Leroy Chalk came to France to revive his pro basketball career and never left

PARIS — Leroy Chalk was born in Big Sandy, Texas, and moved to France in 1977.

Unlike many Black expatriates, Chalk did not set his eyes on Paris at an early age and did not leave the United States because he was fed up with racism. His dream was to play basketball, and he would go wherever the game took him: from Big Sandy to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Boston to Belgium and finally Paris.

What began as a basketball journey became an adventure that landed him in the City of Light.

“I’ve always been adventurous,” he told me recently. “I was back there in the country. I never liked that country life. Now I could really enjoy it, but when I was a kid coming up, I didn’t want to be in the country. I wanted to go to New York. I always wanted to be in a city environment-type thing. Not in the country.”

Chalk’s ticket out of Big Sandy became basketball.

Chalk originally signed a letter of intent to attend East Texas State. He was resigned to staying local. “Everybody could have come to see me play, though that wasn’t big-time ball,” Chalk said.

After an outstanding senior year in high school, he caught the attention of a number of larger schools, including the University of Nebraska. The Cornhuskers came calling to Big Sandy and convinced Chalk to visit Lincoln.

Chalk’s world was about to widen.

“I had just turned 18, I hadn’t ever been nowhere,” he said.

“I was supposed to go [to Europe] for two years and go back. But I got hurt. That’s why I had to stay over here. I couldn’t go back to the NBA hurt. I went to Europe to get healthy. Instead, I got hurt worse.”

As one of five children — and the only boy — the idea of going to Nebraska was daunting.

“Me and my mother were very, very tight. You know what I mean? Me and her took care of the girls,” Chalk said. “For me to leave at 18, that was hard to do, that was a hard decision to make. When I made it, I said, ‘I got to make it, I can’t go up there and fail and make my mama ’shamed.’ I had to make it for my mom’s sake.”

Chalk did indeed do well at Nebraska, well enough to be drafted by the Boston Celtics and come within an injury of making the team. He was chosen in the 13th round of the 1971 NBA draft.

Clarence Glover was a first-round pick that year but Chalk was having a great camp … at Glover’s expense. “I was eating him up, I was hungry,” he said. “Anything coming off the board I’m going for it. I’m young and crazy.”

Unfortunately, Chalk injured his knee and was released. 

“Red Auerbach took me to the airport in his car,” Chalk recalled. “He had a white Cadillac. I’ll never forget that day. He said, ‘Chalk I want you to come back next year, you got a lot of potential.’ ”

​Being cut by Boston was the first major setback of Chalk’s career and it stung. “I cried,” he said. “That hurt, man that hurt. I’d been thinking about that for so long and then to get hurt and everything like that, that was so disappointing.”

Chalk’s agent told him that the Celtics wanted to bring him back but that he should go play in Europe to get healthy. “I was supposed to go for two years and go back. But I got hurt,” Chalk said. “That’s why I had to stay over here. I couldn’t go back to the NBA hurt. I went to Europe to get healthy. Instead, I got hurt worse.”

His first stop was Belgium. Despite the injury, Chalk played well enough to be regarded as an upper-echelon player with all of the attendant perks. He saw the advantages of being a Black American star playing abroad.

“When I got started over here, I was like the star of the team, and that makes a difference,” he said. “When you’re a star, I don’t care what color you are, you get priority treatment.”

There were clubs in Belgium that would not admit certain Black people. “I could go up in there, they’d say, ‘Oh, that’s Leroy, come on in, man,’ ” he said.

“I had a Moroccan guy with me, they told me, ‘You’re good, but no North Africans in here.’ ”

His friend eventually was allowed entry because of Chalk.

“Even though you don’t realize it at the time, it makes a big difference when you’re welcomed and accepted wide open in a place just because who you are, what you’ve done,” Chalk said. “Personally, I was really well treated.”

“Everything in Paris is so mixed up, it ain’t really no area you can go and say you’re going to the Black part of town or the white part.”

Chalk played for four years in Belgium. He began playing in France in 1977, playing a year in Châlons-en-Champagne, then a year in Dijon.

When Chalk arrived in France, he didn’t think he’d stay for five decades. He played until the mid-1990s, and in the interim he and his Guadeloupean partner had a daughter. Chalk earned his degree from the National Institute of Sport, Expertise, and Performance. He began teaching and coaching at the Marymount International School in Paris as an after-school sports coach.

“By me having my degree, a French degree, I got into the school system right away,” he said.

​Chalk was settling into life as a Black American in Paris, though he didn’t necessarily connect with the Black community.

“Everything in Paris is so mixed up, it ain’t really no area you can go and say you’re going to the Black part of town or the white part,” Chalk said.

His daughter, who was born in 1987, reflects a different kind of racial sensibility than Chalk’s which was formed by a segregated upbringing in Big Sandy.

“She was raised here in France, so she doesn’t have the same attitude as Black people like me,” he said. “Her attitude is that she doesn’t care who’s in her group: Chinese, Black, white. It doesn’t really matter to her.

“We’re raised up with that Black-White thing, but my daughter being raised up over here, she doesn’t care. Her attitude is totally different than mine.”

Chalk is a different kind of Black American expat. He did not target France, he landed here because of basketball. At age 75, he has enjoyed a good life in Paris. He is a French resident but an American citizen. “I have all the rights as a French person here, but not voting rights,” he said.

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During the course of interviewing a handful of African Americans living in Paris, I asked them all the same questions. 

• Could they see themselves moving back to the United States?
• Do they feel freer in France than in the United States?
• Do they miss the States?
• Do they feel French?

“Man, I really would like to go back, this coming fall as a matter of fact,” Chalk said. “But permanently? I don’t see it. I’d have to hit the lotto. I’d have to have some backup because for me just to go back with my wages, I couldn’t make it.”

Freer?: “I do,” he said. “I don’t feel discrimination like there is in the States. It exists, of course. But I don’t feel the discrimination like it is in the States.”

Do you miss the United States? “Not really. I go back and enjoy myself but I’ve been over here so long, so not really,” he said.

​Finally, do you feel French?

​“I’ve been up here 53 years, and I don’t feel French,” Chalk said. “I’m more French than most of these people walking around here, but I do not feel French at all.

“I feel comfortable, but I don’t feel French.”