In June of 1939, London won the bid to host the 1944 Summer Olympics. Just months later, on September 1st, Germany invaded Poland, sparking the international conflict that would come to be known as World War II. The 1940 Summer Olympics were canceled, then the 1940 Winter Olympics. As the global conflict continued to escalate, the 1944 Summer and Winter Olympics followed, becoming only the fourth and fifth Olympics to be canceled due to war.
All around the war-torn globe, athletes who’d been training and preparing, some for decades, had their dreams put on hold once again.
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Alice Coachman was born on Nov. 9, 1923, in Albany, Georgia, to Fred and Evelyn Coachman, the fifth of their ten children. Dad Fred was a veteran of World War I. A cherished family story tells of his survival through an ambush in France by hiding in a mule carcass. “The mule’s belly, literally, split open from German guns,” reported Mike DeArmond for The Kansas City Star in 1996, enabling Fred “to crawl inside the animal rather than to stand alone and be shot.” When looking for survivors, the German troops only saw a dead mule and left, allowing Fred to return home safely to Evelyn and their growing family. “If it had not be for that mule, I wouldn’t be here!” Alice said.
In his 1996 article, Mike paints a picture of Alice’s youth: “From inside the house, over the cacophony of her five brothers and four sisters, Alice heard the beat of Count Basie and Duke Ellington emanating from the radio someone had given her father as a partial reward for plastering a wall.” Inspired by Shirley Temple, Alice wanted to be a dancer for a time. Then, listening to the radio, she thought maybe she’d want to be a musician.
In this boisterous, crowded household, young Alice wanted to stand out. “I wanted to be somebody. I’d just sit on the porch and watch all the girls going by, looking nice,” she told The Kansas City Star. “I wanted some nice things, too.” Her father’s stunning survival during the war had also given her a feeling of destiny. Surely this little southern girl was meant for something more.
When not in school, Alice, from as young as age 10, worked picking peaches, cotton, and beans to supplement her family’s income. The family later relocated to Tuskegee, Alabama. Her parents wanted her ladylike, but Alice felt more inclined to running and jumping the farm fences. She played softball, ran races against the neighborhood boys, and liked dancing.
As a young Black girl in the United States South in the early 1930s, Alice wasn’t welcome much of anywhere when it came to sports. Most leagues only accepted white children. Those that allowed Black children, only accepted boys. So, the roads and fence posts became Alice’s training grounds. She often ran and jumped barefoot. “You had to run up and down the red roads and the dirt roads. You went out there in the fields,” she told The Kansas City Star, “where there was a lot of grass and no track. No nothing.”
"I didn't have any girls for playmates because they were ladylike, and I didn't have no competition to help me jump over the bar, I didn't have no competition to make me run fast, and I didn't have no competition to hit the baseball or softball. So I was really a boy in the sight of the other boys I was playing with,” Alice told NPR in 2004. “And when I look back, maybe if I hadn't played with them, I wouldn't have been as good as I am. That was my competition right there."
While her parents wanted a daintier daughter, others saw Alice’s incredible athletic talent. A teacher at her elementary school and her aunt Carrie Spry encouraged her. With this extra support, 15-year-old Alice started high school and immediately joined the track team. By age 16, she’d earned a scholarship to the Tuskegee Preparatory School and access to proper athletic equipment. She joined the nationally ranked Tuskegee Tigerebelles. This was not a free ride, however, as The Telegraph noted, “the ‘working’ scholarship she was given meant that she had to clean the gym and the swimming pool, sew football uniforms and maintain the tennis courts,” while attending classes and training with the track team.
Just the same, when she was finally allowed to compete, Alice racked up the wins, the first coming before she’d even started classes. “As a senior at Tuskegee Institute High School, she won the [Amateur Athletic Union] nationals in the high jump and the 50-meter dash,” reported Lisa A. Ennis for the New Georgia Encyclopedia. “During her college career at Tuskegee, she won national championships in the 50-meter dash, the 100-meter dash, the 400-meter relay, and the high jump. She also played on the Tuskegee women’s basketball team, which won three championships. She was the only African American on each of the five All-American teams to which she was named.”
By 1940 and the time for the Summer Olympics, Alice was in peak form. She was ready, but the spreading war canceled all Olympics events in 1940, then again in 1944. Alice kept competing in national events. “In ’44 I was really ready. I was voted five times on the All-American team,” she told The Kansas City Star. For 10 years in a row, she’d won the national championships in the high jump. In 1946, she graduated from Tuskegee with a degree in dressmaking.
Then, with the world at something resembling peace and 1948 Summer Olympics back on, Alice, now 25, qualified and made her way to London. She was just one of 12 women on Team USA, and of those, she was one of 9 Black women. Her fellow history-makers were Mabel Walker, Lillian Young, Nell Jackson, Mae Faggs, Cynthia Robinson, Theresa Manuel, Emma Reed, and Audrey “Mickey” Patterson.
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Audrey Patterson was born Sept. 27, 1926, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Her parents, Lionel and Josephine Patterson, didn’t support their daughter’s athletic tendencies, if only because they thought she’d have more interest in music. Audrey, called “Mickey” throughout her life, did it all.
“By the time she was halfway through high school at Gilbert Academy [a New Orleans preparatory school for African American students], she was an accomplished dancer, sang contralto, and performed in the band,” wrote Marty Mule for Shreveport, Louisiana’s The Times in 2000. “She played on the girls basketball team, and her track abilities developed beyond anyone’s expectations.”