Jerry Harkness, an All-American forward who led Loyola University Chicago’s integrated basketball team to the 1963 N.C.A.A. championship, along the way defeating a Mississippi State team that had previously refused to play against Black athletes, died on Tuesday in Indianapolis. He was 81.
The death, in a hospital, was confirmed by his son, Jerald. No cause was given.
The 1963 tournament, and in particular Loyola’s second-round game against Mississippi on March 11, illustrated the racial tension that was prevalent in sports in the early 1960s. The all-white Mississippi State Bulldogs had chosen not to go to three previous N.