Athlete – Basketball
Mr. Henry Bell was a veritable scoring machine for the Douglass High School Demons Basketball Team back in the late 1950s. He averaged more than 32 points per game during his junior and senior years at Douglass. His 54 points in a 108-65 win over Lincoln Institute in December 1957 set a single-game scoring record that stood for more than 32 years in Lexington, with no three-point shot, and he didn’t even play in the fourth quarter!
Mr. Bell helped bridge the gap between the segregated and early post-segregated eras in Lexington. His 1956 Douglass Team made it to the championship game of the National Negro High School Basketball Tournament at Tennessee State University in Nashville. At this time, all-black high schools were not allowed to play in the state-sanctioned tournaments across the country, such as the KHSAA.
The next year, in February of 1957, Mr. Bell’s Douglass team was the first all-black team allowed to play in the 43rd District Tournament at Memorial Coliseum. Against a backdrop of sketchy officiating and Rebel flags waving in the stands, Douglass won their first game over Nicholasville High School by a score of 87-45. The Demons lost a barn-burner to Henry Clay in the second round by a score of 46-44. Despite the early loss, Mr. Bell, along with his brother, George, was named to the 43rd District All-Tournament Team.
After high school, Mr. Bell played basketball at Jackson State College, now Jackson State University, in Jackson, Mississippi. Mr. Bell started officiating in 1974 and became a sought-after basketball referee who called games in the Big 10 and Ohio Valley Conferences. Mr. Bell also called six boys and two girls KHSAA Sweet 16 tournaments in his 35-year officiating career.
For his outstanding careers as both player and referee, Mr. Bell was inducted into the KHSAA Hall of Fame in 1992.
