After reading this post, click the link to hear her voice and the NPR interview with Ms. Coachman, who's story is included in the National Visionary Leadership Project. I encourage you to explore their website.
lovu~
Kendke
Alice Coachman of the United States, after winning the high jump at Wembley Stadium during the 1948 London Olympics.
Credit
Associated Press
New York Times Sports
By
Alice
Coachman, who became the first black woman to win an Olympic gold medal
when she captured the high jump for the United States at the 1948
London Games, died on Monday in Albany, Ga. She was 90.
Her
daughter, Evelyn Jones, said she had been treated at a nursing home for
a stroke in recent months and went into cardiac arrest after being
transferred to a hospital on Monday with breathing difficulties.
Coachman
(who was later known as Alice Coachman Davis) received her medal from
King George VI. She was invited aboard a British Royal yacht, she was
congratulated by President Harry S. Truman at the White House, and Count
Basie gave a party for her. She was lauded in a motorcade that wound
its way through Georgia from Atlanta to her hometown, Albany.
But
she had returned to a segregated South. Blacks and whites were seated
separately in the Albany city auditorium when she was honored there. The
mayor sat on the stage with her but would not shake her hand, and she
had to leave by a side door.
As a youngster in Albany, she had run and jumped barefoot, using ropes and sticks for makeshift high jumps. She had not been allowed to train at athletic fields with whites.
“You
had to run up and down the red roads and the dirt roads,” Coachman told
The Kansas City Star. “You went out there in the fields, where there
was a lot of grass and no track. No nothing.”
At
a time when there were few high-profile black athletes beyond Jackie
Robinson and Joe Louis, Coachman became a pioneer. She led the way for
female African-American Olympic track stars like Wilma Rudolph, Evelyn
Ashford, Florence Griffith Joyner and Jackie Joyner-Kersee.
“I
made a difference among the blacks, being one of the leaders,” she told
The New York Times in 1996. “If I had gone to the Games and failed,
there wouldn’t be anyone to follow in my footsteps. It encouraged the
rest of the women to work harder and fight harder.”
Alice
Marie Coachman, one of 10 children, was born in Albany on Nov. 9, 1923,
to Fred and Evelyn Coachman. She ran track and played baseball and
softball with the boys when she was young, but her father, a plasterer,
was angered by her refusal to be ladylike and sometimes whipped her for
pursuing athletics.
She
saw little prospect of an athletic career and thought of becoming a
musician or a dancer, having been enthralled by the saxophonist Coleman
Hawkins and by Shirley Temple. But she was encouraged by a fifth-grade
teacher and an aunt to continue in sports, and she came to the attention
of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama while competing for her high
school track and field team in Albany.
Coachman
moved to Tuskegee and competed for the institute’s high school and
college teams and later for Albany State College (now Albany State
University). She captured the Amateur Athletic Union high jump
championship 10 consecutive times, from 1939 to 1948, and the union’s
50-meter outdoor title from 1943 to 1947. She also won national
championships in the 100-meter dash and the 4x100-meter relay.
But
Coachman had to wait until 1948 to compete in the Olympics; the 1940
and 1944 Games were canceled because of World War II. On a rainy
afternoon at Wembley Stadium in London in August 1948, she vied for gold
in the high jump with Dorothy Tyler of Britain. They both cleared 5
feet 6 1/8 inches, but Coachman won because she did it on her first try.
Micheline Ostermeyer of France was third.
Coachman, the only American woman to win gold in track and field at the London Games, remembered the moment long afterward.
“I
saw it on the board, ‘A. Coachman, U.S.A., Number One,’ ” she told NPR.
“I went on, stood up there, and they started playing the national
anthem. It was wonderful to hear.”
Coachman’s
track and field career ended with the 1948 Olympics, when she was 24.
She raised a family, became an elementary and high school teacher, and
created the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation to aid young
athletes and former competitors in financial need.
She
is survived by her daughter and a son, Richmond, from her first
marriage, to N. F. Davis, which ended in divorce; a sister, Dicena
Rambo; one grandchild; and two great-grandchildren. Her second husband,
Frank Davis, died about five years ago, her daughter said.
Coachman was inducted into the United States Olympic Hall of Fame and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame. There is an Alice Coachman Elementary School in Albany.
Coachman faded from public view after the 1948 Olympics, but her pride remained undiminished.
“Go
anyplace and people will tell you Wilma Rudolph was the first black
woman to win a medal — it’s not true,” she said in an interview with The
Birmingham News in 1997, referring to Rudolph’s three gold medals in
the sprints at the Rome Olympics. “She came on the scene 12 years later.
But she was on television.”
The mission of the National Visionary Leadership Project (NVLP) is to
develop the next generation of leaders by recording, preserving and
sharing the stories of extraordinary African American elders – Visionaries -- who transcended barriers, shaped American history and influenced the world.
Co-founded in 2001 by Camille O. Cosby, Ed.D. (wife of comedian/producer/activist Bill Cosby) and Renee Poussaint (wife of Dr. Alvin Poussaint, Harvard University professor of psychiatry)
NVLP is an innovative educational nonprofit that conducts videotaped
oral history interviews with accomplished African American elders.
We
then share these historic first person accounts through our educational
and outreach programs, lesson plans, website and other media. The result
is an amazing collection of conversations that show how these elders
achieved significant triumphs, overcame personal and historic struggles,
and created breakthroughs that paved the way for us all. With
interviews conducted by NVLP's co-founders, board members and college
fellows, NVLP’s unprecedented archive, which is permanently preserved at
the Library of Congress, transforms and creates tomorrow’s leaders,
while passing on the richness of the African American heritage and
traditions of social change.
What We Believe- We believe that African American history, culture and tradition have shaped America’s history and society.
- We believe elders and youth are natural resources of each community and their intergenerational connection can create positive social change for all.
- We believe in nurturing confident young leaders who are inspired to create a better world for themselves and others.
- We believe all people should exist in a society that affirms their human dignity, respects their contributions and nurtures their full potential.
Visit the website:http://www.visionaryproject.org/index.asp
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