The
first black woman to win Olympic gold – and the only American woman to win gold
in track and field at the 1948 London Games has died at the age of 90 on July
14, the same day that Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winning South African author
also died at the age of 90. Alice Marie Coachman died of stroke in Albany, Georgia.
Both were born in 1923 (Gordimer on November 20 and Coachman on November 9).
Coachman
won gold in high jump at the 1948 London Olympics in front of King George VI
who awarded the medal. Afterwards she was invited to board the royal yacht. At
the height of her international achievement, praised around the world, she
returned home to a segregated society. The mayor of Albany, at the time, would
not shake her hand when the city celebrated her success (New York Times, July
16, 2014). Similarly, Nadine Gordimer – also internationally acclaimed – lived
in the era of South African apartheid (1948-1994).
Coachman
achieved her success at a time when she was not allowed to train with white
athletes, so her training ground was the nearby grasslands where she ran
barefoot. She came from a family of 10 children, and it is said her father
was angered by her “unladylike” interest in athletics. When she moved to
Tuskegee to attend high school and college, she won the Amateur Athletic Union
high jump championship 10 consecutive times. She was also proficient in the 100
meter sprint and the relay.
She
won gold at the age of 24, because the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were cancelled
due to World War II. She beat Britain's Dorothy Tyler – but only on a countback.
They both jumped the same height, but Coachman did it on her first jump, so she
took first place. French Micheline Ostermeyer was third. This was Coachman’s first
and only time at the Olympics. She is better known as Alice Coachman Davis after
her marriage to NF Davis, and also her second marriage to Frank Davis.
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