Track and Field

By: Daina Ramey Berry

Source:

 Black Women in America, Second Edition

Track and Field

On 29 November 1923, a young star, Alice Coachman, was born in the small town of Albany, Georgia. At the time of her birth, Fred and Evelyn Coachman did not know that their daughter would become the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal in track and field. Growing up one of ten children, young Alice enjoyed athletics, despite the fact that the government excluded African Americans from all organized athletic activities in southern YMCAs and schools. She found ways to subvert both the Jim Crow system of segregation and societal norms that said it was not proper for a “lady” to train, compete, and play sports like boys. Alice ignored the constraints placed upon women and blacks and spent much of her childhood running. She challenged boys to running and jumping competitions because, as she said in a 1995 interview, “The girls were no fun to play with as they were always trying to act cute.”

Black women athletes in track and field, like Coachman, challenged conceptions of race and gender by competing in local, regional, and national meets as early as the 1920s. They first appeared in international competition at the 1932 and 1936 Olympic Games and continued to dominate several events at the start of the twenty-first century. However, their road to success was not always smooth.

Modern Origins of Track and Field

The sport known today as track and field has its modern origins in walking, also referred to as “pedestrianism.” The fashion for this activity began in the late 1700s in England and traveled to the United States. Beginning in 1837, women at Mount Holyoke College had to walk one mile per day to satisfy physical education requirements. In 1864 Oxford and Cambridge Universities in England held the first dual track-and-field meet. However, it was not until 9 November 1895 at Vassar College that women were allowed to compete. At the time, a track meet was referred to as “field day,” and black women were excluded from competition and attending these schools. Despite such exclusion, most black women had some exposure to the sport in school through physical education programs and the development of national athletic organizations.

Crossing the finish line, 1906. A teenage African-American girl running ahead of four white girls, photographed by the Chicago Daily News during a race at an athletic field. The man standing at left is an official with a stopwatch.

Chicago Historical Society

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The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU) was formed in 1878. Prior to 1895, African American males were denied participation and attendance at AAU national meets and, their female counterparts were not permitted to compete in AAU-sponsored meets until 1936. As the governing body of track and field since the inception of the sport in the late nineteenth century, the AAU changed its name in 1979 to The Athletics Congress/USA (TAC/USA) and in 1992 it became USA Track and Field.

College Competition

Many African American athletes, male and female alike, received their first opportunity to participate in track-and-field meets at the collegiate level because of their exclusion from AAU-sponsored competitions. Even though 1936 marked the first year black women participated in an AAU national meet, they competed on local levels in the 1920s. African American women attending historical black colleges and universities (HBCUs) such as Tuskegee Institute, Tennessee State University, Alabama State University, Fort Valley State College, Prairie View A&M College, and Wilberforce University excelled in track-and-field competition from the 1930s through the late 1960s.

Cleveland L. Abbott served as the director of Physical Education and Athletics at Tuskegee Institute from the mid-1920s until his death in 1955 and is remembered for building one of the best women's track-and-field programs in U.S. sport history. Female athletes under his leadership competed in “the first college-sponsored relay in the country,” the Tuskegee Relays Carnival in 1929. Initially they had only two events, the 100-yard dash and the 440-yard relay; however, within a few years this Relays Carnival contained a program similar to AAU competitions. In 1937 the Tuskegee women's track and field team won the AAU national meet, marking the first time an African American squad had captured the national title. The Tuskegee dominance in women's track and field continued well into the 1950s. From 1937 to 1953, athletes such as Lulu May Hymes, Cora Gaines, Mable Blanche Smith, Hester Brown, Celestine Birge, Jessie Abbott, Rowena Harrison, Lelia Perry, Lucy Newell, Lillie Purifoy, Nell Jackson, and Alice Coachman helped Tuskegee win seventeen national outdoor and four indoor titles.

