketball,” Grogan said. “They thought we were good. Like I said, I don’t recall anybody doing any special thing.”
Grogan and Martin spent time Thursday looking through the school’s small yearbook.
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They recall having to pass the all-white Roswell High School, with its much better facilities, to get to their own school.
“We were handicapped with facilities,” Martin said. “We didn’t have the best of nothing, really. We always had second. We always made the best with what we had, and that’s how we became the state champs.”
The school, built in 1950, has not been a school since 1968.
For many years it was used as a storage facility by Fulton County Schools.
A developer plans to keep the building standing and convert it into office space.
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