National Day of Protest + Harlem’s Basketball Mecca
This Saturday will see the largest day of nationwide protest against Donald Trump and Elon Musk since they took power on Jan. 20. Protests are planned in hundreds of cities and towns across the country. Here in New York City, protesters will rally at Bryant Park at 42nd and Fifth Avenue at 1 p.m. For the full map of where protests are happening, click here.
The lead group organizing Saturday’s protests are the Indivisibles, a grassroots network of progressive anti-Trump activists formed after his 2016 presidential win. There is certainly no lack of reasons to protest: Trump and Musk’s attacks on Social Security and Medicaid, on federal workers and their union rights, on immigrants and the environment, and more. Trump’s announcement on Thursday that he was initiating the largest global trade war since the 1930s promises to stoke inflation. If it feels like Trump and Musk are taking us back to an uglier time in our history, it’s because he is. For more, see our February cover story on Trump’s attempt to repeal the 20th century. It’s far from inevitable and days like this Saturday will tell us something about the depth and the breadth of the opposition to Trump 2.0.
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History Lesson
The nation’s best men’s and women’s basketball players are playing in the Final Four this weekend as they chase their respective national championships. They will play in giant, sold-out arenas and in front of a television audience of millions. Much of the modern, fast-paced poetry-in-motion style of basketball can be traced back to Holcolmbe Rucker, a Harlem-based Parks Department employee who organized summer leagues in the 1950s and ’60s. By bringing together the best young talent in the city, Rucker helped catalyze a transformation in basketball. Rucker Park in Harlem was designated a national commemorative site in January. At a moment when Trump is using the pretense of fighting “wokeness” to erase Black history and contributions, Janavi Kumar writes, the move to honor and preserve Rucker Park bucks that trend.
Rucker Park: From Streetball Jewel to National Treasure
By Janavi Kumar
Four missed shots, and the freshly collected snow on the rim has been nearly rattled off altogether. Groans and screams from the two-person crowd, one recording on a phone, another with hands tangled in hair like this is Game 7 and not just another day at Rucker Park. The boy handling the ball opts for a simple chuck from the free-throw line, and finally it falls clear through the netting with a shwoop, the snow undisturbed.
Cheers, laughter, and some very choice words from the teenage crowd. Flexed muscles from the star of the show. A celebratory layup after a sweet, silly game of Don’t Mess Up The Snow on a cold morning at the local basketball court.
Rucker Park sits on the border of the Harlem and Washington Heights neighborhoods, tucked neatly beneath the Macombs-Dam Bridge that connects Manhattan to the Bronx. Directly to its west are two NYCHA public housing complexes, the Polo Grounds Towers and the Rangel Houses; to its east, the Harlem River.
A New York cornerstone, the park — which consists of a field, a tennis wall, and a playground where children chase each other around a large, climbable whale — is more than a neighborhood haven: it’s also home to what is considered the most famous streetball court in America and quite possibly the world. It’s so renowned that in September, Rep. Adriano Espaillat announced that the House had passed a bill that he introduced to get the park federally enshrined as a national commemorative site. Two weeks before Donald Trump’s inauguration, Biden signed the bill into law.
Designation as a national commemorative site can protect a site’s culture, legacy and future by placing it under federal National Park Service jurisdiction. Espaillat’s bill allows for federal funding at the discretion of the secretary of the interior, who can collaborate with the mayor and New York City Parks to sponsor exhibits, installations and other educational initiatives at Rucker Park.
In the dead of winter, fewer sneakers are heard squeaking on the asphalt, but on any average day in the spring, summer or fall, Rucker Park is filled with everyone from basketball players to fashion photographers. Most park-goers arrive separately but easily fall into a rhythm, all knowing their part in the elaborate dance of sharing space. Pick-up games are wordlessly assembled, joints shared between strangers. One day in late September, I watched as players avoided the half-court circle where a girl in a matching two-piece set posed for photographers with a bottle of Espolòn between her feet.
“Hi, nephew!” a middle-aged woman called out from behind the fence, and a player dropped the ball to enthusiastically wave back to her. The two-on-three game he was in had become steadily more raucous and sweaty. His teammate smacked him on the head for his lapse before turning around and repeating sincerely, “Hi, auntie.” The players were imposing, and their tangled chorus of voices was at once crass and supportive.
On the side of the court opposite the two-on-three game, where no one yelled obscenities, was a little boy, likely just finished with his day at a nearby elementary school. For several minutes, he ran to and from the three-point line, threading the ball between his legs mid-air before bouncing it off the backboard. He lifted his head only to turn and watch the melee of larger bodies across the court. After a few minutes, he walked over to them, bouncing his ball until he was noticed. His head, still bowed, was level with the other players’ waists.
“You wanna play, little man?” Ten minutes later, the boy still had barely spoken, but one of his opponents had seen enough. The team the boy had joined had rapidly gained traction — maybe because of his shiftiness, but more likely because his opponents couldn’t mow him over.
One man looked over at the bleachers to joke, “We’re getting cooked!”
