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Title: “But They Can’t Beat Us: Oscar Robertson and the Crispus Attucks Tigers”

Author: Randy Roberts

Publisher: Sports Publishing Inc. ($19.95)

This is a book about race, social upheaval, racist white school boards and civil rights; about Rosa Parks and the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott--and the high school days of basketball legend Oscar Robertson.

And it’s a story about Indianapolis’ Crispus Attucks High, built for blacks in the 1920s so that white children wouldn’t have to sit in classrooms with black students.

Roberts describes years of Attucks’ administrators unsuccessfully petitioning for membership in the Indiana High School Athletic Assn. so their basketball teams could compete for the Indiana state high school championship.

Once Attucks was admitted, Robertson led the Tigers to the 1955 and ’56 state championships and became a prep folk hero. In a time when even the NBA had few 6-foot-5 guards, Robertson was a marvel of power and grace, of unparalleled shot-creating ability and virtually unstoppable off the dribble.

A natural for Indiana, right? Wrong. Roberts writes that Robertson quickly sized up Coach Branch McCracken as a racist, and moved along in the recruiting process.

UCLA’s John Wooden made a run, trying vainly to induce Robertson to fly west for a visit. But Robertson, new to airplane travel, envisioned a seven-hour trip with eight stops and declined. He finally settled on Cincinnati, a university located in a city that was similar to Indianapolis and only a two-hour drive away.

The book is a good read, and a refresher course on how far sports have come.