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GBN’s Daily Drop: Figure Skating Pioneer Mabel Fairbanks (LISTEN)

GBN’s Daily Drop: Figure Skating Pioneer Mabel Fairbanks (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on March 7, 2022

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

Today’s GBN Daily Drop podcast is based on the Monday, March 7 entry in the “A Year of Good Black News” Page-A-Day®️ Calendar for 2022 about Mabel Fairbanks, a figure skater who was denied the opportunity to compete for the U.S. because of her skin color but found other ways to dedicate herself to the sport and became a coach to future national and world champions of color:

You can follow or subscribe to the Good Black News Daily Drop Podcast through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, rss.com or create your own RSS Feed. Or just check it out every day here on the main website (transcript below):

SHOW TRANSCRIPT:

Hey, this Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Monday, March 7th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

Growing up in the 1920s, Mabel Fairbanks dreamed of becoming a champion figure skater, but she was denied entry to rinks because of her skin color. So, she learned in part by eavesdropping on white skating instructors. And when the U.S. Skating Team wouldn’t accept Black skaters, she showed off her skills by skating in entertaining ice shows instead.

Fairbanks later became a coach who worked with World Champion pairs team Tai Babilonia and Randy Gardner, Olympic gold medalists Scott Hamilton and Kristi Yamaguchi, and Atoy Wilson, the first African American athlete to win a U.S. skating title.

Though she was never able to compete for her own prizes, Fairbanks was recognized as a pioneer of the sport when she became the first African American inducted into the U.S. Figure Skating Hall of Fame in 1997.

Fairbanks passed away at 85 years old in 2001, and her resting place at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Los Angeles is marked by a plaque etched with a pair of figure skates and the words “Skatingly Yours,” the phrase she’d add whenever she signed autographs.

(via Atoy Wilson and the Mabel Fairbanks estate)

To learn more about Fairbanks, check out the recent NPR Code Switch podcast episode (embedded above) about her story and legacy, the 2019 children’s book Ice Breaker: How Mabel Fairbanks Changed Figure Skating (She Made History) written by Rose Viña and illustrated by Claire Almon, and the U.S. Figure Skating Mabel Fairbanks Skatingly Yours Fund set up to support the training and development of promising young figure skaters of color.

Links to these and other sources are provided in today’s show notes and in the episode’s full transcript posted on goodblacknews.org.

This has been a daily drop of Good Black News, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar for 2022,” published by Workman Publishing. Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

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