Wisconsin Badgers

Jim Biggs and Ivan Jefferson made UW history and paved the way for future African American basketball players when they became two of the first African Americans on the UW basketball team in 1958.

On UW's first road trip in the winter of 1958, Biggs and Jefferson suffered the indignity of not being allowed to stay at a hotel with their teammates prior to a game against Rice University in Houston, Texas. The two were instead banished to the all-Black campus at Texas Southern.

When the squad returned to Madison, the trip's Jim Crow accommodations became a cause celebre. Soon after, the athletic board adopted a resolution on Dec. 19, 1958 which stated that UW student-athletes “travel together, lodge and dine together and play together as a team without discrimination.” From there forward it was required that road games be played only in cities where the entire team could stay under one roof. That explains in part why the men's basketball team didn't play another game in the South until 1963 (at Kentucky).

A native of Chicago, Biggs was a three-time letter winner at Wisconsin (1959, 1960, 1961) and was named team captain in 1959. Biggs earned All-Big Ten honorable mention honors in 1959, becoming the seventh Badger to score 30 points in a game, doing so against Northwestern on Feb. 28, 1959. He appeared in 41 career games, tallying 249 points and 82 rebounds.

Jefferson lettered in one season for the Badgers, appearing in all 22 games of the 1958-59 season. Jefferson averaged 6.3 points game and ranked second on the team with 5.2 rebounds per game.