First Black Female Olympics Medal Winner

In 1948, Audrey Patterson became the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal.

Audrey Patterson & President Harry S. Truman
The White House 1948

Audrey Patterson

Audrey Patterson was the first African American woman to win an Olympic medal--bronze--in 1948. 

With all that gold being earned by African American women at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, we should remember the first African American women to win Olympic medals, lest we forget that Audrey Patterson helped lay the groundwork for black female gold medalists in the 2016 Summer Olympic in Rio. 

Audrey Patterson was born in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the heart of Jim Crow America. 

The Olympic Games were cancelled in 1940 and 1944 as many Americans were glued to the radio listening for developments of war with Germany. Audrey Patterson was in high school at the world was fighting in the European and Pacific theaters. No doubt, Patterson knew black soldiers in her family, her community or her school--although not allowed to enter combat in a meaningful way due to Jim Crow laws.  

African American men nationwide were on the cusp of gaining important civil rights for themselves in the military, as well as for other American blacks back home. 

During WWII, the Tuskegee Airmen, a unit of black pilots was organized at the instigation of black activist, A. Philip Randolph. The Army trained these men for air combat.Their proficiency proved so strong that they led to the desegregation of the U.S. Army by the Executive Order of President Harry S. Truman. After WWII ended in 1945, the next time a black American woman competed in the Olympics was in 1948. This was just before the official opening of the modern Civil Rights Movement when Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King burst onto the scene in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1954. In the meanwhile, black Americans were on the hunt for heroes to use in the fight against Jim Crow laws and the Olympics seemed as good a place as any. Female Olympians were training at both Tuskegee and Tennessee State in the tradition of former Olympic competitors.

Black females had been qualifying for the Olympics since 1932 in integrated track and field teams.

1936 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

Trained at Tuskegee Institute, Tydie Pickett and Louise Stokes entered competition with the 1932 Los Angeles Olympics and the 1936 Berlin Olympics teams. Both times, Pickett and Stokes were replaced at the last minute by white teammates they had previously defeated.These political decisions were made by Olympic officials and seemed to have something to do with race.

The Berlin Olympics of 1936, however, belonged to black male track star, Jesse Owens, who won four individual gold medals at the Olympics. Legend has it that Jesse Owens was snubbed by Adolph Hitler. However, Owens said in his biography that he felt more of a snub by his own country upon his return from the Berlin Olympics. Touring with his Olympics team, he was discriminated against in hotel accommodations, restaurants and transportation due to Jim Crow laws in the United States. 

Further, Jesse Owens was not invited to the White House until many years after his victory when he was invited to the White House by President Dwight Eisenhower and appointed Athletic Ambassador. Owens when around the world promoting the goodwill of the United States by speaking to school children. Owens also made the rounds among schools in the United States, especially in the south where Jim Crow laws still prevailed.

Audrey Patterson said she felt that 1936 Olympic gold medal winner, Jesse Owens, was speaking to her in 1944 when he told a group at Gilbert Academy, "There is a boy or a girl in this audience who will go to the Olympics."In 1947, Patterson enrolled at Wiley College in Marshall, Texas, where she became a track star, winning the Tuskegee Relays in the 100- and 220-yard dashes and the Amateur Athletic Union National Indoor Title in the 220-yard event. In 1948, Patterson transferred from Wiley to Tennessee State in Nashville, where she dominated the American record with another undefeated season. Patterson went to Providence, Rhode Island, for trials in the 1948 Olympics and earned a position on the U.S. Women's All-American Track & Field Team for the London Olympics. Patterson was one of the nine black females on the 12-member team.

At the time of the 1948 Olympics, Audrey Patterson, also known as Mickey, was a 22-year running beauty, who got cheers whenever the crowd caught a glimpse of her. And Mickey did not disappoint her international fans. By edging out Shirley Strickland of Australia, Patterson won a bronze medal for the 200-meter dash in the first Olympic Games that offered women the 200-meter race for competition. Fanny Blankers-Koen of the Netherlands won the race, her third gold medal. A few days later, African American track and field star from Tuskegee Institute, Alice Coachman, won a gold medal for the high jump.

