(This is the second in a series about Detroit Public School League basketball legend, Spencer Haywood. Please find Part 1 here.)

The legend of Spencer Haywood began much earlier than his 1966 arrival in Detroit. It began, in fact, with another arrival – his into this world – on April 22, 1949.

There wasn’t much to Silver City, MS. A few hundred people lived in this tiny town about a hundred miles north of Jackson. The pre-Civil Rights era in this part of the nation left blacks to service industry employment and that’s just where Spencer’s 42-year-old mother Eunice found herself on the day of his birth. Seven-months pregnant, Eunice gamely put in an honest day’s work until finally succumbing to the unmistakable pains of labor. She laid down her equipment – she’d been preparing the fields for planting season – and headed home, lay down on her bed, and gave birth to Spencer with the assistance of two mid-wives. Two months premature, Haywood arrived on his father’s birthday. This was an important fact for Spencer’s father, John, a 6-foot-5 carpenter, had died – hammer in hand – on the job three weeks prior to Spencer’s birth.

It was in fact the death of Spencer’s father that had led many to believe he might never arrive. Overcome with the emotion, Eunice had taken a nasty spill during the services for her husband and most thought the next family function would be to console her for losing her child … not for having one. The fact that Spencer arrived three weeks to the day after his father’s death didn’t go unnoticed to the Haywood family who felt he must have a special purpose for surviving Eunice’s fall and arriving when he did.

Forget this special purpose business; the big question was whether or not he would survive once he had arrived. Born those two months premature, he was in the fields slung over his mother’s back one short week later. Certainly, this isn’t what Dr. Spock had written in his childcare books.

Adding to the odds against him, Spencer became part of a family of nine that eventually grew to 11. Granted, the two eldest had since departed the family home, but his mother was earning just $20 a week between her work in the fields, cleaning, and welfare. After his father passed, the Haywood’s economic fortunes went from bad to horrendous. John was the primary breadwinner and kept his accounting in his head. Debts were quickly forgotten. In his autobiography Spencer Haywood: The Rise, the Fall, the Recovery, Spencer described his family’s financial state as “poorer than dirt. We were the lower class of the lower class.”

A black man in the deep rural south in the 1950s and 1960s was not about to get discovered by major college basketball programs, let alone the professional leagues. While people like Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Medgar Evers were making inroads with the Civil Rights movement, these were faint rumors to the Haywood family and the other blacks in the backwoods of Silver City.

How far behind the times was this part of Mississippi? The first mixed race sporting event didn’t take place until 1978 when a semi-pro basketball game was played.

Haywood recounted trips around town – almost always on foot – in his autobiography. Blacks were used for BB gun target practice by white boys, chased by dogs, had beer bottles chucked at them, and were shot at with rifles.

It was, in short, a difficult childhood.

It was, however, all Haywood ever knew and no doubt hardened him for the type of journey he would later embark upon.

A 6-foot-6 freshman, Spencer was quickly discovered by Coach Charles Wilson at McNair High School. Despite a lack of coordination, proper shoes, and a jock strap – all of which made for some uncomfortable moments – Haywood made the McNair High 12-man varsity.

He didn’t see much action, but he did make a memorable first impression during a blowout three games into his freshman season. Haywood grabbed a loose ball and coasted in for a breakaway lay up – into the wrong basket!

Gangly and still growing into his body, Haywood played sparingly the entire first season – not even traveling to some road games – but was a key cog on McNair’s regional-qualifying team as a sophomore. He was beginning to fill out and at 6-foot-7 was averaging over 20 points per game. The local black colleges were beginning to take notice.

It was during his sophomore year that Haywood got his first glimpse of the north. He visited his brother Joe in Chicago for a few weeks following Christmas and vowed to return. Despite the pimps, hookers, drugs, and cockroach-infested apartments, he did return following that sophomore year at McNair. Spencer put Silver City in his rearview mirror as best he could and was content to work his job as a busboy at Fred Harvey’s Restaurant, sending a weekly allowance back to his mother. That changed, however, when his older brother Leroy, a college basketball player at Bowling Green State University, came to town for a visit.

Spencer had begun to gain a bit of acclaim on the playgrounds of his Chicago neighborhood and a challenge was made to Leroy. They played seven games and 15-year-old Spencer won three of those. Leroy had seen enough and promptly loaded up his car and spirited Spencer from the ghettos of Chicago to the flatlands of northwestern Ohio – explaining to him that basketball might be a viable option. Leroy, who had lived with an aunt in Detroit and had been a solid player in his own right at Northeastern, worked the phones and got his baby brother a tryout at the Kronk Recreation Center for a coach named Will Robinson at Pershing High.

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Understandably, Spencer Haywood was a hot commodity in 1967 when he finished his senior year at Pershing High School. UCLA called and said it’d like Spencer to play alongside Lew Alcindor. USC also approached him as did Bowling Green and the Air Force Academy. The prevailing rumor, however, was that he would matriculate across town to the University of Detroit where he would be reunited with Coach Robinson who was expected to replace longtime coach Bob Calihan when he retired.

Haywood had other ideas. He witnessed firsthand the burgeoning empowerment of young black men in the late 1960s.

