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School District of Beloit to Look at Honoring City's First Black Basketball Star
The School District of Beloit Board of Education has approved forming a committee to consider naming the Beloit Memorial High School basketball floor to honor a 1930s basketball star.
Johnny Watts was a 1934 Beloit High School graduate who powered the school to three straight state basketball championships (1932, 1933 and 1934) and also was a standout football player.
He would later play briefly in college and then have a long professional basketball career, first with the Harlem Globetrotters and then by forming his own all-Black barnstorming team, the Negro Globe Trotters, based in Milwaukee. Watts died in 2001.
Jim Simmons of Beloit has been pushing for the honor for Watts for several years. The Beloit Memorial High School gymnasium is named after Bernie Barkin, who coached the Beloit team from 1953 to 1982, winning 442 games and leading the school to one state title. Simmons is asking for the floor to be named in Watts’ honor.
It’s not an uncommon request. The University of Wisconsin plays at the Kohl Center, named in honor of former U.S. Senator and Milwaukee Bucks owner Herb Kohl. In 2017, the University of Wisconsin named the Kohl Center court in honor of Ab Nicholas. Nicholas was a Rockford, Illinois native who starred at Wisconsin in the 1950s before becoming a successful businessman and major UW donor in Milwaukee.
The committee does not have a deadline to make a decision.
