American Olympian high jumper Alice Coachman dies at 90

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.