Mississippi resident recalls novelty basketball team
Texas Cowgirls traveled with Harlem Globetrotters
Associated Press
From: The Commercial Appeal Memphis, Tennesse
October 2, 2011
PEARL -- Picture this: A double-deck bus barnstorming the northern United States and Canada with the Harlem Globetrotters filling the upstairs and the Texas Cowgirls, a women's basketball team, riding below.
The Globetrotters, featuring Wilt Chamberlain and Meadowlark Lemon, were black. The Texas Cowgirls were white.
The years were 1957 and '58.
"We got a lot of strange looks," said Barbara Leggette, a resident of Pearl, near Jackson, who was 18 years old and a member of the Cowgirls at the time. "But us and the Globetrotters got along great. They looked after the girls in every big city we went to and made sure nobody bothered us."
Those big cities included New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Small towns were on the schedule, too, "because we played every day and usually twice on Sunday," she said.
It was, in some ways, a traveling circus. The Globetrotters were proving that comedy and basketball made good companions.
The Cowgirls -- formed in 1949 and disbanded in 1977 -- always opened the entertainment, taking on local men's teams. They came onto the court wearing western hats, vests and holsters filled with cap pistols. Whenever a player made a shot during warm-ups, she would take off something.
"We'd get all the way down to our uniform, and the crowd would start yelling 'More! More!' but that's as far as it went," Leggette laughs. "Lord help me if my daddy could've seen that."
Rarely did the Cowgirls lose.
The Globetrotters, featuring Wilt Chamberlain and Meadowlark Lemon, were black. The Texas Cowgirls were white.
The years were 1957 and '58.
"We got a lot of strange looks," said Barbara Leggette, a resident of Pearl, near Jackson, who was 18 years old and a member of the Cowgirls at the time. "But us and the Globetrotters got along great. They looked after the girls in every big city we went to and made sure nobody bothered us."
Those big cities included New York, San Francisco, Boston and Chicago. Small towns were on the schedule, too, "because we played every day and usually twice on Sunday," she said.
It was, in some ways, a traveling circus. The Globetrotters were proving that comedy and basketball made good companions.
The Cowgirls -- formed in 1949 and disbanded in 1977 -- always opened the entertainment, taking on local men's teams. They came onto the court wearing western hats, vests and holsters filled with cap pistols. Whenever a player made a shot during warm-ups, she would take off something.
"We'd get all the way down to our uniform, and the crowd would start yelling 'More! More!' but that's as far as it went," Leggette laughs. "Lord help me if my daddy could've seen that."
Rarely did the Cowgirls lose.
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