Wilma Rudolph Ran for Freedom

At the 1960 Rome Olympics, Wilma Rudolph became the first U.S. female in Olympic history to win three gold medals. 

Wilma Rudolph
Fraternal Order of Eagles Award 

Wilma Rudolph

In 1960, Wilma Rudolph of Tennessee State University made national headlines on radio, television and mainstream newspapers when she became the first U.S. female to win three gold medals in track and field at the 1960 Rome Olympics.

With all that gold being earned at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, we should remember the first African Americans to win Olympic gold medals, lest we forget that in 1960 Wilma Rudolph fought Jim Crow and helped lay the groundwork for black gold medalists in the 2016 Summer Olympic in Rio.

Wilma Rudolph had Polio 

Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Rudolph was a four-and-a-half-pound premature baby born  in 1940 in Clarksville, Tennessee. She did not go to traditional school for one year, but was home schooled due to infantile paralysis, caused by the polio virus, which she contracted at age four. Still a sickly child at age seven, she was enrolled into a segregated and underfunded Tennessee school by her parents who did not have the best jobs or health insurance. By age 12, Rudolph's treatments at the Fisk University Medical College Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, had straightened her twisted leg and given her the normal physical health she had never enjoyed before. 

Wilma Rudolph - College Graduate 1963

Wilma Rudolph

Wilma Rudolph
Tennessee State University 1963

 had overcome childhood polio and fought her way to good health by the time she reached her teens. Her athletic abilities made her a high school basketball star, garnered for her attention from college coaches, gained her a college education and eventually placed her in the history books alongside Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King and other civil rights activists.

Wilma Rudolph was a track and field athlete and an activist for civil rights. During the time of her victories, the United States was in the midst of a bloody civil conflict on the streets of southern cities. Politicians were grappling with the notion of granting African Americans civil rights, voting rights and civil justice. In the light of this national turmoil, all African American achievements were being sought by the Civil Rights Movement to further the cause of social change.

Wilma Rudolph - Fastest Woman on Earth in 1960

Wilma Rudolph, fastest woman on earth 

after returning from Rome Olympics in 1960

Just as television was beginning to become the main bearer of news and celebrity, Rudolph's track victories helped her to pick up the civil rights struggle against Jim Crow when she got the chance to run track in college. She became an important vehicle for the Civil Rights Movement while she getting college education, which she would use later to influence a new generation of track stars and school students. The most important vehicle out of poverty and low-paying jobs was education, one of the primary goals of 1950s civil rights efforts by Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks. Civil rights and Civil rights and women's rights pioneer, Wilma Rudolph did her part to break down racial and gender barriers, inspiring women and African Americans when she protested that her hometown victory parade in Clarksville, Tennessee, after the 1960 Olympics, be an integrated event and not segregated, as Jim Crow laws had previously dictated.

Wilma Rudolph's 1960 Rome Olympics track victory came after Alice Coachmen's track and field victory in the 1948 London Olympics was announced on radio: Coachman became the first African American woman to win a gold medal in the history of the Olympics.

In tenth grade, Wilma Rudolph became a record-setting Burt High School basketball star. Tennessee State University (TSU) track coach, Ed Temple, invited her to put on her running shoes and come to a summer track camp at TSU, where she received a full college scholarship after graduating from high school. At TSU, Rudolph earned a place on Temple's track and field team.

When Wilma Rudolph competed in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, her first Olympic competition, she won a bronze medal. During the Melbourne Olympics in November 1956, 16-year-old Rudolph's attention was also on civil rights at home, where Jim Crow laws prevailed in education, housing and jobs. By June 1956, the Civil Rights Movement was causing a nationwide tide of protest.

Female Students Woolworth's Sit-ins

Seven months before Rudolph 1960 Olympics victory, North Carolina black female college students protested with male students against segregated lunch counters in The Woolworth Lunch Counter Sit-ins, solidifying women's participation in racial protests nationwide and joining Rosa Parks in the female civil rights legacy. 

Wilma Rudolph was invited to the White House by President John F. Kennedy after her victory at the 1960 Rome Olympics. 

President John F. Kennedy & Wilma Rudolph
Oval Office, The White House, 1960

All eyes--young and old, black and white--were on Wilma Rudolph, considered to be the fastest woman on earth at the time. Rudolph returned from Rome in 1960 a television and media celebrity.

