Today, we’re talking track and field. And you can’t talk about that sport without talking about Willye White.

            White was born in 1939 and raised by her grandparents in Money, Mississippi. The  town of Money became infamous 16 years later as the place where Emmett Till, a 14-year-old African American boy, was brutally tortured and murdered. So you can imagine the environment in which White grew up.

            To add to her family’s income, White picked cotton, but she made time for sports.

            “I started chopping cotton when I was 10,” she said. “I got paid $2.50 a day for 12 hours. The only way I could get any recognition was through sports. Sports gave me an escape. It kept me off the street.”*

            At the same age, White began training in her segregated schools as a sprinter and in the long jump. In 1956, as a high school sophomore, she qualified for the Olympics, where she took home silver in the long jump at the Melbourne Games. She also participated in the 1960 Rome Olympics, although she didn’t medal.

            But in White’s world, medals aren’t what the Olympics are about.

            “The Olympic movement taught me not to judge a person by the color of their skin but by the contents of their hearts,” White said.**

Olympic-sized racism

            In contrast to White’s worldview, Olympic officials of the time held an odious view of Black female athletes. In the 1940s, Olympic official Norman Cox suggested they should compete separately.

            “The International Olympic Committee should create a special category of competition for them,” he proposed. “The unfairly advantaged hermaphrodites, those less-skilled, child-bearing types with largish breasts, wide hips and knocked knees who regularly defeated normal [meaning white] women.”***

            Norman Cox could have learned a few things from Willye White.

            When it came time for college, White started at Tennessee State University, where future Olympian Wilma Rudolph was a teammate. But White chaffed under the controlling thumb of her coach, Ed Temple, and she left after six months. In 1960, she moved to Chicago, where she became a nurse.   

Racing toward freedom

            Two years later, in 1962, the iconic Penn Relays opened competition to women. The renowned track-and-field event began in 1895 and is hosted annually by the University of Pennsylvania at Franklin Field in Philadelphia. It’s the oldest and largest track and field competition in North America. Upwards of 15,000 high school athletes compete before crowds topping 100,000 spectators. For 67 years, it was a male-only affair.

            In its inaugural year, the only women’s event was an invitational 100-yard dash. Willye White was invited to compete.

            Nine women raced, and White won with a time of 10.9 seconds. Along with the other eight women, White broke open the Relays. The next year, an Olympic development relay was added and in 1964, the 440-yard relay. By 1976, the Relays had expanded women’s competition to include a full schedule of events.

            White went on to become the first five-time Olympian in the history of American track and field. After her Olympic days were over, she concentrated on her education, earning a bachelor’s degree in public health administration at Chicago State in 1976.       

            She won 13 national indoor and outdoor titles and set seven U.S. records in the long jump. She was a member of more than 30 international track and field teams and won a dozen Amateur Athletic Union long jump titles, and was elected to 11 halls of fame. She coached Team USA to the 1981 World Cup and the 1994 U.S. Olympic Festival. She founded a business as a fitness and sports consultant and started a foundation that provided after-school programs, health care and summer camps for children.

            But, despite all the acclaim, White considered her greatest accomplishment was simply to find her place in life. A place where her color and her background didn’t constrain her.

            “Athletics was my flight to freedom: freedom from prejudice, freedom from illiteracy, freedom from bias,” she said. “It was my acceptance in the world.”****

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* Frank Litsky, “Willye B. White, the First 5-Time U.S. Track Olympian, Dies at 67.” New York Times (February 7, 2007).

** United States Olympic and Paralympic Museum, Hall of Fame. https://usopm.org/willye-white/

*** Susan K. Cahn, Coming on Strong: Gender and Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Women’s Sports (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994), p. 111.  

**** Litsky, “Willye B. White.”