" To many white fans, the Attucks players were like the Harlem Globetrotters, entertainers who had come to play an exhibition. But the games meant something quite different to Principal Lane. He viewed each backwoods gym as a showcase for progress and each Attucks player a goodwill ambassador. A game at a rural schoolhouse was a chance to demonstrate to white fans, some of whom doubtless still had robes and hoods stashed in their closets, that black and white Hoosiers could compete without violence or incident. If Hoosiers could observe racial harmony while their sons competed in a packed gym, Lane thought, they would later come to believe in its possibility in schools and neighborhoods. "

― Phillip Hoose , Attucks!: Oscar Robertson and the Basketball Team That Awakened a City