Trailblazing Sports Journalist And Activist Howie Evans
Photo: Special to the NY Beacon
By Jaime Harris – Part 1
Howie Evans was a proverbial giant. Even though standing just 5-10, he was a towering sports and cultural icon. To me, he was a sage, mentor, coach, role model, father figure, and tough, nurturing uncle.
He was my mother Elaine’s oldest brother, and died last Thursday morning at 91 at the Longleaf Neuro-Medical Treatment Center in Wilson, N.C., where he was a resident since 2018 dauntlessly surviving the collective symptoms of dementia.
The sports editor emeritus of this publication, Evans was raised in the South Bronx, growing into a multi-sport athlete at Morris High School. From Morris, he focused on basketball at HBCU Maryland State College in the mid-1950s, which became the University of Maryland Eastern Shore in 1970. He returned to his alma mater as the head basketball coach from 1985 to 1987.
Evans’ list of firsts, Hall of Fame inductions, and honors and awards in education, sports, journalism, and activism are all too lengthy to note on this page. Working for the then-New York City Board of Education for more than 20 years, he was a charter member of its Chancellor’s Task Force on Academics and Athletics. He was a co-founder of the New York City Basketball Hall of Fame, as well as inductee, growing it with New York basketball luminaries like Bob Williams, Tom Konchalski, and Mel Davis. As a broadcaster for the New York Jets, he was the first Black journalist to be a member of an NFL franchise’s traveling press corps.
Evans was also the first African American to own a major professional sports franchise in partnership, co-owning and serving as president of the Garden State Colonials of the Eastern Professional Basketball League. However, those achievements merely illustrate what he did, not who he was.
Evans began his journalism career in earnest in the mid-1960s and was the sports editor for the New York Amsterdam News for nearly 50 years. In conjunction with being a basketball coach, his writing and broadcasting became vessels for him to change the world. His imprint is everlasting. He was analogous to an ancient scribe — a griot who recorded and interpreted history while simultaneously producing it.
His unwavering mission to have the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame committee elect some of his close friends
– Black pioneers such as Bob Douglas, founder of the New York Renaissance, and ingenious coach John B. McLendon Jr., recognized as the first Black coach in any sport at a predominantly white university (Cleveland State, 1966), is emblematic of his lifelong commitment to the social tenets of opportunity, merit, justice, and equality.
Editor Note: Jaime Harris is the Sports Editor of the New York Amsterdam Newpaper. Mr. Harris is also the nephew of Howie Evans. Part 2 will focus on Mr. Evans relationship with tennis icon Arthur Ashe and helping to end apartheid in South Africa.
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