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Sports, like American society, was segregated well into the 20th century. In many ways professional sports was the face of race in the cultural fabric. African-American athletes competed in their own separate, but unequal, professional leagues and little was done to challenge the status quo. Branch Rickey, who was the general manager of baseball’s Brooklyn Dodgers, was the first to step up and end segregation in American sports.

Clifton was the only one of the pioneering trio to earn All-Star honors like Robinson had done in baseball. Thirty-four years old at the time in 1957, Sweetwater was the oldest player in NBA history to be named as a first-time All-Star. After that season, he retired with lifetime marks of 10.0 points and 8.2 rebounds per game. <ref>Brown, Clifton,"Sweetwater Clifton, 65, Is Dead; Was Star on 50's Knicks Teams," ''The New York Times'', September 2, 1990</ref> In 2014, Nathaniel “Sweetwater” Clifton joined Earl Lloyd as basketball racial trailblazers inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.

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