In the 1930s, there was a shortage (read: a total absence) of track teams for black women in Albany, Alabama. So Alice Coachman, the first woman to win a gold medal in the Summer Olympics (1948), spent her childhood dreaming up clever ways to begin training to become a record-breaking high jumper.
She tied sticks together to make a high jump. She ran barefoot over dirt roads to work on her sprinting. Finally at 16, she was accepted into the Tuskegee Preparatory School and in that same year, 1939, broke the national and collegiate high jump records. Still barefoot.
There is little doubt she would have qualified for, if not dominated, the 1940 and 1944 Olympics, but those games were cancelled while WWII roared through the land and populations of several of the nations, who, in calmer times, would have participated in the games.
In 1948, she qualified for the U.S. high jump team with a jump of 5’4″. She broke the existing high jump record by 3/4 inches. Coachman secured the gold medal with her first jump, breaking yet another record with a jump of 5 feet and 6 and 1/8 inches. Her record would stand until 1956.
At 25, Coachman retired from sports. She founded the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation to train athletes and help former Olympians. She was honored at the 1996 Summer Games in Atlanta as one of the 100 greatest Olympians of all time.
Photo Credit: History.com
