Tigerbelle
Page 25
Once there’s a spark, whether it’s an individual spark or a group spark, conversations change—they change everywhere and for everyone. After the Olympics, probably in the eighties, when I was inducted into the Olympic Hall of Fame, I would get invited to a lot of banquet dinners. Half of the time, I just talked to the person right next to me, or sometimes someone from across the table would keep talking to me, and that’s where my conversation would be. A lot of times, people would say things during the cocktail part of the party—the part before everybody sits down—that would make me think: Hope I’m not sitting at that person’s table. But mainly, you knew what you were getting into. You knew you were going to be with corporate America. And you knew you were going to be with a lot of people who probably didn’t know anything about you or what you had done, and that your views and their views might not be identical, and that you didn’t want them identical anyway. You knew which things you should stay away from in your conversations. But once there’s a spark, there’s no way to stay away. Someone is going to bring it up.
That’s what happened when Tommie Smith and John Carlos did what they did. A lot of people were unhappy about that. So I would go to those banquets, and before long someone would say, “What do you think about Smith and Carlos?”
And I would say, “What do you mean?”
“I mean, is that the place for it? The Olympics?”
“What they did made a statement. It started people looking and thinking and questioning a lot of things, and some of the people looking at it joined a movement. So yes. I think that was exactly the right place.”
“But you didn’t do it.”
“No one else did it either. Tommie and Carlos did it, and it was so powerful, there was no room for anybody else. Did you know that I dedicated my medal to them?” And then I wouldn’t have to say too much more.
Sometimes, somebody else at the table might say, “You did?!” in a positive way, and then you would get another conversation out of it—a conversation that everybody at the table would hear, whether they said anything or not, and whether they agreed or not.
Other times, when someone asked about that, and everybody heard me say, “I dedicated my medal to them, I believe in what they did,” nobody else had anything more to say. Then I would know what kind of table I was sitting at. Things are clear when there’s a spark. Whichever side they’re on, people aren’t left to just think their own thoughts.
That was one of the things that came up a lot at those tables, long after Tommie and Carlos did their thing. And every time it came up, it gave me an opportunity to speak out. Sometimes people weren’t happy about it. I would come home and tell Duane, and he would say, “Maybe you need to think more carefully about what you’re going to say.”
“Well, they need to do the same.” Because when someone says something that really offends me or someone else, I can’t not react. I can’t control it.
And when I said that to Duane, he would reply, “Well, you can take a deep breath, and you can excuse yourself, and you can walk away from the table. And then when you come back, dinner’s over, and you don’t even need to sit at that table again. ‘Is it time to go already? I got lost,’ you can say.”
But that wouldn’t work for me. I am a person who has trouble—actually, I don’t think it’s trouble. It’s just that if it comes to my head to respond to something offensive someone has said, and I don’t say it, I walk around with that burden. Some things have to be said.
If we can all say the things that need to be said, if we use our platforms when we have them, and if we can see a way not only to work with other people but to see other people as people, then hopefully my grandchildren will see change that is change—change that is enough. Hopefully there will be a different type of life for them, such that they don’t have to worry about how other people see them because everyone will see everyone else as people. Hopefully, by the time they are thirty or forty, a lot will have changed, not just in one part of the country but all over.
I know that if things are going to change, it’s going to be a long fight and we are going to have to be on our guard for a long time. Because any time you win something, even the littlest thing, it’s always the same: The powers-that-be want you to sit back down and be satisfied. They’re like, “We gave it to you, right? You got to calm down now.” And the minute we calm down, they try to take it back. So we have to try to focus on the big picture, and we have to be down for the long haul. Will it happen? I know I said I didn’t think it was going to happen in my lifetime, but I plan to live to be a hundred, so we’ve got thirty years to get it right.
Appendix.
