BASKETBALL • 1958-60

Mannie Jackson was born in a railroad boxcar in Illmo, Missouri, before moving to Edwardsville, Illinois and finding statewide high school success on the basketball court. In college, he broke down barriers, when he and former high school teammate Govoner Vaughn became the first African-Americans to start and letter in basketball at the University of Illinois. Jackson earned All-Big Ten honors twice as an Illini before playing three years with the Harlem Globetrotters. After starting a long career at Honeywell, where he became one of the company’s senior corporate officers, Jackson became the nation’s first African-American owner of a global sports and entertainment brand when he purchased the Globetrotters in 1993. He won the 2015 Theodore Roosevelt Award by the NCAA, the association’s top honor. Jackson served as Chairman of the National Basketball Hall of Fame from 2007-09. He was inducted as a Laureate of The Lincoln Academy and awarded the Order of Lincoln (the State’s highest honor) by the Governor of Illinois in 2010 in the area of Sports. Jackson is a 2017 inductee to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.