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Posts tagged as “Wilma Rudolph”

Inspirational Quote from Track and Field Legend Wilma Rudolph for #MothersDay (LISTEN)

Inspirational Quote from Track and Field Legend Wilma Rudolph for #MothersDay (LISTEN)

By goodblacknews on May 8, 2022

[Wilma Rudolph and her parents Ed and Blanche Rudolph as they rode in a parade after Olympic victory in Rome. Rudolph agreed to participate only if the event was desegregated. This was the first desegregated public event in Clarksville, Tennessee. Photo credit: Bob Ray via https://digital.library.nashville.org/digital/collection/nr/id/2227/]

by Lori Lakin Hutcherson (@lakinhutcherson)

On Mother’s Day 2022, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic gold medalist and international track star Wilma Rudolph, who rightfully and fatefully choose to believe her mother.

To read it and about her, read on. To hear it and more about Rudolph, press PLAY:

[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. Full transcript below]:

Hey, this is Lori Lakin Hutcherson, founder and editor in chief of goodblacknews.org, here to share with you a daily drop of Good Black News for Sunday, May 8th, 2022, based on the “A Year of Good Black News Page-A-Day Calendar” published by Workman Publishing.

US athlete Wilma Rudolph shows the gold medal she won at the Women’s 100 meters Summer Olympic Games sprint event on September 2, 1960 in Rome, Italy. (AP Photo)

Today, for Mother’s Day, we offer a quote from three-time Olympic Gold Medalist and National Track and Field Hall of Famer Wilma Rudolph, who had polio as a young child:

“My doctors told me I’d never walk again. My mother told me I would. I believed my mother.”

Wilma Glodean Rudolph was born prematurely in June 1940 and after contracting Scarlet Fever, pneumonia, polio and infantile paralysis, Rudolph wore braces on her legs until she was nine years old.

Because there was so little medical care available to Black people in 1940s Clarksville, Tennessee, Wilma’s mother Blanche took her on weekly bus trips 50 miles away to Nashville to get Wilma treatment at Meharry Medical College.

Blanche and other family members also massaged Wilma’s weakened leg four times a week until Wilma had enough strength to no longer need braces, or the orthopedic shoe she wore until she was 11.

By the time she was 16, Wilma was running in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, bringing home a bronze medal in the 400-meter relay.

Rudolph earned a college scholarship to Tennessee State and in 1960, she headed to Rome with the goal of becoming the best woman runner in the world. She surpassed that goal, winning three gold medals and breaking world records in the 100 and 200 meters.

She was nicknamed “The Tornado” and became an international track star. Rudolph graduated college with a degree in elementary education, and taught for the majority of her life after she retired from athletics. Let’s hear a clip from Rudolph describing the last race she ever ran before she retired:

“It was Palo Alto, California, Stanford University, Russia versus the United States. I was running well, but the heart wasn’t there anymore. I mean, what do you dowhen you win all of it? To keep yourself motivated, you have to be a little bit hungry, to be there and stay there and to stay on top.

And this particular day, we were running a relay we were behind when we started off. And you always think on a staggered start and you know, on a staggered start that, okay, she’s gonna catch her in the turn. And by the time that baton is passed, we were going to be even. That didn’t happen. And then when they pass it the next time I said, well, by the time they get to the next person, we will be even, or be one step ahead.

And by the time it got to me, I saw that we were behind, and I made myself a promise that day I said, if you catch the Russian it’s history – retire. If you do not catch the Russian, you will have to run another four years for the Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. I caught the Russian. I retired, it became history.

It was the fastest single race that I’ve ever ran in the history of my career. And to get a standing ovation in my home country, outdoors, which I’ve never had before, I think it was the grandest moment in my career. I retired that day, and I have never regretted it.”

Rudolph passed in 1994 of brain cancer, the same year her mother Blanche passed. Rudolph has been honored with a U.S. postage stamp, induction into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame and National Women’s Hall of Fame, and in 2012 her hometown built the Wilma Rudolph Event Center. A life-sized bronze statue of Rudolph stands near the entrance of the building.

 To learn more about Wilma Rudolph, watch videos of her Olympic races on YouTube, read her 1977 autobiography Wilma: The Story of Wilma Rudolph, Wilma Rudolph: A Biography from 2006 by Maureen Margaret Smith and the children’s book Wilma Rudolph: Athlete and Educator by Alice K. Flanagan and check out the 1977 movie Wilma starring Cicely Tyson, Shirley Jo Finney and Denzel Washington, available on Vudu.