The Tennessee State University Tigerbelles emerged during the Tuskegee dynasty and established their dominance in women's track and field from 1955 to 1968. Jessie Abbott, the former Tuskegee star and daughter of Cleveland Abbott, served as the first coach of this women's squad from 1944 to 1945. Abbott took the Tigerbelles to the Tuskegee Carnival during her short tenure as coach. For nearly ten years, the program's leadership experienced several changes as volunteer coaches replaced Abbott, until Edward Temple accepted the permanent position in 1953 as head women's track-and-field coach. Two years after Temple's arrival, the Tigerbelles won the Women's AAU Track and Field Championships. Temple maintained a positive attitude about women's role in the sport. Following the Tuskegee model, he established summer track clinics to assist athletes in perfecting their track-and-field techniques. Recalling the success of the clinics in an interview on 4 December 1992, Temple explained, “We'd train together for one month three times a day …. We'd work on basic fundamentals—arm movement, leg movement, how to get in the blocks, how to pass the baton, how to do all of these various things.”

Track-and-field summer programs aided Tigerbelles such as Chandra Cheeseborough, Isabelle Daniels, Mae Faggs, Martha Hudson, Barbara Jones, Alfrances Lyman, Margaret Matthews, Edith McGuire, Madeline Manning, Mamie Rallins, Lucinda Williams, Wilma Rudolph, Wyomia Tyus, and Willye White to succeed in national and international competition.

The decade of the 1970s witnessed the growth and incorporation of club- and league-sponsored teams. Even though some of these clubs had existed for years, it appears that the sport experienced a transformation during this decade as athletes had the opportunity to become professionals, and amateur status took second stage. This shift is apparent in the record books, as club teams such as the Los Angeles Track Club, the Atoms Track Club, the Mayor Daley Youth Foundation, the New York Police Athletic League (PAL), the Washington, DC, Striders, and the Chicago Comments (formally the Catholic Youth Organization) dominated national competition until the competition shifted to colleges and universities. This competition shift provided valuable opportunities for African Americans to receive a college education after desegregation, as several institutions started recruiting black athletes for their teams. Attendance at HBCUs was no longer their only choice. In addition, athletes started competing for local club teams during the summer when they were not attending college. By the early 1980s, the Santa Monica Track Club had increased the visibility of the sport in the United States through successful national and international competition.

College Teams at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century

Along with the success of the transition from amateur to professional, female athletes still found their college years of competition vital to their club activities during the off-season. The Louisiana State University (LSU) Lady Tigers, for example, dominated women's track and field from the mid-1980s into the early 2000s. Between 1982 and 2003, LSU brought home the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I Outdoor Track and Field Championships on fourteen occasions, with an eleven-year streak from 1987 to 1997. Following a close second during many of these years were the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Lady Bruins. The LSU and UCLA rivalry was not reserved solely for outdoor competition, as fall and early winter indoor competition produced some exciting meets over the years. Between 1983 and 2003, LSU won nine NCAA indoor titles, while UCLA won two.

Other teams with impressive records in indoor competition include the University of Texas, Tennessee State, and the University of South Carolina. Indoor and outdoor college competition served as a platform on which young women athletes received their training prior and simultaneous to competition on the international circuit during the off-season. The primary goal of many of these athletes was a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, and black women have done exceptionally well in Olympic track and field history.

Olympic Competition, 1930s–1960s

Black women became members of the U.S. Olympic team in the 1932 Games held in Los Angeles, California. Louise Stokes and Tidye Pickett were the only African American members, and they were both pulled or placed on reserve for the 400-meter relay in 1932. During the 1936 Olympics, Pickett competed in the 80-meter hurdles and did well in the heats; she was eliminated from the final round because of a fall in the semifinals. Stokes was on the reserve list again for the 400-meter relay in the 1936 Olympics.

The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled because of World War II, but black women continued to compete on a national level. During this decade, Alice Coachman developed a national reputation within the track-and-field community. From 1939 until the 1948 Olympics, Coachman dominated the high jump, the 50-meter dash, and the 100-meter dash. She was ready for Olympic competition in the early 1940s, but the war eliminated any opportunity to hold the Olympic Games. So, at the age of twenty-five, in 1948, Coachman was eager for a third opportunity to represent her country in London, despite her reservations about the journey and competition. She described how she began crying as the ship left port. “But I couldn't let my country down, I couldn't let my school down, and I couldn't let my folks down, so I had to go. After being champion for nine or ten years, I had no choice even though I was sick.”

