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The Grand Marshals of this year’s 500 Festival Parade are the members of the 1955 Crispus Attucks High School Indiana State Championship basketball team and some of the cheerleaders. The 500 Festival wanted to honor the team 60 years after they young state champs were let down because of the color of their skin.
The '55 Attucks team was the first all-black school team to win a State Championship anywhere in the country. Oscar Robertson, knicknamed the “Big O” in college, went on to legendary NBA career. In 1955, he was a 17-year old junior and key player on the Attucks team.
"All the other teams, predominantly white of course, who was in that situation, they were let off on the Circle and this is where they partied until they went home," Roberston said. "But not Crispus Attucks because we were all black … they were afraid, I guess, that we were going to tear the city up."
Instead of dropping the team off at Monument Circle to celebrate with their fans, the Attucks players were whisked around the Circle and taken to a park in the black community, leaving them feeling unwanted. This year, for the first time in the history of the 500 Festival Parade, there will be a special stop on Monument Circle for a long-overdue celebration of the '55 Crispus Attucks State Championship.
Robertson says he's honored to be a grand marshal for this year's parade.
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