When Audrey Patterson returned from the Olympics, her hometown newspaper, The Times-Picayune, did not mention her victory, which was interpreted by the black community as a snub because Patterson was an African American. The mayor did not attend her celebration ceremony, sending a certificate in his stead. However, President Harry Truman invited Patterson to the White House for a congratulatory visit after her history-making Olympic performance. 

In 1948, Rosa Parks had started her civil rights career with the Montgomery, Alabama, branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as a principal investigator in rape cases involving black Alabama women. Rape was a primary offense against black women during the era of Jim Crow laws, used to control activities and suppress esteem in the black community. It was during the next decade, that Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King led the Montgomery Bus Boycott that led to the dismantling of Jim Crow laws across America.

Although, during this same period changes were occurring nationally in race relations. The Tuskegee Airmen, a unit  of black pilots had helped the United States win WWII and President Harry Truman had desegregated the U.S. Army. Both of these events were brought about by the encouragement of former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and black activist, A. Philip Randolph, labeled the most dangerous black man in America.

1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

At the 1948 London Olympics, nine of the 12  members of the U.S. Women’s All-American Track & Field Team were African American. Audrey "Mickey" Patterson of Tennessee State became the first African American woman in Olympic history to win a medal. 

Audrey Patterson was born in 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, in the heart of the Jim Crow south, steeping in discrimination against African Americans. 

Audrey Patterson won a bronze medal for the 200-meter dash in the 1948 Olympics. That was the first time the 200-meter race was included in Olympic competition for female runners. In that 1948 Olympic Games, another African American female became the first black American woman to win a gold medal in Olympics history; Alice Coachman won the high jump and was inducted into eight athletic Halls of Fame. Later that year, the Amateur Athletic Union announced that Audrey Patterson had been named Woman Athlete of the Year. 

In 1965, Audrey Patterson founded Mickey's Missiles track club for girls six to 18, and produced Olympic track star, sprinter Jackie Thompson, who competed in the 200-meter Olympics in 1972. In 1982, Patterson founded the Martin Luther King Freedom Run in San Diego and was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Audrey Patterson died in 1996.

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First Black Female Olympic Gold, Alice Coachman

Alice Coachman was the first African American female gold medal winner in Olympics history.

Alice Coachman, 1948 High Jump Winner

Track and Field

Alice Coachman 

Alice Coachman won a gold medal at the 1948 Olympics, becoming the first black American woman to win gold, just days after Audrey Patterson became the first African American woman to win a medal of any kind in the Olympics.

Alice Coachman, 1948 London Olympics High Jump Winner

1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track & Field

The last Olympics held before World War II was in Berlin 1936. Black male track and field star, Jesse Owens, who won four gold track and field medals and tried to turn his victory into a victory for civil rights. In spite of Jesse Owens' impressive results, race relations in the United States remained oppressive.

Nearly two decades would pass before Brown v the Board of Education in 1954 and the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1954-55, led by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, would cause changes in federal law would remove Jim Crow law from the nation's books. However, it takes more than the stroke of a pen to remove racism from society.

Historical background- Females in the Olympics

Black women in that 1936 Olympics, Tydie Pickett and Louise Stokes, had been removed from the track and field roster as they had been in the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932. They were replaced by white teammates they had previously defeated. Because the world was involved in WWII, the Olympics were cancelled in 1940 and 1944. The next Olympics were held in 1948 in London, in which African American women track and field stars, comprising the greater proportion of the 1948 U.S. Female Olympic Track and Field Team, set records that year and won medals.

Since 1948, black female gold medal Olympians--from Coachman, the first, to Gabby Douglas in the 2012 London Olympics, most recent of the African American female gold medal winners--have been making Olympic history and showing the world who they were. Each occasion that black women win medals or make other significant accomplishments to society, the world sees African American women in a different and more positive light, and re-evaluates changing standards of American beauty.

Athletics and civil rights helped set new standards of American beauty. Beauty standards of have changed along with images of black women. 

Rosa Parks & Martin Luther King
Montgomery Bus Boycott

The image of black female beauty ushered in by the Civil Rights Movement was very different from the old images of black women during the days of Jim Crow laws. 

