TCU to honor Dr. James Cash, school’s first Black student-athlete, with statue

By Chuck Carlton

8:13 PM on Apr 21, 2021 CDT — Updated just now

James Cash, the first Black student-athlete at TCU, will be honored with a statue in front of Schollmaier Arena, the school announced Wednesday.

Cash is one of five players in TCU men’s basketball history with at least 1,000 points and 800 rebounds and led the Horned Frogs to the 1968 Southwest Conference championship. His jersey was later retired by the school.

”Dr. Cash is one of our biggest and brightest stars. He is a trailblazer, a visionary and an icon,” TCU athletic director Jeremiah Donati said. “We are proud to call him a distinguished TCU alum. His achievements on this campus were merely the start of an extraordinary career as a humanitarian, philanthropist and business leader. He has been an inspiration for all those who came after him and followed in his footsteps.”

Cash later earned a master’s and doctorate degree at Purdue, joining the Harvard Business School faculty in 1976. In 1985, he became the first Black faculty member to receive tenure. In 2020, Cash was the first Black person at Harvard to have a building, Cash House, named for him.

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