I knew Jackie Robinson was the first Black athlete to play in the Major Leagues in the modern era, and I knew Althea Gibson broke the color barrier in professional tennis, but I was not familiar with Wilmeth Sidat–Singh, the first Black star athlete at Syracuse University—and I am a Syracuse grad. This changed thanks to Scott Pitoniak and Rick Burton’s Invisible No More, a historical novel about the two-sport superstar.
The book, released on Dec. 5 during the 80th year anniversary of Sidat-Singh’s death, begins in 2000 in Upstate New York where Black sports reporter Breanna Shelton covers a medal ceremony for Charles Williams, one of the Tuskegee Airmen (a fighter pilot squadron of Black pilots active during World War II). Charles, who flew alongside Wilmeth, persuades Breanna to write about the Syracuse athlete. After convincing her editor to greenlight a series on him, Breanna visits Charles’ home to obtain source material, which includes letters to Wilmeth from boxer Joe Louis, and musicians Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway. At this moment, Shelton realizes the importance of introducing Wilmeth to readers.
Through Breanna, a fictionalized character used as a narrative device to tell Sidat-Singh’s story, we learn that Wilmeth grew up in Jim Crow D.C. His father died when he was 7, and his mother, Pauline, was a secretary at Howard University where she met her second husband, Samuel Sidat–Singh, a Howard med student of Indian descent.
Samuel moved the family to Harlem, and Wilmeth began to hone his basketball skills at the neighborhood YMCA, where members—including Calloway’s son Mercer—were in awe of his talents that “went beyond his God-given physical abilities.” Wilmeth made the Daily News all-city team, making him one of the first Black athletes to earn all-city honors in a daily newspaper. This accolade earned him a scholarship to Syracuse University.
Bigotry runs through the book as a theme, especially when Wilmeth, known as the “Manhattan Hindu” because of his light skin and last name, arrives on Syracuse’s campus in 1935, where he’s forbidden to live. He’s chased by security guards, profiled by professors, and shunned by administrators. But football coach Roy Simmons Sr. sees something special in him. During an intramural football game, Wilmeth throws a 50-yard pass, inspiring Simmons to convince the talented athlete to play football for the Orange.
Wilmeth worries about how the community will receive him as the only Black person on the roster, but Simmons has an idea: Let Wilmeth continue to “pass” as Indian, which he does while leading the team to key wins over rivals Cornell and Penn State. Along the way, he earns praise from legendary sports writer Grantland Rice. On the basketball court, the coaches marvel at Wilmeth’s “no-look pass” and the way he plays like “a magician forever in search of new tricks.”
But things change on Oct. 23, 1937, when the Washington Tribune outs Wilmeth in its story: “NEGRO TO PLAY U OF MARYLAND; THEY CALL HIM A HINDU.” Wilmeth gets benched because Maryland “[doesn’t] play against Negroes.” Although devastated, he finished his career at Syracuse as a bona fide two-sport star, earning a diploma in 1939.
The book’s authors follow him postgraduation as he moves back to D.C. to play semiprofessional basketball. But when Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, he says “playing professional basketball seemed pretty insignificant.” Wilmeth signs up to be a Tuskegee Airman.
The authors stay attuned to Wilmeth’s pain, and we plummet with him into the nightmare of the Selfridge Air Field in Michigan where he “could smell the racism in the air” and where “Wilmeth hated thinking white maintenance men or ground crew would even consider purposely damaging a plane such that it might kill the pilot.” Prophetically, on May 9, 1943, at the age of 25, Wilmeth Sidat-Singh’s plane failed, forcing him to parachute into Lake Huron where he drowned.
Through the authors, we recognize Wilmeth’s nationwide impact—Louis arranged for an Arlington Cemetery burial where celebrities such as Calloway and Ellington paid their respects. We also learn that Syracuse retired Wilmeth’s basketball jersey in 2005. Prompted by the college’s chief diversity officer Kumea Shorter–Gooden, the University of Maryland made a public apology at the 2013 Maryland-Syracuse football game. Shorter-Gooden tells Breanna: “What happened to Wilmeth Sidat-Singh is an example of the worst of America’s racial history.”
The authors create a scenario where Breanna’s articles about Wilmeth go on to win many awards, catapulting her to a position at the Washington Post where she becomes one of the first Black women columnists at a major newspaper. In the book, she, too, struggles with racial discrimination throughout her career, an acknowledgement that inequality still exists today. I am hopeful that the authors’ in-depth research and imaginative prose in Invisible No More will create the earned respect for Wilmeth Sidat-Singh and establish his place among the pantheon of great Black athletes.
Invisible No More, by Scott Pitoniak and Rick Burton, was released on Dec. 5 by Subplot Books.
