Runners Louise left and Agnes Stokes right at a track meet in For the African American Stokes, it was the second time she was denied the opportunity she had worked hard to earn. At the Olympics in Los Angeles, she had also been pulled from the race.
Two times she had been on the verge of becoming the first African American woman to compete in the Olympics, and twice she was denied. Something else was conspicuously absent from the proceedings in Berlin: African American basketball players.
Every team that had competed in the U. Only a handful of predominantly white colleges had desegregated their programs. Many of the best African American basketball players in the s played professionally for barnstorming teams such as the Harlem Globetrotters and New York Renaissance and therefore, as non-amateurs, were ineligible for the Olympics under the rules of the era.
Not that it would have mattered. While white Olympic officials were okay with a few black stars competing in individual sports such as track and boxing, there was great resistance to a black presence in team sports.
Giving a black team the opportunity to compete in the trials with the chance to make up half of the entire U. Even after Barksdale broke the color line, for decades only a token number of black players were allowed on the U. In their whites-only structure in , U. American Olympic runner Jesse Owens and other Olympic athletes compete in the twelfth heat of the first trial of the meter dash.
Berlin, Germany, August 3, Eighteen black athletes represented the United States in the Olympics. Track and field star Alice Coachman made history at the Olympic Games, becoming the first Black woman to win an Olympic gold medal. Olympic gold medalist Florence Joyner brought style to track and field with form-fitting bodysuits, six-inch fingernails and amazing speed. She still holds the world records in the and meter events.
Track and field athlete Carl Lewis competed in four Olympic Games. He won nine gold medals, including four at the Olympics in Los Angeles. In , Wilma Rudolph became the first American woman to win three gold medals in track and field at a single Olympics.
American track and field great Jackie Joyner-Kersee won three Olympic gold medals and numerous national titles during her record-setting career. Swimmer Michael Phelps has set the record for winning the most medals, 28, of any Olympic athlete in history. Jamaica's Usain Bolt is an Olympic legend who has been called "the fastest man alive" for smashing world records and winning multiple gold medals at the , and Summer Games.
American runner Allyson Felix has won nine Olympic medals, making her the most decorated woman in U. His long jump world record stood for 25 years. Olivia Rodrigo —. Megan Thee Stallion —. He tied the world record in the yard dash while still in high school, and his performance at the Big Ten Championships, in which he established three world records and matched a fourth over a span of 45 minutes, remains one of the most extraordinary accomplishments in collegiate sports history.
He wasn't the only African American athlete making waves. Ralph Metcalfe was a silver medalist at the Olympics and at one point shared the world record in the meter dash. And a Temple University sprinter named Eulace Peacock emerged as a highly formidable opponent to Owens, even beating him multiple times in head-to-head competition in , before suffering a hamstring injury that squashed his Olympic hopes. Owens nearly didn't get the chance to make Olympic history. With American decision-makers aware of Hitler's discriminatory policies against Jews — but not yet aware of the scope of the horrors to come — a fierce debate raged about whether to boycott the games.
Amateur Athletic Union president Jeremiah Mahoney argued that participation amounted to support of the Third Reich, but he was outdone by the American Olympic Committee head Avery Brundage, who insisted that the Games were for the athletes and not the politicians. Like other elite Black athletes who grew up in an unequal society, Owens considered the moral stance against Germany to be hypocritical and wasn't inclined to surrender the chance to shine on a global stage.
The gold, silver and bronze medal winners in the long jump competition salute from the victory stand at the Summer Olympics in Berlin. From almost the get-go, Owens seized the reins as the star of the Summer Olympics.
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