The late Dr. Edwin B. Henderson (1883-1977), a 50-year resident of Falls Church and grandfather of current resident Edwin B. Henderson II, was “directly elected” to the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, it was announced last week. Henderson was instrumental in the Early African American Pioneers Committee and a basketball coach for years in Washington, D.C. in the early years of the last century. He was the first to introduce basketball to African Americans on a widespread basis in 1904 and in 1910 his team, the YMCA 12th Streeters of Washington, D.C., won the World Colored Basketball Championship. He was also founder of the first rural chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Falls Church. Falls Church’s Mary Ellen Henderson Middle School is named for his wife, a school teacher here for years, and his grandson is head of the Tinner Hill Heritage Foundation here.