Nicknamed, "The Tornado," Wilma Rudoloh was the first woman to win the James E. Sullivan Award for Good Sportsmanship (1961), Rudolph was the first U.S. female athlete to win the European Sportswriters' Award, Sportsman of the Year. She won the Christopher Columbus Award for Most Outstanding International Sports Personality (1960), The Penn Relays (1961), the New York Athletic Club Track Meet and The Millrose Games. In 1962, she retired from track at age 22 and graduated from college in 1963 with a degree in elementary education.

Wilma Rudolph was a school teacher and inspiration to the generation of track stars who followed her to the Olympics and beyond.

Florence “Flo Jo” Joyner  
and Wilma Rudolph

In 1963 Wilma Rudolph was selected to represent the U.S. State Department as a Goodwill Ambassador at the Games of Friendship in Dakar, Senegal. Later that year, she was invited by Dr. Billy Graham to join the Baptist Christian Athletes in Japan. Rudolph taught school, became a sports media commentator on national television and inspired a new generation of American girls and female runners like Florence Joyner. 

Wilma Rudolph died of brain cancer in 1994 at age 54. The Clarksville, Tennessee, portion of U.S. Route 79 was renamed in her honor and, in 1997, Tennessee Governor Don Sundquist set aside June 23 as "Wilma Rudolph Day."

Our Stories 

Before we had air conditioning and before outdoor entertaining was fashionable, my mother prepared lavish cold-cut suppers to serve in our backyard. Sometimes, if the budget allowed, she cooked a few vegetables, sausage links or other meats on her barrel grill. She had a ton of grilling recipes from books and magazines that she was always anxious to try out on company. She learned her grilling skills from a host of pit bosses in and out of our family. 

Black Cowboys of Texas 

My mother talked about Saturday Night Suppers at Uncle Tinney's house when she was a young girl living on an isolated farm. 

Uncle Tinney was only one of the black cowboys in our family. The closest one to me was my father, who had been a cowboy since he was born practically. And I do not mean simply dressing up like a rodeo dude. My mother said, "Uncle Tinney was not really a cowboy. He had been a cowhand on a local ranch and learned his style of cooking from real cowboys. Ask my father--a real cowboy--and learn the difference between a cowboy and a cowhand. 

My father was a rancher, who came from a ranching tradition that required him to be more than proficient on horseback and open fire pits on the range. He knew about Saturday Night Suppers, but not those at Uncle Tinney's place. The Saturday Night Suppers my father attended were generally on the range attending the herd when some need arose that needed attention. I always wanted to spend the night out on the range, but my mother said, "No."

Uncle Tinney was married to my grandmother's sister, part Comanche through their father. My great grandfather knew about the old way and taught it to his offspring and in-laws of offspring.I have memories of my great grandfather. He lived his last years with my grandmother's oldest sister, whom I visited during some holidays while my great grandfather was still alive. I developed an interest in his old stories when I was in elementary school before he died. That could be the way Uncle Tinney learned some of his outdoor cooking techniques. My mother said Uncle Tinney dug a hole in the ground behind his house and lit a slow fire in the hole, while real cowboys dug holes and lit fires on the range. I wanted to dig a hole behind our house and light a slow fire, but my mother said, "No."

Then Uncle Tinney placed a whole pig or most of a pig wrapped in corn shucks in the hole and smoked the pig all day Friday. On Saturday just before the supper, he took out the tender meat, falling off the bone. With fresh white bread, his wife, my great aunt, baked in their outdoor oven, Uncle Tinny made sandwiches to sell at the supper. Everybody from miles around, black, white and brown, came to eat, drink Uncle Tinney's home-brewed beer, listen to Cousin Roy play is guitar and sing out of tune, and kick up dust dancing in the side yard.

Ojibwa Woman Cooking
An Ethnographic Biography 
of Paul Peter Buffalo

"My father taught all of us children how to hunt, clean and cook wild meat outdoors," my grandmother said. "That's the old way, the only way when he was a boy. Our people were starving. Wild meat and small game were how we survived because there was no money or store to buy meat. 'And why should you buy meat?' Bigmama's father would ask, 'when you can go out the back door and bag a rabbit or a squirrel, skin it and cook it over an open fire for supper.' So that is what we did," Bigmama said. "Very much in the old way of our prairie ancestors."