The Tigerbelles
Coach Edward Stanley Temple
USA Olympic Women’s Track Coach, 1960 and 1964
Pan-American Track Coach, 1959 and 1975
Olympic Gold Medals won by Tigerbelles
Mae Faggs, BS/MS[37]—1952 Helsinki, Finland (4x100-meter relay)
Barbara Jones, BS—1952 Helsinki, Finland (4x100-meter relay); 1960 Rome, Italy (4x100-meter relay)
Wilma Rudolph, BS—1960 Rome, Italy (100 meter, 200 meter, 4x100-meter relay)
Martha Hudson, BS—1960 Rome, Italy (4x100-meter relay)
Lucinda Williams, BS/MS—1960 Rome, Italy (4x100-meter relay)
Edith McGuire, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (200 meter)
Wyomia Tyus, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (100 meter); 1968 Mexico City, Mexico (100 meter, 4x100-meter relay)
Madeline Manning, BS/MDiv—1968 Mexico City, Mexico (800 meter)
Chandra Cheeseborough, BS—1984 Los Angeles, California (4x100-meter relay, 4x400-meter relay)
Olympic Silver Medals won by Tigerbelles
Willye B. White, BA—1956 Melbourne, Australia (long jump); 1964 Tokyo, Japan (4x100-meter relay)
Edith McGuire, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (100 meter; 4x100-meter relay)
Wyomia Tyus, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (4x100-meter relay)
Madeline Manning, BS/MDiv—1972 Munich, Germay (4x400-meter relay)
Kathy McMillan, BS—1976 Montreal, Canada (long jump)
Chandra Cheeseborough, BS—1984 Los Angeles, California (400 meter)
Olympic Bronze Medals won by Tigerbelles
Audrey Patterson, BS—1948 London, England (200 meter)
Wilma Rudolph, BS—1956 Melbourne, Australia (4x100-meter relay)
Isabelle Daniels, BS—1956 Melbourne, Australia (4x100-meter relay)
Margaret Matthews, BS—1956 Melbourne, Australia (4x100-meter relay)
Mae Faggs, BS/MS—1956 Melbourne, Australia (4x100-meter relay)
Additional Tigerbelle Olympians (US)
Emma Reed, BS—1948 London, England (high jump)
Anna Louis Smith, BS/MS—1960 Rome, Italy (long jump)
Shirley Crowder, BS—1960 Rome, Italy (100-meter hurdles)
JoAnn Terry, BS/MS—1960 Rome, Italy (80-meter hurdles); 1964 Tokyo, Japan (long jump)
Vivian Brown, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (200 meter)
Estelle Baskerville, BS/MS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (long jump); 1968 Mexico City, Mexico (high jump)
Eleanor Montgomery, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (high jump); 1968 Mexico City, Mexico (high jump)
Martha Watson, BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (long jump); 1968 Mexico City, Mexico (long jump); 1972 Munich, Germany (long jump); 1976 Montreal, Canada (long jump)
Iris Davis, BS/MS—1968 Mexico City, Mexico (100 meter); 1972 Munich, Germany (100 meter)
Mamie Rallins, BS—1968 Mexico City, Mexico (100-meter hurdles); 1972 Munich, Germany (100-meter hurdles)
Brenda Morehead, BS—1976 Montreal, Canada (100 meter)
Additional Tigerbelle Olympians (International)
Cynthia Thompson (Jamaica), BS/MD—1952 Helsinki, Finland, and 1956 Melbourne, Australia (100, 200 meter)
Lorraine Dunn (Panama), BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan (100-meter hurdles)
Marcella Daniels (Panama), BS—1964 Tokyo, Japan, and 1968 Mexico City, Mexico (100, 200 meter)
Deb
bie Jones (Bermuda), BS—1976 Montreal, Canada (100, 200 meter)
Helen Blake (Jamaica), BS—1976 Montreal, Canada (4x400-meter relay, 400 meter)
Una Morris (Jamaica), BS/MD—1964 Tokyo, Japan, 1968 Mexico City, Mexico, and 1972 Munich, Germany (4x400-meter relay, 200 meter)
ENDNOTES
Introduction
1. Pronounced Weye-OH-mee; the final a is silent. Return to text
2. “Wyomia Tyus Retains Olympic 100m Title—First Ever | Mexico 1968 Olympics,” https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=T2TOQU2T338. “Bittersweet Bronze: Mexico ’68,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_76h0OCM558. Return to text
3. See “Mexico's 1968 Massacre: What Really Happened?” December 1, 2008, All Things Considered, NPR, produced by Joe Richman and Anayansi Diaz-Cortes, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/ story.php?storyId=97546687. Return to text
4. See Sports Illustrated Vault: http://www.si.com/vault/issue/43115/1/1. Return to text
5. See “Women’s Tennis Stars Paid Less Than Men, Despite Equal Popularity” by Martha C. White, http://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/women-s-tennis-stars-paid-less-men-despite-equal-popularity-n543496, and “Gender Equality? Women Are Already Tops in Tennis” by Stefanie Kratter, http://www.cnbc.com/2015/ 02/26/in-tennis-women-are-on-top-kratter-150226-ec.html. Return to text
6. See “Sure, These Women Are Winning Olympic Medals, but Are They Single?” by Katie Rogers, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/19/sports/olympics/sexism-olympics-women.html?_r=0. Return to text
