The Milan Miracle - 60 Years On

The Indianapolis Star looks back at the most famous high school basketball state championship team in Indiana history:

Bobby Plump doesn't spend a lot of time on "what-ifs." The shot went in after all, didn't it? Why worry about what would have happened if the ball clanked off the back of the rim that night in Hinkle Fieldhouse?
"I think the correct answer is this," Plump says, standing in the exact spot where he took the shot. "If I hadn't made the shot, I wouldn't be standing here talking to you about it 60 years later."
There is a twinkle in his eye. He laughs. Plump hit that shot – maybe the most famous of all shots – 60 years ago this March. The clock ticked down in the 1954 championship with underdog Milan and traditional state power Muncie Central tied, 30-30. From the top of the key, Plump faked left and drove right, stopping on a dime as defender Jimmy Barnes rushed to stop him from getting to the basket, his momentum carrying him away from his man.
Plump rose up and flicked his right wrist. The ball sailed through.
Milan 32, Muncie Central 30.
That, they thought, was the end of the story. But Milan's tale of David vs. Goliath carries on as strong as ever 60 years later, helped in part by the release of the movie "Hoosiers" in 1986, which introduced the story – a Hollywood version – to a new generation of basketball fans. 

The article covers the tournament run in 1952-53, when the team lost in the state semifinals, and then the championship season of 1953-54.  One of the most interesting parts of the story is when the team ran into sophomore sensation Oscar Robertson and his Crispus Attucks teammates in the semistate:

The semistate championship game that night would mark an incredible intersection in Indiana high school basketball history. Crispus Attucks, led by a sophomore named Oscar Robertson, defeated Columbus 68-67 in the afternoon game. It meant Attucks and its young star would meet veteran Milan.
Plump: We stayed at the Pennsylvania Hotel because Woody wanted to keep us away from the fans telling us how good we were. When we walked out of our hotel before we were going to play Attucks, people were rolling down their windows and yelling, 'Beat those n-words! Get them the hell out of here!' It shocked us. Things were really prejudice back then. But the players couldn't have been better to play against.
White: Our scouting report on Oscar Robertson listed him last. But once the game started, it was obvious how good he was. He'd drive in off the wing and once he got in there just pull the ball away when you tried to block it. I'd never run up against a guy who could do that.
Schroder: Thank goodness he was only a sophomore.

Crispus Attucks was the segregated black school in Indianapolis, and they went on to win the state championship in Robertson's junior and senior seasons:

 Team photo of the 1954-55 Crispus Attucks basketball team that won the Indiana State championship in 1955 under coach Ray Crowe (upper left).

Not many realize the nation's first black high school champions came from a school that was the brainchild of the Ku Klux Klan. And few are aware that even after the Tigers won the state championship, they were given a celebration different from the one the white champions who came before them had.
Yet from 1950 to 1957, the Crispus Attucks Tigers were the most invincible team this basketball-crazed state had seen. Their high-scoring, high-flying, ultra-athletic ways led them to six regional championships, four semi-state championships and back-to-back state titles in 1955 and '56. The Tigers went 179-20 in that span, won what was then a record 45 games in a row, and in '56 completed the state's first undefeated season. The group included not only Robertson, a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame, but Hallie Bryant and Willie Gardner, two of the 28 members of the Harlem Globetrotters' prestigious Legends Ring... Back then, Indianapolis was a ferociously segregated city, traced back to the days of D.C. Stephenson, the Ku Klux Klan grand dragon who lived in the city in the early 1920s.
It was Stephenson and several Klan-supporting politicians who proposed a segregated high school for black students. Crispus Attucks High, named after the runaway slave who was believed to be the first American killed by British soldiers in the Boston Massacre, opened in 1927. But because the school had no white students, the Indiana High School Athletic Association ruled that Attucks was not a public school and thus that the association would not grant Attucks membership. Not until 1933 were member schools even allowed to play against Attucks. And not until 1942 was Attucks granted membership and welcomed into the state basketball tournament.
Even then, Attucks' home gym was too small to host games, so the Tigers always played on the road. And because many of the all-white Indianapolis schools refused to play Attucks, many of those games were played in small towns outside the city. There, the Tigers were the high school version of the Harlem Globetrotters, an entertaining curiosity that filled gyms and amazed fans but who struggled to find a place they were welcome to eat after the game.
"It was a very prejudiced town and a very prejudiced time," said Betty Crowe, an Attucks graduate and the widow of coach Ray Crowe. "You couldn't eat in certain restaurants; you couldn't sit in certain movies. But you learned to overcome it. You learned not to use that as an excuse. You knew you just had to do better."
Many of Attucks' students, including Robertson, lived in Lockefield Gardens, a government-subsidized housing complex a couple of blocks from the school. Others weren't as lucky and lived in homes without electricity or running water. The school was the beacon of hope. Because blacks weren't welcome to teach in most white schools, Attucks had arguably the most decorated faculty in the state, with every teacher carrying a master's or doctorate. The school produced doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, politicians and award-winning musicians.
"I never had a teacher who said a single word to me about basketball," Robertson said. "That wasn't what they cared about."
But most everyone else did. And in those tiny gyms across the state, the lines of color were easy to see. Blacks on one side, whites on the other, a brown leather ball bouncing between them. In the face of segregation, nothing brought more pride for the city's black population than an Attucks basketball victory.

It's been said that the back-to-back Attucks state championships are what led to Indianapolis schools to desegregate.  I'd say Brown v. Board of Education had more to do with it, but it does make for a good story.  Even today, though, Indiana is a pretty bigoted place.  I am not a fan.  It is ironic that the charming tale of little Milan High School was directly followed by the less charming but arguably much more impressive tale of Crispus Attucks overcoming ridiculous bigotry on their way to victory.  It is also notable which story got made into a movie.