Coachman competed despite serious medical challenges. She had a twisted ovary that required the insertion of a tube on one side, but the tube had to be removed before she jumped because it was too dangerous to compete with it. She “went to the doctor every day” and he examined her to see if she was able to compete. “It hurt my back,” she explained, and “[e]very time I jumped it seemed as though I'd get a catch in my back. The day before I jumped, the doctor took the tube out to give me some relief.” The women's high jump was the final event of the Games, and Coachman recalled competing in front of eighty-five thousand track enthusiasts who “watched me jump because there had never been a black woman win a goal medal.”

Eight other black women joined Coachman at the 1948 Olympics in London. But the team did not do well; most did not qualify for the final rounds and only four placed in the top ten to fifteen. Coachman and Audrey Mickey Patterson were the only two medalists. Patterson was actually the first African American woman to receive a medal in Olympic competition when she won a bronze medal in the 200-meter dash just days before Coachman received the first gold medal.

Olympic competition during the Cold War era of the 1950s led African American women to victories in the 400-meter relay (1952, Helsinki, Finland; 1956, Melbourne, Australia) through winning the gold and bronze medals respectively. At home in the United States, African Americans could not attend the same schools as whites, they dined in segregated facilities, and they had several other legal restrictions placed on their citizenship. Despite this continued hostility toward their race, Mildred McDaniel and Willye B. White were the only women, black or white, to receive individual medals in the 1956 Olympic competition.

Clearly, McDaniel followed in Coachman's footsteps by being the second and only other black woman to receive a gold medal in the high jump. Like Coachman, she too practiced in the backyard of her parents' home in Georgia. She jumped over a pole and raised it higher each time while challenging the boys in her neighborhood to competition. At the 1956 Games in Melbourne, she competed in front of 110,000 spectators, as the high jump was the last event.

White competed in five Olympic Games, beginning in 1956 as a sixteen-year-old high school student. She set an American record in the long jump with a leap of 19 feet 11 inches to receive the silver medal. Reflecting back on her experiences, she recalled that she “started in athletics because [it] was my flight to freedom. Freedom from the delta cotton fields [of Mississippi], bias, and prejudice of the South.” White was the only American woman to compete in five Olympic Games. “It was hard for me when I went to the Olympics in 1956 for the first time,” she explained in a 1995 interview. “I came out of a totally segregated area where that 14 year old child had been lynched in my hometown.” The “fourteen-year-old child” she referred to was Emmett Till. She continued by saying that “to get to the Olympic Games and go to the village and find blacks and whites living together, sleeping together and being friends, it was just mind boggling.”

The 1960s marked an important decade in U.S. track and field as well as in the struggle for racial equality. At times it was “segregated and ugly,” but that had changed by the end of the decade. African American women continued bringing the United States medals in the 400-meter relay, and athletes such as Earlene Brown, Wilma Rudolph, Edith McGuire, Wyomia Tyus, and Barbara Farrell-Edmonson brought home individual medals. Brown was the first and is still the only American woman, black or white, to win a medal in the shot put. At 5 feet 7 inches and 225 pounds, Brown received the bronze in 1960 (Rome, Italy). As the first American woman to break the 50-foot barrier, she retired from track and field after the 1964 Olympics, when she placed fifth in the shot put.

Wilma Rudolph was by far the best-known sprinter because she was the first woman to win three gold medals in Olympic competition. Her story is remarkable because of her physical challenges as a child. She was born with polio, suffered double pneumonia, had scarlet fever at the age of four, and wore a leg brace from six to ten. Doctors said that she would probably never walk again, but just six years after they took off her leg brace, she competed on the gold-winning 400-meter relay team in 1956. Some say her Olympic performance in 1960 at Rome was similar to Jesse Owens's 1936 performance. Rudolph won the 100 meters, the 200 meters, and the 400-meter relay in 1960.

In the 1964 Olympic Games held in Tokyo, Japan, Wyomia Tyus and Edith McGuire Duvall placed in the top three of their events. At the time, Tyus was the first person, man or woman, to defend the 100 meters title successfully two Olympics in a row, until she was joined by Gail Devers in 1996. Her performances in the 1964 and 1968 Olympics were spectacular, and she set a world record in the latter competition. Like her predecessors, Tyus did not escape the effects of southern segregation. “The closest school to my house,” she explains, “was within walking distance, but it was whites-only. So each day, I had to ride an hour on a bus to get to school. My father always used to tell us, ‘You will have to work twice as hard to get what you want.’” She did, because she accomplished tasks that no male or female had done before her.

