The 1980s was a huge decade for black women. Angela Davis made her first Vice Presidential run in 1980. In 1982, Alice Walker was the first black woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for The Color Purple. Toni Morrison doubled down on the ass kicking when she won the Nobel Prize for literature later that year. On the opposite, but no less notable end of the achievement spectrum, Vanessa Williams was the first black woman to win the Miss America pageant, in 1984, and the first black woman to turn a public nudity and over-blown, puritanical rage incident into a hit record and successful acting career. Ah! The infancy of equality!
Returning to sports, one of the most notable people of this decade was groundbreaking, world champion, figure skater Debi Thomas.
In 1986, Debi Thomas (1967-present) was the first black woman to win the U.S. National Championships and the World Championships. She repeated that victory in 1988 and added a bronze medal from the Winter Olympics to her accomplishments. She was the first African American to earn a medal in a Winter Olympics.
Her performance in the 1988 Calgary Olympics is one of the most heartbreaking on record. Thomas skated a strong short program and was in first place going into the long program. During her long program she fell three times but still managed to win the bronze medal. After that, Thomas retired from amateur competition and went on to win three professional titles.
In 1986, Wide World of Sports named her athlete of the year. Thomas was heavily criticized for going continuing her studies at Stanford University while training full-time.
After she retired from skating, Thomas finished up at Stanford, graduating with a degree in engineering in 1991. She graduated from Northwestern Medical School in 1997 and is currently practicing orthopedic surgery in Virginia.
Thomas was inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 2000.