Civilization changed greatly during the period between Bigmama's childhood and my own. 

    

Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

Hard Cover

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Amazon Kindle

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Sunny Nash is an author, producer, photographer and leading writer on U.S. race relations. She writes books, blogs, articles and reviews, and produces media and images on U.S. history and contemporary American topics, ranging from Jim Crow laws to social media networking. Sunny Nash is the author of Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's (Texas A&M University Press), about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement.

Sunny Nash’s book is recognized by the Association of American University Presses as essential for understanding U.S. race relations. Nash's book is also listed in the Bibliographic Guide for black studies at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in New York; and recommended for Native American collections by the Miami-Dade Public Library System in Florida. Nash uses her book to write articles and blogs on race relations in America through topics relating to her life--from music, film, early radio and television, entertainment, social media, Internet technology, publishing, journalism, sports, education, employment, the military, fashion, performing arts, literature, women's issues, adolescence and childhood, equal rights, social and political movements--past and present—to today's post-racism.

© 2023 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

 www.sunnynash.blogspot.com 

~Thank You~

Labor Day - The End of Ice Cream Summer

My family, like other American families, had a Labor Day tradition when I was growing up. 

Grape Nut Ice Cream by Kristin Taylor

Similar to a recipe my mother used, 
this healthy choice ice cream features
grape juice flavoring. 

My mother used
fresh seasonal fruits to flavor her
homemade vanilla ice cream recipe.

The establishment of Labor Day as a U.S. national holiday and the invention of the ice cream cone make an interesting historical intersection. 

Labor Day predates the American ice cream cone by a decade. 

I've been working on this post for a while now, and thought I should get it out before Labor Day became a distant memory and summer had drifted down into autumn with the falling leaves.

Established in 1894 as a national American holiday commemorating American workers, Labor Day seems to have been hijacked by the general American public as a three-day weekend to party! For some, Labor Day marks the end of wearing white as part of our summer wardrobes for the remainder of the year. 

When I was a little girl, I watched my mother fold all the white items in our wardrobe and pack them away on the Sunday before Labor Day. Why did we have to give up our favorite summer fashions because of a date on the calendar? I din't care what the calendar said, the weather was still hot in September and, besides, I liked my white shorts and shirts, now relegated to gym class. Anticipating the coming Monday, Labor Day, was also the last day of ice cream summer. I confess, Labor Day was not my favorite holiday, except for homemade ice cream.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Vanilla Ice Cream
Chocolate Syrup Topping

I loved my mother's homemade ice cream, flavored with fresh fruit, mint, powdered green tea or chocolate syrup. 

The recipe that produced our end of summer treat wasn't my mother's recipe and she never claimed it as her own. It was a recipe that had been passed down through our family for many generations. My mother simply added her own twists to the summer delight and she liked to serve her homemade ice cream in homemade ice cream cones.

Ice Cream Cone

"I can stretch the ice cream farther serving it in cones," she said. "And cones are cheaper to make than ice cream."

My mother made her own ice cream cones from a recipe she found in a book from a second-hand store that also sold used furniture and other household goods that she sometimes purchased at very discounted prices if they were in good condition, but they, especially, had to be in good taste and in keeping with my mother's exquisite sense of decor and impeccable style. 

Agnes B. Marshall
Inventor of Ice Cream Cone
Published in 1888

Some books my mother collected on various subjects said the ice cream cone was popularized in America at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904, making ice cream cones 112 years old today. "Ice cream cones may have become known in America in 1904," my mother said, "But they have been around much longer in the rest of the world."

In 1888, 128 years ago, English author and dessert chef, Agnes Bertha Marshall, published Book of Cookery, containing the ice cream cone recipe my mother mimicked in her own kitchen when I was young. 

The ice cream cone recipe was different from the one Mrs. Shields sold in her 1950s neighborhood confectionery down the street from where we lived. Mrs. Shields bought her cones wholesale off the back of a truck from a traveling salesman. Her ice cream was store-bought, too, which, according to most her the neighbors who bought her goods, were also very over priced. 

Agnes Bertha Marshall was the authority on cold sweet treats, according to my mother. Marshall wrote so many books on the preparation of desserts made from flavored ices, the English author earned the title, Queen of Ices. 

