The Smart Set Athletic Club was an athletic club based in Brooklyn, NY. [1] [2] [3] [4] The club organized the first African-American basketball team, one of the most successful teams in the Black Fives Era. [1]
Founded in 1904, the Smart Set Athletic Club is credited with assembling the first formal fully independent African-American basketball team. [2] The team debuted in 1907. The Smart Set Athletic Club team was also a founding member of the Olympian Athletic League, along with the Alpha Physical Culture Club, the Marathon Athletic Club of Manhattan, and the St. Christopher Club. [2]
Smart Set members came from a background of well-educated, affluent African Americans who resided in what at the time was a predominantly white Stuyvesant Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. [2]