“Racial awareness was becoming a very big thing in our lives,” he wrote in his autobiography. “Pride. We could be proud; we could call attention to ourselves with our hair and clothing and walk. … Basketball was still more important to us than politics and the restructuring of American society, but we were aware that a revolution was in the works.”

Haywood was keenly aware that he – a black man who was in demand – was in a position to make a statement and he was prepared to make it. When it came time to choose a college he selected the University of Tennessee. He would become the first black player in the entire Southeastern Conference.

Though he and Wiley Davis, a Pershing teammate his junior year, both arrived in Knoxville during the summer to familiarize themselves and get settled, things quickly unraveled before either began taking classes. Tennessee coach Roy Mears was – it was rumored – catching a lot of heat from Adolph Rupp and the bluebloods in Kentucky about integrating the SEC with a borderline student. Mears was pushing Spencer off to a junior college in Chattanooga for the year to improve his grades.

Haywood and Davis both got a bad vibe and sought Will Robinson’s advice. He was friendly with Coach Bob King at the University of New Mexico and it was decided the two of them would attend Trinidad State Junior College in Alamosa, CO, for the year before transferring to New Mexico.

Haywood was dominant from the outset. He led the nation’s junior college players by averaging 28.2 points and 22.1 rebounds per game.

It was this breakthrough performance as well as a confluence of other factors that allowed Haywood the opportunity of lifetime the following summer: An invitation to the 1968 Olympic basketball trials.

For the first time in USA Basketball’s history, junior college players were invited to the trials. Haywood made it through the juco portion of the trials in Hutchinson, KS, with relative ease. He then impressed legendary Oklahoma State coach Henry Iba on the very first day of full-squad trials in Albuquerque, NM.

It was easy to stand out during these trials, especially if you were a talented big man. The top three collegiate post players – Alcindor, Elvin Hayes (Houston), and Wes Unseld (Louisville) – all declined invitations. Haywood parlayed their absences and his talent into a spot on the team and he so ferociously seized the moment that he became a national icon by the time the Mexico City Games were complete. He scored 21 points, hauled in 10 rebounds, and blocked five shots in the Americans’, 65-50, gold-medal victory over Yugoslavia and was named MVP of the tournament. He still owns Team USA Olympic records to this day for most points scored in a single-Olympiad (145 for a 16.1 average) and his .719 field goal percentage is second only to Charles Barkley’s .816, but remains highest among non-Dream Teamers.

In addition, Haywood – who was viewed by many pundits as a second and even a third choice entering the Olympiad – won the praise of the media and Coach Iba.

Wrote John Kiernan of the New York Times: “Haywood was the sensation of the tournament, so good that many eyewitnesses think he will outrank Alcindor as a superstar. He is the fastest big man in the game, a demon under the boards, and limitless in his scoring potentialities.”

Nearly two decades later, when Iba congratulated Bobby Knight’s 1984 gold medal-winning team following the Los Angeles Olympics, Haywood had snuck into the crowded locker room to offer his congratulations, but before he could Iba took note: “Gentlemen, the greatest basketball player ever is here tonight: Spencer Haywood.”

Of course, all these accolades were directed toward a 19-year-old soon-to-be college sophomore.  Speaking of which, what college would Haywood’s hat rest the following year? The plan, of course, was to attend the University of New Mexico, just as another Pershing star, Mel Daniels, had done some eight years earlier. Haywood, however, had other ideas and chose instead to head back home and attend the University of Detroit. The plan was to play one year under Bob Calihan and then Will Robinson would take over and U-D would become a national power, bringing in all of the best players from the PSL. Players like Ralph Simpson (currently at Michigan State) and Curtis Jones (at North Idaho Community College), and George Gervin just beginning to achieve notoriety at King High School.

Things progressed swimmingly during the early stages of the season. Haywood scored and rebounded with a reckless abandon, including a 36-point, 31-rebound debut during a 105-40 rout of tiny Aquinas College. His successes weren’t limited to just the softies either, he posted a 35-point, 23-rebound performance against Marquette’s Dean Meminger. The Titans also bested St. Bonaventure – led by future Detroit Piston All-Star Bob Lanier – and found themselves ranked seventh in the nation after dashing out of the gate with an unblemished 10-0 record.

Calihan was starting five blacks at the time, however, and there was pressure mounting to make some modifications. Line-up changes were made – including the insertion of Bob Calihan Jr. at point guard – and the season began to unravel. It hit its apex for Haywood in a game at the University of Toledo when – after being subjected to what he viewed as questionable officiating the entire game – he attacked Rockets’ center Steve Mix in the closing moments and then brushed an official with a punch during the ensuing melee. Haywood was suspended for two games and the Titans limped home, winning just six of their final 16 games to finish 16-10.

Though Haywood delivered his end of the deal – becoming a first-team All-American averaging 32.1 points and 21.5 rebounds (tops in the nation) per game – U-D didn’t uphold its end of the deal. Once Calihan retired, Will Robinson was passed over as the next coach, the Titans chose instead Don Haskins of the University of Texas-El Paso. Haskins, however, got such a cool reception from the Detroit media that he quit within two days of accepting the job. Robinson was passed over again, this time for Jim Harding from La Salle. Harding – a yeller and screamer – and Haywood didn’t hit it off. Suddenly, Haywood was about to become a different sort of legend – one of the more infamous variety.

• Up Next: Challenging the Status Quo.