Labor Day, a National Holiday
Celebrating the American Worker

Ice Cream Cones and Labor Day Go Hand-in-Hand

Don't get me wrong, my mother was knowledgeable about and appreciated the real history of Labor Day and many other things in the human experience, on which she did not hesitate educating me. The historical marker for Labor Day, as well as many other historical date markers were common discussions in our house. My mother used the calendar for some of the liveliest history lessons, which she called history stories trying to make me think of these conversations as everyday dinner table banter instead of what the conversations really were--an extension of school!

I guess you could surmise that my mother was a history buff and did her best to turn me into one, too.  Not only was she a history buff, but a science buff, a math buff, an art buff, language buff; you name it! If it had to do with education, the subject made her a buff. She scoured used book store shelves and, yard and estate sales looking for suitable material to use against all of my free time. At the time when I was growing up, public policy prevented us from entering most libraries. Occasionally, a neighbor that worked for the city as a library janitor brought my mother worn library books discarded from shelves due to overuse, wear-and-tear and abuse. 

Repairing a book with a broken spine or torn pages, and erasing pencil marks from margins, my mother complained, "Some people should not be allowed to check out library books because they don't know how to handle them! And they won't let us into the public library!"

I was not allowed to celebrate something unless I had an understanding of what the something was and, sometimes, not even then; as in my grandmother's lesson on Halloween, another story. But I will keep this discussion focused on ice cream cones and Labor Day.

My great grandmother's homemade ice cream recipe marked the end of summer.

Vintage White Mountain
Ice Cream Freezer
Similar the the the 100-plus-year-old 

antique, wooden ice cream freezer

in the possession of my family 

for decades after 

my great-grandmother died.

On Labor Day, my mother made her grandmother's 100-plus-year-old homemade ice cream recipe given to her by her grandmother to use with the 100-plus-year-old antique wooden ice cream freezer, also a gift from her grandmother. I remember the freezer well. It stayed in the family for years, coming first into the possession of my grandmother via her mother, then my mother. 

I remember taking turns with invited neighborhood children cranking the ice cream freezer. My mother usually made vanilla but occasionally mixed in fresh seasonal fruit or berries or mint from our garden or powdered green tea, all of which my mother also used in our teatime rituals. 

I don't know what finally happened to my great grandmother's ice cream freezer, which would be mine by now. I only have a vague memory of the wooden boards coming off. Overuse, I guess. 

Sausage and Veggies on the Grill

Before the arrival of Labor Day, during ice cream summer,  many of our evenings in the backyard included my mother's cookouts, where she invited neighbors to join in the fun.

If neighbors had something to throw on the fire or place on the table, it was welcomed. However, if they didn't have a contribution to the feast, my mother welcomed them empty-handed anyway, dividing up what she already had so that everyone got a little taste of some part of her delicious offering. 

As flatbed trucks drove slowly down neighborhood streets and stopped at various corners letting people off, many of our neighbors and their children my own age were only getting home from their summer jobs toiling from sunup to sundown in blazing sun picking cotton on nearby farms. 

"You can't throw an outdoor ice cream supper and let your neighbors stare from the heat of their yards," my mother said. "If you don't have something to offer them, keep your supper inside your house, no matter how hot is tets in there! Especially on Labor Day!"

    

Bigmama Didn’t Shop 

At Woolworth’s 

Sunny Nash

Hard Cover

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Amazon Kindle

Bigmama Didn't Shop 

at Woolworth's

Author of Bigmama Didn’t Shop At Woolworth's, Sunny Nash is recognized as a leading author on U.S. Race Relations.

Sunny Nash's book, which she fondly refers to as "The Bigmama Book," is about life with her part-Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. The book is awarded the distinction, Book for Understanding U.S.  Race Relations by the American Association of University Presses; and recommended for Native American Collections by Miami-Dade County Library System. Nash writes a popular blog, Sunny Nash - Race Relations in America, based on period themes from her book.

Robin Fruble of Southern California wrote, "Every white person in America should read this book (Bigmama Didn't Shop At Woolworth's)! Sunny Nash writes the story of her childhood without preaching or ranting but she made me realize for the first time just how much skin color changes how one experiences the world. But, if your skin color is brown, it matters a great deal to a great number of people. I needed to learn that. Sunny Nash is a great teacher," Fruble said.

