Modern college basketball fans can be forgiven if they associate the hoops history of the University of Memphis (formerly Memphis State) with Anfernee "Penny" Hardaway or Derrick Rose instead of Larry Finch. But in the early 1970s, as Keith Wood explains in Memphis Hoops, Memphians saw Finch, a star player for the Tigers, as a hometown hero able to unite a racially divided community. White and Black fans alike cheered on Finch and his teammates as they advanced to the 1973 NCAA title game, where they lost to the powerhouse UCLA Bruins squad. This biracial coalition, however, was short-lived and could not be replicated by other local basketball teams in the 1970s or 1980s as city leaders struggled with issues of race.

In Memphis, you often hear about how basketball brings the city together. Among the cheering throngs at the FedEx Forum, you will find people of all stripes, united in their fervor for the NBA’s Grizzlies or the University of Memphis Tigers. But can a sport straddle Memphis’ racial divide? In his new book Memphis Hoops, Keith Wood investigates the city’s history of race and basketball — and tells a complex, riveting story.

Many years ago, I (Aram Goudsouzian) invited Joe B. Scott, a former star on the Memphis Red Sox, to visit my class on U.S. sports history. In his presence, the students marveled. They relished this living, breathing connection to the bygone Negro Leagues. Mr. Scott passed away in 2013, but his team and era live on in a new book by Keith Wood, The Memphis Red Sox: A Negro Leagues History. Wood recounts not only the on-field action of a franchise that spanned from 1924 to 1959, but also its tradition of Black owners, its centrality to the city’s Black community, and its great heroes, including Joe B. Scott.