Edith McGuire-Duvall joined Tyus as an individual medalist in 1964 and came in second in the 100 meters behind her. McGuire-Duvall won the 200 meters, setting a world record with a time of 23 seconds flat. Other individual medalists in 1968 included Barbara Ferrell Edmonson, who placed second in the 100 meters behind Tyus, and Madeline Manning Mims, who was the first American to win a gold medal in the 800 meters. Mims set an Olympic record that year, and also qualified to compete in three other Games (1972, 1976, and 1980).

The 1968 Olympics were extremely controversial because two African American male athletes showed the world that they could mix athletics with politics. John Carlos and Tommie Smith protested on the medal stand by raising their fists in the Black Power gesture and made a statement about the mistreatment of African Americans in the United States. In support of their efforts, Tyus announced to reporters after the two men were expelled from the Olympic Village that she would dedicate her gold medal in the 400-meter relay to her two teammates. “What I did,” says Tyus, “was win a track event. What they did lasted a lifetime, and life is bigger than sport.”

Olympic Competition, 1970s–2000s

The 1970s Olympics were again years in which African American women won medals in the relay events. For example, in 1972 and 1976 the United States placed second in the 1600-meter relay. The only individual medalists were Kathy Hammond (1972), who received a bronze medal in the 400 meters, and Kathy McMillen, who placed second in the long jump in 1976. International politics in 1980 prevented U.S. athletes from competing in Moscow, but black women were ready in 1984.

African American females placed first and second in the 100-, 200-, and 400-meter races. Evelyn Ashford set an Olympic record in the 100 meters and received a gold medal, while Alice Brown took second in that event during the 1984 Olympics. Valerie Brisco (Hooks) won three gold medals and set three Olympic records. She was the first person, male or female, to win both the 200- and 400-meter races in Olympic competition. Florence Griffith Joyner placed second behind Brisco in the 200 meters. Chanda Cheeseborough received the silver medal in the 400 meters. Benita Fitzgerald Mosley was another gold medalist in 1984 in the 100-meter hurdles. Kim Turner, Kim Gallenger, Kim Batton, Kim McKenzie, and Judi Brown also won medals in the 1984 and 1988 Olympics.

The 1980s gave birth to many other African American Olympic champions. Noted as the greatest female athlete in the world, Jackie Joyner-Kersee began the first of five Olympic competitions in 1984 and received a silver medal in the heptathlon. Joyner-Kersee set two world records in the 1988 Olympics and received two gold medals in the heptathlon and long jump. She defended her heptathlon gold in 1992 and placed third in the long jump in 1992 and 1996.

Her sister-in-law, Florence Griffith Joyner, also set two world records in 1988. “FloJo” took center stage that year and won the 100 and 200 meters. She set both Olympic and world records and brought home three gold medals and a silver that year. Evelyn Ashford came in second to FloJo in the 100 meters.

Tisha Waller winning the high jump at the Millrose Games in 2000.

Photograph by Spencer Burnett

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During the 1990s women such as Gail Devers, Gwen Torrence, LaVonna Martin, Janeen Vickers, and Sandra Farmer-Patrick all continued in the Olympic tradition set by the women who came before them. In the 2000 Olympics, Marian Jones won three gold medals (100 meters, 200 meters, 1600-meter relay) and two bronze medals (long jump and 400-meter relay). The only other individual medalist was Melissa Morrison, who received a bronze medal in the 110-meter hurdles. Relay team members Chryste Gaines, Torri Edwards, and Nanceen Perry joined Jones to bring home a bronze in the 400-meter relay, while LaTasha Colander-Richardson, Jearl Miles-Clark, and Monique Hennagan joined her to receive the gold medal in the 1600-meter relay.

Looking to the Past and Future

The overall history of black women's participation in track and field can be characterized as a successful one. Many athletes set national, Olympic, and world records that remained unchallenged into the twenty-first century, while others were celebrated in Halls of Fame on college campuses, sports facilities, and museums across the country.

See also Coachman, Alice; Joyner, Florence Griffith; Joyner-Kersee, Jackie; Olympic Games and Amateur Sports, Participation in; Rudolph, Wilma Glodean; and Tyus, Wyomia.

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