Out of the Shadows: A Biographical History of African American Athletes

9. Alice Coachman: Quiet Champion of the 1940s

Alice Coachman with her teammates from Tuskegee. She is kneeling on the far right in the first row. (Tuskegee University) 2WIGGINS_pages_133-262.qxd 9/12/06 12:00 PM Page 146 9 Alice Coachman Quiet Champion of the 1940s J E N N I F E R H . L A N S B U R Y America revels in its sports lore. From the first in this to the most in that, from football to track and field, from the World Series to the Olympics— Americans have long loved to keep track of their sports stars. Names such as Jesse Owens, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Althea Gibson, Johnny Unitas, Wilt Chamberlin, Joe Louis, Arnold Palmer, Wilma Rudolph, Muhammad Ali, Martina Navritalova, and countless more, evoke a sense of sports greatness and achievement. While none but the most avid of sports fans may remember the specifics of what made each of these athletes memorable, many Americans would nonetheless recognize the names and be able to associate the athlete with his or her sport. At least one name, however, has faded somewhat from the American public memory. On August 8, 1948, in a track and field stadium in London, high jumper Alice Coachman leapt 5 feet, 61 ⁄8 inches to become the first African American woman to win an Olympic gold medal. She achieved this distinction at the end of a ten-year career in which she amassed a total of thirty-six track and field national championships—twenty-six individual and ten team titles—a remarkable record.1 From 1939 when she first won the national championship for her signature event, the high jump, no one else owned the title until after she retired ten years later. She was a member of the first All-American Women’s Track and Field Team in 1943, as well as every year thereafter through 1948, her last year of competition . In the early 1950s, she was one of the first African American sports celebrities that Coca-Cola used to endorse their soft drink. She has been inducted into nine halls of fame throughout the country, including the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, and, most recently in 2004, the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame. Yet mention her name, and many Americans will say they have never heard it. 2WIGGINS_pages_133-262.qxd 9/12/06 12:00 PM Page 147 In part, the loss of Coachman from the public memory speaks to the gender constructions in the culture of American sport. Indeed, the word athlete in and of itself is gendered male in American society. While the list of sports greats includes some females, it has overwhelmingly been a male domain during the twentieth century, particularly in terms of those athletes that have become part of the American cultural memory . Yet, Coachman’s accomplishments have also faded because of the sport in which she participated. While track and field certainly has its share of statistics, Americans are not “assaulted” with it in the way we are baseball, football, and basketball. National championships simply do not get the media coverage of team sports, and the media-saturated Olympic Games come around only once every four years. As such, who can tell whether the Jackie Joyner-Kersees and Marion Joneses of today will become the Alice Coachmans of tomorrow, or whether we will even remember Carl Lewis in the same way we remember Jesse Owens. Not every Olympic gold medalist becomes part of the national cultural memory, nor do we hallow every sport’s “first.” If Alice Coachman has been lost to America’s sports lore, is there a reason to resurrect her? Is there, in short, a value to remembering this particular sports’ first? Within the last few years, historians have begun to argue for an expanded time frame for the African American civil rights movement. Rather than confine the movement to the important activism of the 1960s, scholars are recognizing how the contributions of individuals from the 1930s through the 1950s were critical antecedents to bringing the 1960s and 1970s to fruition.2 Harry T. Moore was recruiting for the NAACP in Florida as early as the mid-1930s; fifteen years of bold activism on his part led to his death in 1951.3 In response to a segregated armed forces, the Tuskegee airmen used their status as successful World War II pilots to stage two nonviolent protests in 1945, ten...