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PUMA and the Black Fives Foundation release the second collection in our ongoing partnership. The Black Fives Foundation’s mission is to research, preserve, showcase, teach and honor the pre-NBA history of African Americans in basketball. This collection celebrates the way the teams of the Black Fives Era expanded their reach beyond the neighborhoods where they began, into cities and towns throughout the United States. Teams would travel the country playing extensive schedules, adhering to strict business models while navigating racist Jim Crow restrictions on everything from public transportation to restaurants to lodging, even before arriving in tense, unfamiliar, potentially volatile arenas, armories, ballrooms, and gymnasiums far from home. Yet, these squads most often won those games, left town safely, and were invited back. Their journeys played an instrumental role in popularizing the game while providing essential cultural inspiration to Black communities across America. This collection of vintage- inspired designs and fabrications showcases these experiences with historical graphics and authentic logos maintained by the Foundation.

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PUMA and the Black Fives Foundation are back with the third installment of our partnership in support of Black history education reform. This time, the collaboration showcases the cultural parallels in basketball then and now. The collection is inspired by the vibrant atmosphere that surrounded the sport during the Black Fives Era—a time when games accompanied by music, dancing, and fashion were meaningful social events that helped shape community and culture. Today, basketball provides powerful new opportunities for social and cultural impact beyond tunnel walks, celebrity rows, and halftime entertainment: the chance to make history now.

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The Black Fives Era spanned what were perhaps America’s darkest yet most colorful years, a rich period that included the First Black Migration, the emergence of the phonograph and radio, the growth of entertainment culture, the explosion of jazz, ragtime, and the blues, vice reform, lynchings and race riots, the ballroom dancing craze, Prohibition, the Roaring ’20s, the Harlem Renaissance, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and the Golden Age of Sports.The men and women of the Black Fives Era were true basketball pioneers whose desire simply to play their best and innovate the game opened doors for generations of African American players.

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In doing so they left a worldwide legacy that inspires not only ballers, but also all of us to this day.