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Getting Open: The Unknown Story of Bill Garrett and the Integration of College Basketball | 
 enlarge | Authors: Thomas R. Graham, Rachel Graham Cody
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $10.17
You Save: $4.78 (32%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 2121791
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0253220467
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.323092
EAN: 9780253220462
ASIN: 0253220467
Publication Date: October 2008 (In 33 Days)
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Not yet published
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
The real "Hoosiers" story April 17, 2007
This well-written book took me back to Shelbyville IN in the 1950s, when every barber shop displayed a picture of the 1947 championship team and every patron knew all their names. No one would question the effect Bill Garrett had on his home town, but few could have predicted the impact he would have on collegiate sports for years to come.
The little town of Milan provided great sports drama for the movie "Hoosiers," but the life of Bill Garrett is more than a sports story. He did for NCAA athletics what Jackie Robinson did for Major League Baseball. Young people of today would be shocked to learn what he endured just a couple of generations ago.
Thanks to Tom and Rachel Graham Cody for this great read. As a Purdue grad, it pains me to praise a book that casts such a positive glow on Indiana University!
 So...who was Bill Garrett? December 28, 2006
This is a good book and a good read. If you're from small-town Indiana (like me) and old enough to understand what single-class "Hoosier Hysteria" really meant, then you'll like this book.
However I respectfully offer that it's not a 5-star book. It may be a 5-star story in search of a 5-star telling.
I just finished the book yesterday, and I find myself wishing the authors had been less dispassionate. Or more passionate? Whatever.
So who was Bill Garrett? The book talks a lot about his life and times, and provides some ancedotes, but always left me wanting more about Bill. Sadly, Bill wasn't available to be interviewed, but his teammates, friends and wife were all sources for the book.
Here are some examples:
We learn a lot about how Bill came to enroll at IU, but we don't learn about the man himself. Bill left Tennessee State after enrolling, and took a bus to IU. No one was available to meet him there! How did he feel about this?
Bill was on the road and separated from his wife for several years while he knocked around the fringes of professional basketball. How was their relationship affected? We don't know.
Finally - the authors talk about the changes in college basketball in the 1950's (pp 169-175), Branch McCracken's sporadic recruitment of black players, yet fail to mention that IU WON the NCAA championship in 1953!
Sorry 5-star raters...it's a good book and a story worth telling, but could be a lot better. Probably a better movie than a book.
Blown away! December 27, 2006
Seldom have I been so touched, entertained, and educated by a book as I was by Getting Open, which I read in two days. It is truly a masterpiece and something I will keep on my bookshelf for the rest of my life.
Although born and raised in Indiana, I didn't know much if anything about Bill Garrett before reading this book, but I was just blown away by his story. Not knowing the story, it was almost like reading a well-crafted novel and I hung on every new development the authors revealed. I also didn't know much about the racial intolerance of the times. My neighborhood and high school were all white, so I really had little if any contact with blacks before I went to Indiana University as a freshman in 1963. It hardly seems possible that such racial intolerance existed in the Midwest so recently before then.
This book exceeded all my expectations and I highly recommend it to anyone, whether you're a basketball fan or not. If you have any ties to the Hoosier State or to Indiana University, you will love it all the more.
A Story That Needed To Be Told December 15, 2006
At the pinnacle of his high school career - leading Shelbyville High to the Indiana state championship; a team that had three black starters - not one college scout in the arena attended the game to recruit Bill Garrett or his two teammates due to the color of their skin.
At the pinnacle of his collegiate career - leaving the court to a standing ovation that lasted several minutes - Bill Garrett was refused service in a restaurant days later; one that had on its marquee that it welcomed fans of Indiana Unniversity basketball.
And when Bill Garrett was ready to launch his pro career, the team in his home state did not draft him.
But Bill Garrett was stronger than those who attempted to keep those doors closed. And we are better because of him.
For author Tom Graham - with his co-author/daughter Rachel Graham Cody - the book took seven years of reseach, and certainly a lifetime of not denying the facts from the past and understanding the urgency in the present to set the record straight.
Getting Open is more than a biography on Garrett and how he integrated Big Ten basketball by playing and starring for IU. It is a history of institutionalized racial hatred in the State of Indiana - at one point in the 20th Century, the KKK essentially controlled all essential government offices - and the tireless work of person's from different sides of the tracks to fight the good fight.
Graham is a Shelbyville native who was old enough to vividly recall the times, which certainly helped as he meticulously did his research to cut through the fiction that builds from facts as the years tumble on.
It is a book from the heart that will make you realize how we must celebrate those who had the courage then by continuing to challenge those who want to forget - or rewrite - the past.
Great civil rights story reads like a novel August 6, 2006
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
This book is an incredibly well written and well documented story that should be more widely read. It is an important history that many sports fans, and non-sports fans, will enjoy tremendously. It is an inspiration to us all, and offers many lessons and insights about overcoming racism. Thank you to the father-daughter authors for getting out this story!
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