XENIA — It was supposed to be a regular fairy tale of racial harmony.

Dick Vice and Don Barnette, the white and black co-captains of the Middletown Middies' 1952 state championship basketball team, planned to continue their salt-and-pepper success after high school.

Recruited by several colleges, they both committed to the University of Cincinnati.

"All along, Cincinnati led me to believe I'd be playing for them," Barnette said. "Dick and I visited their campus a bunch of times, even worked out in their gym. Then, just two weeks before school was to start, they told me I hadn't passed the entrance exam.

"Now I would have accepted it a little better if there had been some kind of entrance test. But there was no SAT, no ACT, nothing like that back then. So Dick stayed, and I went back to Middletown."

Why was he denied?

Barnette mulled over the question in silence Saturday morning as he sat in his Xenia hotel room. On the bed next to him was the cane he now uses. On the table lay a copy of his autobiography.

Finally, he answered by simply rubbing one hand up and down his other forearm.

"The color of my skin," he said softly. "Cincinnati wasn't ready for a player like me."

But as Barnette had stroked his arm, you couldn't help but notice the fancy watch on his wrist. It was from his induction into the Miami University Hall of Fame.

And that's when it became clear. The story of the 72-year-old Barnette is not one of rejection, it's one of readjustment, reward and lasting recognition.

Barnette broke the color barrier at Miami in 1952 when he became the first black to play basketball at the school.

That paved the way for a rich history of African-American players that has included the likes of current coach Charlie Coles, NBA legends Wayne Embry and Ron Harper, and, most recently, Nathan Peavy, the Chaminade-Julienne High School graduate who just finished his career (1,080 points, 576 rebounds) with the RedHawks.

That barrier-breaking career — Barnette also was the first black player to captain one of the powerhouse Middies' teams — is why he'd flown back to Ohio on Friday night from his home in Oakland, Calif.

Saturday afternoon, he was the featured speaker at the National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce. That's where a special sports exhibit — A Presence With Impact: Blacks in American Sports — is on display through October.

"Not to sound self important," Barnette said with a shrug, "but I'm supposed to be one of the living-legend parts of the show."

The designation fits.

After his state-title days at Middletown, he helped Miami to a Mid-American Conference title in 1954-55 and the following season earned first-team All-MAC and honorable mention All-American honors.

He was an All-Navy basketball player during his service days and then spent four years spanning the globe with the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters, whose founder and coach, Abe Saperstein, dubbed him "The Dribbling Wizard."

It wasn't the first time one of Barnette's coaches had come up with a name for him.

At Miami, Bill Rohr did the same thing once.

To put the times in perspective, consider that Barnette's appearance in a Miami uniform came two years before the landmark Brown versus Board of Education case, three years before Rosa Parks' act of defiance and 11 years before

Dr. Martin Luther King's I Have A Dream speech on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Back when Barnette started playing for Miami, the race-dividing Jim Crow laws still ruled much of the land.

"We went to Florida to play games in Miami and Tampa, and at first, I was told to stay on the bus," Barnette recalled. "At Tampa, I was told no blacks — only they used the n-word — were allowed on campus. Finally the game was moved to the U.S. Army field house.

"Coach Rohr was upset about what was happening, and the next thing I know — at least for our Florida games — I'm listed as Jose Clemente. I was supposed to be Cuban or Hispanic or Latino, I don't know. He picked the name.

"And suddenly — as long as I wasn't black — I could play."

Barnette's eyes were teary as he went on: "Back then, you didn't just stand there and fight it, or you'd never advance. I just wanted to be a ballplayer. But the truth is, if you were a black athlete then you went to work every day with segregation on your shoulders."

It's memories like that that have gotten Barnette involved as a coordinator of the Black Legends of Basketball Foundation, which recognizes basketball's pioneering barnstormers and tries to educate today's young people — especially NBA players.

"A lot of today's pro players don't know anything about it — and in many cases don't care to — and they should," Barnette said. "They're millionaires today because other guys paid the dues. They need to know what it was like."

To understand that, you just had to watch Barnette pull up his left pant leg Saturday to reveal a golf ball-sized scar on his left knee.

The injury happened during his Globetrotter days as he was putting on a dribbling exhibition in a bullfight ring in Mexico.

"The floor of that arena was pretty rough for 'el toro,' and I ripped up my knee pretty bad," he said. "I kept playing and it kept bleeding and at halftime, well, here's what sports medicine was back then. They had 6-foot-9 J.C. Gibson sit on me, and they poured peroxide in the wound. I lifted him and me off the table, but then I went back out and put on a show."

He has stories of rooming with Wilt Chamberlain, the season The Stilt played with the Globetrotters, and he can tell you about his dribbling exhibitions in places like Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand.

In fact, a picture from the latter stop graces the cover of his book, which he's entitled Is My Skin My Only Sin?

He said he was watching television some years ago when he heard a Louis Armstrong song with a similar line. That's when he told Barbara, his wife of 50 years, that he was going to pen a book and he had the title.

"I told her it would be My Skin Is My Only Sin and right off she goes, 'No, No, No. No way,' " he said with a laugh. "She said, 'I know you too well. You've got more than one sin.' "

"So I just moved one word around and had the new title."

He always could readjust.