During the days of Jim Crow laws, women with darker skin were considered less attractive than women with lighter skin. And that was true even in the African American community. Therefore, dark-skinned women were viewed on television shows and in Hollywood movies as less valuable in society than their white counterparts. And black women with light skin remained out of work because producers hesitated in casting them as maids and risking a confusion that white women were playing roles as maids. In other words the roles the public saw black and white women playing were the reflection of the public estimation of them in real life. 

The Olympics helped to show black women as winners, raised their value in society and opened the door for Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Martin Luther King and the modern Civil Rights Movement. Early accomplishments, victories and contributions by Alice Coachman and others laid the foundation for a future generation of black female activists like Rosa Parks to continue building a road to equality. The Civil Rights Movement seized upon Alice Coachman's glory in hopes of creating another African American hero to symbolize racial equality and close the door on the black codes of slavery that created Jim Crow laws and racial injustice in American society. 

By nearly a decade, Alice Coachman's era preceded Rosa Parks, the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Dr. Martin Luther King, both credited with igniting the modern Civil Rights Movement. King, Parks and a little known female civil rights activist named Joanne Robinson worked to hold the Montgomery Bus Boycott together. However, Alice Coachman's victory at the 1948 Olympics had opened doors toward racial justice, which made the efforts of King, Parks, Robinson and other civil rights activists. 

Alice Coachman represented Tuskegee Institute, the school that started women's track and field training for the Olympics, and became the first African American woman to win a gold medal in the Olympics. In fact, Coachman was the only U.S. female athlete of any race to win a medal of any kind at the 1948 Summer Olympics in London. Alice Coachman, other participants in the Olympics and the rest of the African Americans in the United States wanted the same things as other Americans. They wanted a chance to be Americans. They wanted good jobs, homes and education for their children. And that's what winning in the Olympics, attending Tuskegee Institute and other universities, and the Civil Rights Movement meant to them.

Alice Coachman
High Jump Winner (AP Photo)

Alice Coachman--born in 1923 in Albany, Georgia--was one of 10 children. She attended Tuskegee Institute in high school and college at the time of Tuskegee Airmen fame. At Tuskegee, Coachman won several national track and field titles, but due to World War II, the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled. Before Alice Coachman won her gold medal, Audrey Patterson of Tennessee State had already won a bronze medal, becoming the first African American female in Olympic history to win a medal.

Alice Coachman (center) at Wembley Stadium, Wembley, England, August 7, 1948, London Olympics, receiving gold medal for winning the women's high jump; left is D.J. Tyler, Great Britain, second; and right is M.O.M. Ostermeyer, France, third.

Athletics and civil rights helped to change America.

A. Philip Randolph 

Eleanor Roosevelt

National unrest and growing racial and social tension in the military community, led by A. Philip Randolph, brought civil rights to the forefront of the Roosevelt administration, primarily through sympathies of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, leading to the creation of the Tuskegee Airmen, the first black U.S. trained black pilots, who helped America win WWII and were instrumental in the desegregation of the U.S. Army. On July 26, 1948, the President Harry Truman signed Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the U.S. Army, just days before the London Olympics began on July 29, 1948 and Coachman's victory for the gold medal in the high jump.

Alice Coachman's victory fueled the struggle against Jim Crow laws in America and the world.

President Truman & African American Female Olympians

(l-r) Emma Reed, Theresa Manuel, Audrey Patterson,

Nell Jackson, Alice Coachman and Mabel Walker

(l-r) Emma Reed, Theresa Manuel, Audrey Patterson,

Nell Jackson, Alice Coachman and Mabel Walker

After returning from London in 1948 and hanging up her Olympic shoes, Alice Coachman became a symbol of freedom to many African Americans who heard on radio that Coachman was inducted into eight athletic Halls of Fame. These are honors no black women before her had ever earned. Since that time, many black women had earned these and additional Olympic and other honors. 

Alice Coachman opened the door for the fastest woman in the world in 1960, Wilma Rudolph, until Florence "FloJo" Joyner broke her record in 1988, becoming the fastest woman on earth.

After winning her world honors, she founded the Alice Coachman Track and Field Foundation, a non-profit organization to help train young athletes for Olympic competition, to find funds for their college education and to prepare for professional careers after returning from the Olympics.