Reading, MA, Debates Honoring Bill Russell As Racist Past Haunts Town

When Russell and his family lived in the small town as the only Black family, they experienced numerous racist attacks.

Reading, MA-based nonprofit CATO (The Coalition of Us) is pushing the town to confront its racist past as its advocates to commemorate late NBA legend Bill Russell’s time in the Boston suburb.

Russell, who died July 31, 2022, and his family experienced numerous racist attacks when they were town’s lone Black family.

In May 1963, when the town promised to formally establish a Bill Russell Day in order to celebrate and honor the Boston Celtics center, residents reacted by petitioning to block the Russells’ attempt to move into an affluent area of the city. When the team went on road trips, Russell would often return to find his trash cans knocked over. Police attributed these incidents to raccoons.

In 1987, Russell’s daughter Karen wrote an op-ed for The New York Times describing the now infamous 1963 break-in that resulted in a racial epithet being spray painted on the wall of their home.

“Our house was in shambles,” she wrote. “They had broken into my father’s trophy case and smashed most of the trophies. I was petrified and shocked at the mess; everyone was very upset.” Adding a layer to the violation, she said that toward the end of the day, her parents discovered the burglars had defecated on their bed.

Boston native and ESPN writer Howard Bryant told WBUR that the incident was what pushed Russell out of Reading.

“That was something barbaric,” Bryant explained. “Bill Russell left Reading in his rear-view mirror. He didn’t ask anything of them. He didn’t need anything from that town or from the people who were there, from the people who did the things to him.”

Following Russell’s death, the Reading Select Board again passed a proclamation similar in tone to the one in 1963, seeking to honor the late Celtics great’s accomplishments both as an athlete and a civil rights figure.

This time, Philmore Phillip and CATO are pushing the city to not only recognize Russell, but the treatment he received in Reading.

“It’s not fair of him and his family to be celebrated for his accomplishments, without acknowledging what he dealt with in this town,” Phillip said. “We can revisit so many events and relive them. But when it comes to Black history, we can’t acknowledge them, and that’s unfortunate.”

Reading’s attempts at keeping the remembrance focused on Russell, who won 11 championships with the Celtics, and have turned the discussion into a referendum on racism in the city. At a public forum earlier in January, Philip said the city’s attempts to honor Russell could supplement the lackluster education around Black history in the city’s school system.

“I didn’t have the opportunity to learn about a lot of Black figures in my academic career growing up in Reading,” Phillip said. “This proclamation is a start in the right direction in order to fix these issues in Reading.”

In February, the town’s board will vote on forming a committee to plan Bill Russell Day. If it passes by majority vote, a new committee will plan the day honoring Bill Russell in 2024.

Board member Carlo Bacci believes the focus is best left on Bill Russell as an athlete and not anything related to race or civil rights.

“We don’t need a committee for that,” Bacci said, speaking via a video link in response to Phillip’s comments. “We’re talking about civil rights, we’re talking about people, we’re talking about human rights. I mean, if we need a committee for that, we need a committee for a lot of other things.”

“I think that throwing it out there and saying, ‘We don’t have an opportunity to do it,’ is a cop-out,” CATO member and Reading resident Sherilla Lestrade responded. “And I’m tired of cop-outs.”