Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history — some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
When Black NBA players were refused service at Lexington’s Phoenix Hotel in 1961, it sparked a historic boycott and calls for change.
On Oct. 17, 1961, the Boston Celtics were in Lexington to play an exhibition game against the St. Louis Hawks. Two Celtics players, Sam Jones and Satch Sanders, went to the coffee shop of the Phoenix Hotel for dinner, but the waitress refused to serve them because they were Black. Later, Hawks player Cleo Hill was also denied service.
When the Celtics players told their fellow player Bill Russell, Black members of the team decided to boycott the game. Russell, K.C. Jones, Al Butler, and Hawks players Woody Sauldsberry and Hill, decided to leave Kentucky in protest. Although Celtics coach Red Auerbach asked the players to stay, eventually he relented and drove them to the airport.
Phoenix Hotel manager Art Lang said the hotel did not have “discriminatory policies,” and that the refusal of service was a “misunderstanding,” according to the Associated Press. He told the Lexington Leader that he didn’t hear about the incident until about 30 minutes after it had happened, and if he’d known the players were there, he would have served them “on the house.”
T. H. Hardwick, managing director of the Phoenix, said the hotel served all registered guests, but that the players didn’t identify themselves as guests of the hotel.
Sparked by the players’ boycott of the game, The Congress of Racial Equality, in Lexington began picketing the Phoenix and other segregated businesses downtown. Because of the boycotts, performer Louis Armstrong decided to boycott the city too.
A photograph by local photographer Calvert McCann captured the moment Armstrong refused to cross the picket line instead of checking into the Phoenix. Armstrong later cancelled his Lexington appearance.
Through sit-ins at lunch counters and protests at the Phoenix, the group not only brought light to the social injustice of the time but created change in Lexington businesses.
As for the Celtics-Hawks game, the match went on as planned without the boycotting players, and the Hawks won 128-103.
But the damage from the incident was done. The next day, the Boston media got wind of the boycott. Celtics owner Walter Brown vowed that his team would never play another exhibition game in a city where his Black players could be embarrassed.
“We’ve got to show our disapproval of this kind of treatment or else the status quo will prevail,” Russell later told reporters. “We have the same rights and privileges as anyone else and deserve to be treated accordingly. I hope we never have to go through this abuse again.”
Have a question or story idea related to Lexington’s 250-year history? Let us know at 250LexKy@gmail.com.