Black History

Track and Field Olympic Champion Wilma Rudolph: Lightning Fast

Her athletic performance in Rome earned her the title of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century.

Published

3 years ago

May 21, 2021

Christy Price

Wilma Rudolph/ Wikimedia Commons

As a child she was told that she would “never walk again.” Number 17 of 22 children, she was born prematurely and contracted infantile paralysis at age 4. This left her with a twisted left leg and there was no cure. But to the family of Wilma Glodean Rudolph (1940–1994), those words were nonsensical. Nothing, they thought, would stop young Rudolph from walking.
Together, family members cared for and supported Rudolph. They would remove her brace and massage her injured leg. By age 6, she began to hop. By age 8 she could move around with a leg brace. After surviving bouts of polio and scarlet fever, her prognosis was gloomy. “My doctor told me I would never walk again,” Rudolph had said. “My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.”
By age 11, Rudolph, who dreamed of becoming an athlete, often played outdoors. She began to play basketball with the neighborhood kids. Soon, Rudolph was transitioning into a natural athlete. In high school she broke records and led her team to the state championship, and was nominated All-American in basketball. But a chance meeting with a college coach would take Rudolph in another direction.
Track and field became Wilma’s passion, and like basketball, she was a natural. Her rise was astonishing. While still in high school she was competing on the collegiate level.
At age 16, Wilma competed in the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Australia, bringing home a bronze medal in the 4×100 relay, and later entered the 1960 summer Olympics in pursuit of the gold.

Her athletic performance in Rome earned her the title of one of the greatest athletes of the 20th century. She won three gold medals and broke at least three world records, becoming the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at the same Olympic game.
At the height of her dream of becoming an international track and field star, the Saint Bethlehem, Tenn.–born Rudolph was dubbed “the fastest woman in the world.” She took advantage of the spotlight and media attention and used her platform to shed light on social issues. A heroic homecoming was held for the new Olympic champion, yet Rudolph refused to attend because the gathering was segregated. She never again competed in the Olympic Games.
Rudolph won the Associated Press Female Athlete of the Year award in 1961 and retired in 1962. She then enrolled in Tennessee State University and completed her degree becoming a teacher and a commentator. She continued her involvement in sports, working at community centers throughout the country.
During a 1995 interview, Rudolph said of her illness: “I never once thought that I would not walk because I was surrounded by people who were positive about it.” And that positive attitude was the backbone of success throughout her life.
Rudolph died of a brain tumor in 1994.

Christy Price

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Black History

Book Review: ‘The Jazzmen: How Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, and Count Basie Transformed America’

Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping. They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.

Published

4 days ago

May 17, 2024

Oakland Post

Courtesy of Lisa Frusztajer

By Terri Schlichenmeyer

Your toes didn’t wait long before they started tapping.

They knew what was coming, almost as soon as the band was seated. They knew before the first notes were played and the hep cats and jazz babies hit the floor to cut a rug. Daddy, it was the bee’s knees but in the new book “The Jazzmen” by Larry Tye, if you were the Sheik on the stage, makin’ cabbage wasn’t all that swank.

Louis Armstrong was born in 1900 or thereabouts in a “four-room frame house on an unpaved lane” in a section of New Orleans called “Back o’Town … the Blackest, swampiest, and most impoverished” area of the city. His mother was a “chippie,” and the boy grew up running barefoot and wild, the latter of which led to trouble. At age twelve, Armstrong was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home for recalcitrant Black boys, and that changed his life. At the “home,” he found mentors, father-figures and love, and he discovered music.

For years, Bill “Count” Basie insisted that he’d grown up with “no-drama, no-mystery, and nobody’s business but his,” but the truth was “sanitized.” He hated school and dropped out in junior high, hoping to join the circus. Instead, he landed a job working in a “moving-picture theater” as a general worker. When the theater’s piano player didn’t come to work one day, Basie volunteered to sit in. He ultimately realized that “I had to get out … of Red Bank [New Jersey], and music was my ticket.”

Even as a young teenager, Edward Ellington insisted that he be treated like a superstar. By then, his friends had nicknamed him “Duke,” for his insistence on dressing elegantly and acting like he was royalty. And he surely was — to his mother, and to millions of swooning female fans later in his life.

Three men, born at roughly the same time, had more in common than their ages. Two of them had mothers “who doted” on them. All three were perform-aholics. And, for all three, “Race … fell away as America listened.”

Feel up to a time-trip back a century or more? You won’t even have to leave your seat, just grab “The Jazzmen” and hang on.

In his introduction, author Larry Tye explains why he so badly wanted to tell the story of these three giants of music and how Basie’s, Ellington’s, and Armstrong’s lives intersected and diverged as all three were near-simultaneously performing for audiences world-wide. Their stories fascinated him, and his excitement runs strong in this book. Among other allures, readers used to today’s star-powered gossip will enjoy learning about an almost-forgotten time when performers took the country by storm by bootstrapping without a retinue of dozens.

And the racism the three performers encountered disappeared like magic sometimes, and that’s a good tale all by itself.

This is a musician’s dream book, but it’s also a must-read story if you’ve never heard of Basie, Ellington, or Armstrong. “The Jazzmen” may send you searching your music library, so make note.