• • •
Fall days at Rucker Park saw many games like this — locals with baby teeth and those with years of basketball training alike shooting hoops before the cold settled in. They were days made possible by the actions of one New York City Parks Department’s playground directors, Holcombe Rucker. Rucker designed the park, which initially opened as PS 156 Playground in 1956, in an effort to urge neighborhood kids to stay off the street and on a path to college. In 1974, the playground was renamed Holcombe Rucker Park “at the request of Rucker’s protégés,” according to the Parks Department. PS 156 closed in 1981, but the park lived on.
Rucker brought his favorite motto, “each one; teach one,” to life through his summertime Rucker Tournament, ultimately helping around 700 children acquire collegiate athletic scholarships. Rucker continued his own education, obtaining a degree in 1962 from the City College of New York. He spent the rest of his life teaching English at an all-boys junior high school in Harlem before dying from cancer in 1965 at the age of 39.
After its inception, Rucker Tournament constantly eclipsed itself, quickly morphing into a community event where increasingly skilled players showed off, dunking and crossover dribbling. There was a flamboyance to the play that the professional leagues of the 1950s and ’60s would have seriously frowned upon. The NBA of today arguably looks a lot like old-school Rucker Park.
Thanks to Mr. Rucker and a rapper named Greg Marius, who in 1982 began to invite hip-hop crew members and other prominent basketball players to play there, the park turned into a small center of the basketball world every summer.
The park’s famed tournaments attract everyone from politicians to rappers to NBA players, with stars from Earl Manigault to Kobe Bryant to Kevin Durant taking on the crowd in years past. The rich and famous, accustomed to courtside seats in Madison Square Garden, get patted down by security guards and crammed in the bleachers side-by-side with hundreds of New Yorkers.
• • •
An old man rattled off names to me in those same bleachers as we watched the little boy pant and windmill his arms around the other players. The man ended his catalog emphatically with “Wilt Chamberlain!” before bellowing encouragement to the little boy, who missed. Not everyone can be Wilt the Stilt, but Rucker Park continues to be a training ground for the streetballer.
Sports journalist Scoop Jackson says that Holcombe Rucker’s impact on the game of basketball deserves more than just federal enshrinement for his park. “All of these city all-star games, all of the NBA summer leagues you see everywhere,” Jackson told The Indypendent, “[Rucker] was the one who started all that! He single-handedly turned the game of basketball into a year-long sport.”
Indeed, even when passersby are donning sweatpants and puffy jackets, Rucker Park still manages to draw a crowd from near and far.
“It’s very famous, even in Japan,” Toma, a visiting 22-year-old medical student from Kyoto, said, wiping his brow. Toma grew up playing basketball, and Rucker Park made it to his New York City solo trip itinerary this past October, along with a Knicks game at Madison Square Garden and, of course, a trip to Times Square.
Kam, a 24-year-old cut-and-sew designer who embodies Rucker Park’s competitive-meets-compassionate energy, lay down on the bleachers after playing with Toma. Kam, who now lives in North Jersey, doesn’t frequent the park too often during his visits home but said it was an outlet and an escape from all the noise during his childhood. “I feel like when you’re out here, you try to make a quick statement for yourself, you feel me? If I’m playing anything, anywhere, ever, I don’t ever want to lose. I gotta do my shimmy, do my move, get my spot. It’s not that deep, but it is at the same time,” he laughed.
Whether a simple childhood escape or summertime mecca, Rucker Park belongs to its neighborhood. Keeping it this way is proving challenging, with over two decades of continuous gentrification and increasing house prices threatening to push out many longtime residents. According to the 2023 American Community Survey, over 50% of the park’s surrounding area identifies as Black or Hispanic/Latino. In the 1950s, when Holcombe Rucker started his tournaments, the Central Harlem neighborhood that sits directly to the south of the park was over 98% Black.
Regarding community, Scoop Jackson notes that Holcombe Rucker’s name is often followed up with mention of the scholarships he provided for local players. But Jackson is quick to challenge that the scholarships or even the stars of Rucker Park should be the sole focus. “What about the kids who don’t get scholarships? It’s the joy; it’s the freedom; it’s what [the park] has done to the game of basketball. When kids walk out of their tenements and look at Rucker Park, they know what it means to have something like that in their neighborhood.”
Given the park’s historical and cultural impact on both New York City and the sport of basketball, the plaque that will enshrine it — a symbolic gesture to the community surrounding it — is long overdue.
“It’s meaningful for sure,” said Kam, “especially for the people who grew up here … But how can we know it’ll be protected? It’ll never be the people’s as much as we want it to be.” Yes, the park is now a national commemorative site, Kam acknowledged, “but if the places around us change, and they will, the people who built it won’t be around anymore, you feel me?”
• • •
Back on the basketball court that fall day, the little boy’s thin chest rose and fell rapidly under his baggy sweatshirt. His play had worsened. Another player called for a break. The players sat on the bleachers, panting, checking phones, making small talk.
When play resumed, the boy, our future Wilt Chamberlain, relaxed some. He celebrated a teammate’s basket with a big smile and a few dance moves. At the end of the game, he dapped everyone up before heading to the fence gate and strapping on a backpack nearly the size of his own body.
At the gate, he turned around and waved goodbye before heading off down the street, his blue backpack becoming smaller and smaller before it disappeared into the Harlem afternoon.
Click here to listen to a conversation with author Janavi Kumar about the Rucker Park enshrinement on The Indypendent News Hour, which airs on WBAI-99.5 FM Tuesdays 5–6 p.m.
