Willie Cooper helped pave the way for blacks

Posted Mar 15, 2009
Charlie Scott twice led UNC to the NCAA Final Four. He was a dazzling guard, a two-time All-America and the school's first black scholarship athlete. Before Scott arrived in Chapel Hill in 1966, however, there was Willie Cooper. Two years earlier -- in 1964 -- Dean Smith gave Cooper a chance to be the first African-American to play varsity basketball at an ACC-member school in the state of North Carolina. (Raleigh News & Observer)

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