7. See “Katie Ledecky’s Record–Breaking Win Only Took Second Place in This Sexist Headline,” https://mic.com/articles/151670/katie-ledecky-s-record-breaking-win-only-took-second-place-in-this-sexist-headline#.8lIfxvB4x. (As Twitter user Nancy Leong put it: “This headline is a metaphor for basically the entire world.”) And “The Reaction to Olympic Diver He Li’s Proposal Story Isn’t All Praise,” https://mic.com/articles/151534/the-reaction-to-olympic-diver-he-zi-s-viral-proposal-story-isn-t-all-praise#.mmlazXWNf. Return to text
8. Both Douglas and Biles are Black, which apparently means they look the same. See http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com/news/local/Philadelphia-Daily-News-Mistakes-Simone-Biles-for-Gabby-Douglas-390449411.html. Return to text
9. This list changes frequently, so there is some hope that more women’s stories will appear. Return to text
10. Salisbury, Tracey M., PhD, “First to the Finish Line: The Tennessee State Tigerbelles 1944–1994,” unpublished dissertation, 2009, p. 28. Return to text
11. Salisbury, p. 33. Return to text
Chapter 2
12. In the high jump at the London Olympics in 1948. Return to text
Chapter 3
13. Margaret Ellison, “nicknamed Flamin’ Mamie for her strawberry-blond hair and flamboyant personality, had little track experience, but plenty of business savvy,” according to Runnersworld.com. “Hoping to attract both spectators and media, Ellison brought her athletes to a beauty salon before every meet.” In the words of one of her runners, “She just wanted us to be showy. Every year, she would design these fancy uniforms and she had this sewing lady in Abilene make red satin shorts and things like that.” On April 20, 1964, Flaming Mamie’s Bouffant Belles became the first female track athletes ever to be appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated. Gil Rogin, an SI editor at the time, “chose to write primarily about the athletes’ beauty regimen rather than their running, and admits, ‘It was all just a stunt. It wasn't a track story.’” See http://www.runnersworld.com/runners-stories/how-big-hair-got-these-runners-on-the-cover-of-sports-illustrated. Return to text
Chapter 4
14. It was neither the first nor the last time an Olympic team was dominated by Tigerbelles: all four runners in the 4x100 relay teams in both the 1956 and the 1960 Olympics were Tigerbelles, just as Tigerbelles were three of the four 4x100 relay team members in 1964. Nor was it the first time Mr. Temple was chosen as coach in an unprecedented manner: When the US was putting together its national team to go to the Soviet Union in 1958, they had never had a Black coach, and were not thinking to ask Mr. Temple. In an interview with Kenneth Thompson of Fisk University, Mr. Temple tells the story of how he came to be coach: “I called [the chairwoman] aside before they went into the meeting because I wasn’t involved in the meeting, and I said, ‘Frances—’ her name was Frances, Frances Kosinski—I said, ‘Frances, we come up here on a charter bus. I got eight girls on this United States national team. Now, when you go on in there and have your meeting, you tell them that if they don’t come out with me as coach, those eight girls are going to be back on that bus going back to Nashville the next morning.’ She looked at me and turned red, and she went in there and told them, and when she came out, she said, ‘Ed, you the coach.’ And I said, ‘Thank you.’ And from that time on, I didn’t have no problems.” See the complete interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_q3NnejsJQ. Return to text
15. “I was very happy,” Wyomia said in a later interview, “to see that so many American athletes took part in the opening ceremonies in Rio in 2016. When I competed in ’64 and ’68, it was an unwritten rule that everybody would participate in the opening ceremonies, and most of the athletes and their coaches felt that it was an important part of being at the Olympics. But after ’68, it seemed like a lot of people kind of let that go. So it was nice to see the young athletes getting that kind of experience—an experience that meant a lot to me when I had it.” Return to text
16. “I also was pleased,” Wyomia said in the same interview, “to see that, in 2016, a lot of US athletes stayed in the Olympic Village. The basketball teams—both the men’s and the women’s—were the exception of course; they stayed on a cruise ship. But when the press did little pop-up interviews with other athletes, many of them talked about how much they enjoyed staying in the Village and what a nice feeling it was to be with other athletes from around the world, meeting the people they were competing against and eating the different foods in the different food halls—experiences that were unique and life-changing for me. And for some of them I was thinking, You stayed in the Village? Times have changed.” Return to text