Links to these sources and more 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, written, produced and hosted by me, Lori Lakin Hutcherson.

Beats provided by freebeats.io and produced by White Hot.

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R.I.P. Rafer Johnson, 86, Gold Medalist in the 1960 Olympic Decathlon

R.I.P. Rafer Johnson, 86, Gold Medalist in the 1960 Olympic Decathlon

By goodblacknews on December 2, 2020

According to nytimes.com, American athlete Rafer Johnson, who carried the United States flag into Rome’s Olympic Stadium in August 1960 as the first Black captain of a U.S. Olympic team and went on to win gold in the decathlon bringing him acclaim as the world’s greatest all-around athlete, died today at his home in Los Angeles, CA. He was 86.

To quote from The New York Times:

Johnson never competed after that decathlon triumph. He became a good-will ambassador for the United States and a close associate of the Kennedy family, taking a leadership role in the Special Olympics, which were championed by Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and joining Robert F. Kennedy’s entourage during Kennedy’s presidential campaign in 1968. He was remembered especially for helping to wrestle the senator’s assassin to the ground in Los Angeles in 1968.

Johnson’s national profile was largely molded at the 1960 Olympics, one of the most celebrated in the history of the Games, a moment when a host of African-American athletes burst triumphantly onto the world stage.

Muhammad Ali, known then as Cassius Clay, captured boxing gold in the light-heavyweight division. Wilma Rudolph swept to victory in the women’s 100- and 200-meter dashes and combined with her Tennessee State teammates for gold in the 4 x 100 relay. Oscar Robertson helped take the United States basketball team to a gold medal.

Johnson is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Thorsen, brother Jimmy Johnson, a former San Francisco 49er and Pro Football Hall of Famer; two children, Jennifer Johnson Jordan, who was a member of the U.S. women’s beach volleyball team at the 2000 Sydney Olympics and is now a volleyball coach at U.C.L.A., and Josh Johnson; and four grandchildren.

To read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/02/sports/olympics/rafer-johnson-dead.html

African-American Aviation Pioneer Charles Alfred Anderson Sr. to Be Honored by U.S. Postal Service

By goodblacknews on March 7, 2014

In a significant move that brings to the forefront African-American aviation pioneers, the first-ever U.S. postal stamp honoring Tuskegee Airmen is due to be issued this month.  The definitive stamp, which immortalizes aviation trailblazer Charles Alfred Anderson, Sr., goes on sale nationwide March 13.
The 70-cent, First-Class Mail, two-ounce rate stamp, by artist and illustrator Sterling Hundley, will be unveiled next Thursday at a dedication ceremony at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania.
It is part of the Distinguished Americans series, which since 2000 has honored people such as actor José Ferrer, athlete Wilma Rudolph, and scientist Jonas Salk. The Chief Anderson stamp is the fifteenth in the series.
C. Alfred “Chief” Anderson, also known as the “father of black aviation” was selected because he was “a pioneer in aviation who played a crucial role during World War II in training the nation’s first black military pilots, the Tuskegee Airmen,” says USPS regional spokesman Ray V. Daiutolo Sr.
In fact, when Anderson earned his air transport license in 1932, he was the only black American in the country qualified to serve as a flight instructor or to fly commercially. Later he because the first-ever American to successfully land an airplane in the Bahamas.

Poet Raliq Bashard Teams with Fox Sports to Offer Moving Spoken-Word Sports Tribute to Black History Month (VIDEO)

By goodblacknews on February 28, 2014

http://youtu.be/-J8F61MdbUI
Screen Shot 2014-02-28 at 4.51.06 PMWith Black History Month winding down, Fox Sports joined forces with poet Raliq Bashard for a sports-centric tribute to the legends who paved the way for today’s athletes. Check out the video above, put together by Fox and their partners at Relevant 24.  To see the full written text of Bashard’s inspiring spoken-word testimonial, as well as specific stories about black sports figures such as Sugar Ray Robinson, Vonetta Flowers, Larry Doby and Wilma Rudolph, click here.
Review by Lori Lakin Hutcherson
article by Lori Lakin Hutcherson