Integration and MSU Women's Basketball

This image is of Mississippi State’s women’s basketball team in the year 1975. It was captured by Stan Koslowitz. The caption of the photograph lists the names of the players featured in the photograph and on the team. Coached by Libba Birmingham, the team was in its second season of competing.

During the time this photograph was captured, women’s basketball was a very new sport at Mississippi State University. The team had just formed a year prior in 1974. This document as well as the other document pictured here happen to have been published between the years 1974 to 1975. They both capture and describe what early women’s basketball looked like at Mississippi State University.

As seen in the image, the early Mississippi State Women’s basketball team was an integrated sports team. Since it was formed after integration had already happened at Mississippi State, the team never went through a period segregation. Martha Lyles and Denise Miller, the two players shown all the way on the right, were founding members of the team in 1974. Mississippi State Women’s basketball team was founded on a principle of inclusion and equality. Black women were founding members and there never became a time when the team decided not to allow any other black women to play. It is an image of progress and of growth towards equality in athletics on Mississippi State’s Campus.