Chapter 5
17. The article, written by Arthur Daley and dated December 3, 1964, can be found in the New York Times 1964 archive at http://www.nytimes.com/1964/12/03/sports-of-the-times.html?_r=1. Return to text
Chapter 6
18. In 1968, only 8 percent of the female population and 11 percent of the male population earned four-year college degrees in the United States; see “Percentage of the US population who have completed four years of college or more from 1940 to 2015, by gender,” Statista.com, Statista Inc., August 26, 2016. Statista does not have completion rates sorted by race, but I think we can assume, based on the overall tenor of racial discrimination at the time, that the percentages would be even smaller. Return to text
19. According to the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, three major nuclear-related accidents have occurred at Los Alamos nuclear laboratories. Critical accidents occurred in August 1945 and May 1946, and a third accident occurred during an annual physical inventory in December 1958. “Sources and Effects of Ionizing Radiation—2008 Report to the General Assembly,” 2011, pp. 2–3. Return to text
Chapter 7
20. The article, by Bob Ottum, entitled “Dolls on the Move to Mexico,” published on September 2, 1968, is a step forward from the 1964 article about the Bouffant Belles. Although the writer spends an inordinate amount of time discussing the female athletes’ looks, including comments about “girls who look great in those warm-up suits, almost as though they were modeling them, for heaven sakes, instead of just keeping their muscles warm,” he does discuss women who actually went to the Olympics. Return to text
21. Tyus’s impression of Boyle’s response is corroborated by Jimson Lee, who has reminded Speed Endurance readers more than once that it was not Usain Bolt or Michelle Jenneke who introduced prerace dancin
g to the Olympics, but Wyomia Tyus. See “Year in Review: Michelle Jenneke Pre-Race Dance? Wyomia Tyus Did It First!” (January 1, 2013) and “Wyomia Tyus: The Famous Pre-Race Dance to Out-Psych Everyone” (June 16, 2010) on speedendurance.com. Return to text
Chapter 9
22. The “Black Tower” (“constructed,” according to studiotour.com, “of black aluminum and glass”) housed the executive offices of Universal Studios. The building was purchased by Comcast in 2013. See http:// articles.latimes.com/2013/ oct/02/entertainment/la-et-ct-comcast-purchases-10-universal-city-plaza-for-about-420-million-20131002. Return to text
Chapter 10
23. Title IX was signed into law in 1972 by none other than Richard Nixon. You can read more about Title IX—and the Women’s Sports Foundation—at https://www.womenssportsfoundation.org/advocate/title-ix-issues/history-title-ix/history-title-ix/. Return to text
Chapter 13
24. The boycott, intended to punish the USSR for invading Afghanistan, was popular with voters but opposed by Olympians. According to Politico.com, Julian Roosevelt, an American member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), had this to say: “‘I’m as patriotic as the next guy, but the patriotic thing to do is for us to send a team over there and whip their ass.’ Al Oerter, a four-time gold medalist in the discus who was trying to make a comeback at age 42, agreed: ‘The only way to compete against Moscow is to stuff it down their throats in their own backyard.’” See http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/02/ carter-olympic-boycott-1980-103308. Return to text
25. And, in fact, it generally has. The IOC does not keep records, but Wikipedia and Topendsports.com do, based on information released by the IOC. The US has won twice as many medals as its closest competitor, the former Soviet Union (which, Topend points out, will not be getting any more). The position of the US and USSR at the top of the all-time Olympic chart is a standing testament to the Cold War—and to the interrelatedness of sports and politics. US dominance in the Olympics is staggering, although the nation’s glory is more vigorously upheld in the summer events; the US trails Norway for most medals won in the Winter Olympics. Also telling is the list of countries that have never won any medals—countries, for the most part, that are either in danger of inundation or famine due to global warming or are currently being bombed. See http://www.topendsports.com/events/ summer/medal-tally/all-time.htm, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_at_the_Olympics, and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-time_Olympic_Games_medal_table. Return to text