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F o u r “Foxes, not oxes” Wilma Rudolph and the De-Marginalization of American Women’s Track and Field She had already won two gold medals that Olympics.The year was 1960, the city was Rome, Italy, and the remaining event was the women’s 400meter relay. The athlete was Wilma Rudolph, and she was the anchor of the U.S. women’s relay team. She had run with the rest of the relay team before, at Tennessee State University, where the four of them were Tigerbelles, the U.S. national women’s track and field champions. Pee Wee, B. J., Lady Dancer, and Skeeter—their Tennessee State Coach had nicknames for all of them—were ready to show the world their blistering speed.1 When Rudolph broke the tape 44.4 seconds later, she had her third gold medal and the four Tigerbelles had set a new world record. Newspaper reports started pouring in to introduce this Tennessee native and three-time Olympic champion, now the “darling” of the Rome Olympics, to the world: “This queen of the 1960 Olympics is a slender beauty whose eyes carry a perpetual twinkle, as if she were amused, and a little puzzled, at what is going on around her. Miss Rudolph is five feet, 11 inches and weighs 132 pounds. Vital statistics: 34–24–36. [And] she has the legs of a showgirl,” so reported one background piece.2 Tall and slender, and with no trouble securing a date, she represented a new type of American woman track and field athlete. And that was exactly what most people connected with the sport wanted Americans to think. This new generation of track and field athletes that Rudolph  belonged to rose to prominence in the wake of Coachman and the Tuskegee Tigerettes’ historic run as national champions. As the Tuskegee women’s team started to fade in the early 1950s, theTennesseeTigerbelles were just a few years from taking their place as the national women’s track and field powerhouse. As part of that group, Rudolph had competed in the 1956 Melbourne games and won a bronze medal as a member of the 400-meter relay team. Yet it was her performance in the Rome Olympics that made her famous throughout the United States and Europe. She was not, of course, the first African American woman to win Olympic gold, as many Americans eventually came to believe. But by winning three gold medals in the same Olympics she seemed to capture America’s attention. In the span of her seven-year track career, she was responsible for four world records, one Olympic record, and five American records. She was the first African American woman and the first female track and field athlete to win the prestigious Sullivan Award, awarded annually by the AAU to the best U.S. amateur athlete.3 She was twice voted Female Athlete of the Year, in 1960 and 1961. When she hung up her spikes in 1963, she had become an international celebrity. And all of the records, medals, and honors occurred following a series of childhood illnesses that prevented her from walking without the use of aids until she was ten. Rudolph’s career occurred during an especially dynamic and vibrant period in women’s track and field. Since the 1920s, a “tomboy” image had dogged women track and field athletes. This image suggested that “real” women did not compete in the sport. Those who did either debased the “real,” masculine sport of track and field, or were masculinized freaks themselves .This was the image that the black press had worked so hard to refute during the 1940s through feature articles that stressed the femininity of Coachman and her teammates. The first decade and a half of the Cold War, however, had a strong impact on the way Americans viewed women’s participation in competitive track and field. Competing internationally in the late 1950s and early 1960s, sports developed into a Cold War battlefield between the United States and the Soviet Union. As such, the sports pages of white newspapers began granting more space to women’s track and field, particularly when American women went head to head with the Russians. Moreover, the fine, yet definite distinction between black and white women track athletes that had existed when Coachman competed all but disappeared. Women track athletes became accepted as “our girls” as they competed for the United States in its quest to win this aspect of the Cold...

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