© Copyright 2020. Sunny Nash. All rights reserved.

 

© 2020 Sunny Nash. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

~Thank You~

Nothing Really Wrong

 

Nothing Really Wrong...

Sunny Nash

Early in my writing career, I was a staff editor at a small magazine. One day, my boss stopped me in the hallway and asked how I felt about my position. Was that a trick question, I thought? I did not say how much I really wanted a byline for my portfolio. I did not say how I thought I was passed over for writing assignments and given only proofreading chores to clean up the slop of other favored staff editors, who did occasionally get to write for a byline. I kept those things to myself because I already knew the truth would not be welcome in these quarters.

I was a demographic statistic that ticked a box on a form, a box marked 'grateful' to have a job anywhere in an industry among so-called colleagues, who ignored my potential contributions in favor of low-standard status quo. But none of that really mattered to me anymore. I had a secret moonlit counterpunch up my sleeve, ready to knockout any doubt about who I was, who I am and who I will become.

So, I said, "Nothing is really wrong."

"I didn't think so," my boss replied, strutting away confidently.

Watching her strut down the hallway shrouded in homemade snobbery, it all hit me like a ton of soiled bed linen and musty pillows! She had to prevent my star from shining. To her, I represented the competition to her next promotion by her own male boss. Oh, yes! My little boss lady was scared to death of my taking over her position, a position I thought beneath any female dog, knowing all about what she had done to land herself in that broken-down bunk, in the first place, and to keep wallowing there. Seeing her disappear down the hallway, revealed to me at that moment I had nothing to fear from her at all. In fact, I had nothing to fear from anyone! No one can hold me back, except me, as long as I use my vertical, rather than horizontal, strategies to fulfill my intellectual and professional aspirations.

Below is a portion of the gadgets in my toolbox, filled with self-constructed, unscientifically-tested doohickeys, donkey-rigged doodads, widgets, thingamajigs and my mammy-made wardrobe suggestions, which all work for me and could, perhaps with your personal modifications, help you toward your independent standard of best practices in life.

Learn everything the system offers

Embrace all knowledge

Understand and use new concepts

Seek advantages in technology

Seize opportunities to be innovative

Stay ahead of the pack

Abandon trends before they become untrendy

Do not be afraid to compete

Avoid the passé

Study the past to conquer the future

Good looks do count, but do not use them

Dress cheap from the "Children's Place"

Wear comfortable shoes, boots are preferable

Eat to live, do not live to eat

Greed is not attractive

Value humanity

Appreciate the planet

Do your best

And other stuff...

Take it from me, whomever we allow to define who we are controls whoever we become. I decided the day of my little boss lady's question that I would take ownership of me; throw away the key; break the mold; and any other worn-out cliché that can be applied to my situation. Let no one crack my head open ever again and pour in their poison about who I am and what I can do.

This life belongs to me! I, alone, own it!

The night following my little boss lady's question, I went home and wrote a song to fit the occasion, not limited to the position I held in that organization, but including the total person I knew could become. It was my decision to spend my time and money on education, training, traveling, learning and creating what would benefit me and, quite possibly, humankind. When I had finished the song, I felt free for the first time and it didn't matter that my little boss lady dismissed me as her inferior because I knew the truth that she was yet to learn.

Staring down at my letter of resignation on her desk the next day, she was shocked as she asked, "Who will hire a black writer in this town? There are no black magazines here!"

I said, "That's not a problem you have to ponder."

She watched as I laid the key to my cubicle on her desk atop my letter of resignation, and left her office, quietly closing the door behind me. I knew which way I was headed and never looked down again.

Writing my song, " Nothing Really Wrong," helped me to change the direction of my life. I think my song may help you change the direction of your life if, in fact, your life needs changing.

A version of this essay was first published in 2021 World Pulse: An independent, women-led, global social network for social change.

Sunny Nash is a journalist and author of "Bigmama Didn't Shop at Woolworth's" about life with her part Comanche grandmother during the Civil Rights Movement. The book is selected by the Association of American University Press as a book for understanding U.S. Race Relations, and recommended by the Miami-Dade Public Library System for Native Collections.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Sunny_Nash/214753