Midway through the 1926-27 basketball season, on February 12, 1927, the dancehall development company Associated Ballrooms, Inc., builders and owners of mega-sized facilities including the Savoy (Harlem) and Roseland (midtown Manhattan) Ballrooms in New York City, made a big announcement.
They had signed a 30-year, one million dollar lease of an entire South Side of Chicago city block, on South Parkway Boulevard (now Martin Luther King Drive) at 47th Street, where within a month construction would begin on another “monster” ballroom also to be known as Savoy.
With this news, enterprising African American nightclub promoter Dick “Baby Face” Hudson, who managed and coached an all-black basketball squad known as the Giles Post American Legion Five, approached Faggen with a deal to rename his team the Savoy Big Five.
The arrangement would benefit both parties. Hudson’s team needed a new home court and would have one upon the ballroom’s completion, scheduled for the beginning of the 1927-28 season. Meanwhile, Faggen’s facility would get buzz from Hudson, the very popular promoter of a team stocked with black Chicago’s favorite basketball players.
A portion of net proceeds from the sales of our Black Fives assortment will benefit the The Black Fives Foundation, which works to inspire excellence by preserving, teaching, and honoring the pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball.
